TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/021389/02138900.005

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 5.3 KB | 107 lines

                                                                                EDUCATION, Page 69

The Lure of the Classroom


Many professionals turn to teaching in midcareer


    Teachers usually consider their work a lifetime profession,
like doctors or clergy, and look askance at colleagues who
"defect" to more lucrative or less demanding jobs. But the
traffic is not just one way. A growing number of professionals
are turning to teaching in midcareer, taking pay cuts and
accepting sacrifices in order to pursue their late-found
vocation. Says John Kean, chairman of the department of
curriculum and instruction at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison: "They are coming into education in droves."

    The boom is being fueled by fatter teacher salaries and
efforts by many states to speed up the certification process. As
recently as 1983, only eight states allowed full-time staff
teachers to be hired without an undergraduate degree in
education or previous classroom experience. In the 1987-88
school year, some 2,500 teachers in 24 states were trained
through alternative certification programs.

    Some states run such courses themselves, while others
encourage colleges and universities to tailor them to the needs
of career changers, who often cannot afford to forfeit
full-time income. At the California State University at
Dominguez Hills, one-half of the students at the Graduate School
of Education are job switchers. One reason: the program provides
salaried internships.

    Proponents of this trend say career changers are often more
motivated and more effective than teachers who took the
conventional path to the blackboard. "These are a different type
of teacher," says Dianne Worthy, South Carolina's supervisor of
teacher education. "They bring more life experience with them."

    Many of them, in fact, make considerable sacrifices to move
into the classroom. When Tom Carlyle decided to become a
teacher, he quit his job as a manager in a Manhattan publishing
firm and invested $10,000 in a one-year program for career
changers at Harvard's School of Education. Since 1986, he has
been teaching high school math in the New York City public
schools. His $30,000 salary is $5,000 less than he made in the
private sector -- but $9,000 more than he would have made
teaching math five years ago. Carlyle, 39, has no regrets.
"Getting these kids through high school is much more satisfying
than working behind a desk," he says. That kind of
gratification translates into high job-retention rates. In the
past school year, only 4% of midcareer teachers in New Jersey
left the classroom after one year on the job, compared with
almost 16% of teachers with traditional training.

    A few of the new recruits end up teaching college courses,
the most prestigious positions in the educational system, but
most enter at the elementary or high school level. For some,
the long hours, the strains of work and the drop in pay and
prestige can be sobering. "If you tell somebody you are a
chemical engineer for Exxon, that's great," says Nancy Pfeil,
29, who left such a job in 1985 to teach high school calculus.
"But if you say you are a high school teacher, they just say,
`Oh.'"

    Conventionally trained teachers do not always give their
midcareer counterparts a warm welcome. In some states, teachers'
unions have opposed laws aimed at attracting job switchers,
arguing that teaching is a skill that even the most talented
professional must learn before entering a classroom. "Many
believe if you want to be a classroom teacher, you should go
through the same training that they did," says Karen Joseph of
the New Jersey Education Association.

    Midcareerists point out, however, that many traditional
programs are rigid, requiring even seasoned professionals with
doctorates to take two years of undergraduate education courses.
In Los Angeles, Jeff Newman, 37, was at first not permitted to
teach junior high school drama, even though he is a former actor
and published playwright. Behind that bit of illogic was a state
requirement that all drama teachers must have an undergraduate
degree in English or pass the National Teacher Examination.
Newman, who majored in theater arts, finally had to take the
exam.

    Nor are midcareer teachers immune to the stresses that cause
many of their traditionally trained colleagues to burn out on
the job. In the fall of 1983, Air Force Major Robert R. Tindall
was commanding a lead plane in the U.S. invasion of Grenada.
When he retired three years later, he began teaching basic math
at Florida's Fort Walton Beach High School. Tindall is still not
sure which job was harder. "There were times when I thought, `My
God, it would be easier to fight a war,'" he says. Last summer
Tindall abandoned his school work to accept another job offer.
"I was nickeled and dimed to death with administrative duties,"
he says.

    For most late-blooming teachers, though, answering the call
of the classroom has brought fulfillment. "Today you can put
everything into a company and still get pink-slipped," says Ken
Bryant, a former assessor and land manager who is now
student-teaching in a suburban Chicago elementary school. "No
machine can ever take the place of a teacher." That may be so.
But most midcareer teachers are also reaping the deeper rewards
that come of doing a demanding job well.