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FAST FACT: This school year, an estimated 8,880 people went from a full-time career into the classroom with the help of the California Internship Teacher Preparation Program. That number is up from 1,200 just a decade ago. Keri Flynn's career as an attorney was filled with many lucrative cases, yet lots of empty victories. After she won a favorable verdict or negotiated a great settlement agreement for her corporate clients, she was often left wondering whether her work had benefited anyone. "I wasn't working for an individual who I thought I was doing anything for," she says. "I was working for 'gi-normous' multi-million-dollar insurance companies. At the end of the day if there was a win, it was just for me. I didn't help anyone in particular. It was just not fulfilling for me." Today, Flynn still has lots of victories, but for very real and compelling clients - her students. After 12 years as an attorney, Flynn decided to leave the courtroom and take charge of her own classroom as a teacher. Like many professionals who decide to trade in corporate careers for the teaching life, Flynn worked during the day and took classes at night. When it came time to do her student teaching, however, she hit a roadblock. With two children, she didn't know how she could support her family during the unpaid student teaching. Luckily, her son's private school had an opening for a teacher that fall and allowed her to do her student teaching while earning a paycheck. From that moment, she was there to stay - as a teacher and at St. Mary's and All Angels in Aliso Viejo. "I thought, 'I really like this,'" she says. "Kids, I find, want to learn and I can maybe help them develop and try to help them be really good people in society. I can talk about really awesome social issues with the kids I teach and they're interested in it. The kids are so excited and I love to see that. I think I need to be this kind of person and I need to take this high road." Taking the teaching road In California, more professionals than ever appear to be switching careers to pursue their true calling. This school year, an estimated 8,880 people went from a full-time career into the classroom with the help of the California Internship Teacher Preparation Program. That number is up from 1,200 just a decade ago. Overall, one-third of the teachers in this state are career changers. Mike McKibbin, project officer for alternative certification for the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, says the trend is a positive one for California schools. Teachers who come from other careers bring rich experience to the classroom and stay there longer. Schools find that many beginning teachers who come straight out of college are doing career exploration and soon decide the job isn't for them. But career changers tend to know exactly why they want to be a teacher and truly understand the sacrifices the position demands. On top of that, many make the choice to head to the state's classrooms that are hardest to fill - districts in which families have low incomes and education levels. "Because people come in with a bit more maturity, they can apply life's learnings and things they learned in their industry or the military to those classrooms," he says. "They bring maturity that, frankly, 22-year-olds don't bring. Most people take the (teaching) job until they find out what it's really about. For these people, this is the job they really want." McKibbin oversees the intern program for the commission, which handles certification for all of the state's public school teachers. Intern teachers are individuals who have had previous careers, have completed all their subject-matter work and have found a district that will sponsor them as an intern. The program allows them to work full time and collect a paycheck while taking certification classes in the evenings and on the weekends. Instead of spending a semester student teaching, interns get on-the-job training from day one and are solely responsible for an entire classroom. McKibbin recalls talking to students about their intern teachers and asking them how those instructors compared to other teachers who recently graduated from college. "They said, 'Oh, they fake it less,'" he says with a laugh. "That's the great part about it even the kids know." That translates into higher student achievement for California's intern teachers. A recent study in Los Angeles schools found that achievement levels of students with intern teachers was higher than those who were being taught by student teachers. Those results were largely attributed to the intern teachers' maturity levels. A rainbow coalition Career changers enrich schools in other ways. They make up a more diverse group than traditional classes of new teachers. McKibbin says 47% of interns in the last seven years have come from traditionally underrepresented ethnic groups. And 27% of teachers in the elementary program are male, whereas only about 10% of elementary school teachers in California are male. "This provides an avenue for people who under other circumstances wouldn't be coming into this job," he says. "These people have backgrounds I didn't have when I came into the classroom at 22." Not all career changers hoping to enter the classroom choose the intern route. Many, like Flynn, attend night classes for their credential work and find creative ways to do their student teaching. Hank Adler, a former partner at the Deloitte and Touche office in Costa Mesa, left his high-powered position after 35 years to pursue teaching. The former Irvine Unified School District trustee turned to Chapman University's teacher training program and has nearly finished his credential. Adler says he loved every day of his accounting career, but was ready for a new challenge. So, he retired and started the teaching program. "I'm not somebody moving from something I didn't like to something I'd be happy in," he says. "I enjoyed every day. This is a completely different deal. I'm just exercising the passion." Adler says he's not alone in his credential classes. He estimates about one-third of the students are switching to teaching from another job. "They started to do something else and gravitated back to what they wanted to do. The pay keeps them away. After a few years, a teacher is going to make a reasonable level (of pay), but it's not going to be anything comparable to what a successful businessperson or scientist is going to make. So, there's a cost associated with the decision. These are just fine people going into this business. They are interested, dedicated and fun to be associated with." A challenge to the commitment While pay may keep teachers away, the job itself can also drive them away. Roughly 50% of the teachers who start in the classroom will leave long before retirement age. Adler jokes that there are likely a lot of teachers in graduate schools of business, just as there are many businesspeople in teaching programs. Adler recently had a shift in his plans to become a social studies teacher. He's accepted a one-year contract to teach accounting and tax courses to Chapman University students, and will put the rest of his credential classes on hold until the contract ends. Although the crowd in his classroom will be a little older than his original high school plan, he's still fulfilling his teaching passion. He says that life is too short not to follow where you should go, or to stay in a position you don't love, even if your next career is a tough one, like teaching. "It's work," he says. "It's not different than the business world. It's not a retirement job. It's a great job, but it's not retirement. If you're not happy doing what you're doing for any period of your life, you'd better do something else. You only get one life. The goal is to just keep doing what you want to do and be doing something you like the whole time." That's exactly what Flynn intends on doing now that she's found her calling. She hopes to help expand the school's International Baccalaureate program and play a bigger role in those classes. And she sees herself staying in the classroom, close to the students, rather than working into an administrative position. Each day and each child is a new challenge worth the effort. "There are always the kids who, at the beginning of the year, are just struggling," she says. "If you can get just one to not struggle anymore, that's the best. Or if you make one kid understand something about society and then they right a paper on it. That kind of stuff makes your whole year." Flynn plans to stay at the middle school level, an age where students are starting self-exploration and forming their own identities. It's an even greater challenge, but one that she believes allows her to truly make a difference in society. "About seventh grade, they strive for independence," she says. "It's the hardest year for the kids and it's the hardest year to teach in middle school. They're starting to ask, `Who am I? What do I stand for? What do I believe in?' If you can give them good ideas to live by and get them to see their world as bigger than their family or just their school and that they're part of that whole word, I think they become better people." Jennifer Leuer of Yorba Linda is an education reporter. For Letters: ocfamily.com. Teacher Resources So you want to be a teacher. Here are some routes: • Orange County Department of Education, 714.966.4236. That is the credential department. • California Commission on Teaching Credentialing website: www.ctc.ca.gov • A regional program serving teachers with emergency permits has been set up at Cal State Fullerton called CalStateTEACH. The program serves Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Imperial counties: www.calstateteach.net. The site also provides information for prospective teachers. • A term you should be familiar with is emergency permits. Teachers on an emergency permit must have a bachelor's degree and have passed the California Basic Educational Skills Test (CBEST) and passed subject area requirements. They have not yet acquired a teaching credential. • For data on specific schools and districts in California: www.ed-data.k12.ca.us • For numerous reports on the state of California education: www.edsource.org • One increasing criteria these days is accountability. The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing has set standards to guide teacher preparation and assessment. They are: engaging and supporting all students in learning; creating and maintaining effective environments; understanding and organizing subject matter; planning instruction and designing learning experiences; assessing learning. Sources: Includes EdSource. |
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