By Craig Howie, for AOL Find a Job
Former marketing executive Deb Moore has a sign on her school desk that reads: "Every student that passes through the door brings me great joy." But after leaving her high-salary job and the company she founded to teach high-schoolers marketing and economics, she found that her annual batch of new kids often was the least of her challenges.
Naturally enthusiastic, and talking with the burble of her chattering students in the background, Moore says that her switch more than a decade ago from a successful business career to enter education as a "non-traditional" or "alternative" teacher was sometimes difficult, but as a result of more teachers entering the profession from a trade or profession amid an economic downturn, she says many of the barriers she faced have come down.
Moore is one of tens of thousands of educators and instructors who have switched careers -- or have taken the "non-traditional" path into teaching -- in what began as an initiative to attract more teachers to inner-city or rural areas and is now widely considered standard practice in education. Proponents say these teachers offer students practical experience and career outlooks a traditional teacher may not be able to, while opponents of alternative teacher schemes question retention rates, training quality and teacher commitment.
There seems little question of Moore's commitment to her class, and she speaks volumes on her students' recent interaction with several of her professional colleagues at a small-business-themed forum, and of their enthusiasm for a sometimes pretty dry subject like economics. She says she learned most of her people skills in the workplace, which allows her to treat her students as young adults, but skills she learned in teacher transition courses such as classroom management also have been invaluable. The salary cut, in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, was less easy to bear.
"Knowing I'd be going from six-digit salary to a starting pay of $25,500 for a starting teacher in Arizona? I had expense checks bigger! I was so naive I thought the $25,000 was for the first half of the year," she jokes. She also says that the lengthy process -- often four years or more -- to gain a teaching credential through the traditional route was her "biggest barrier to going into teaching."
The state of Arizona required Moore and other "non-traditional" teachers to learn how to integrate the state's education standards and curriculum into the classroom, and also take a refresher course intheir specialty -- in Moore's case, marketing, management and leadership (each costing about $400) -- which can be taken during evenings or weekends. Now, Moore says, industry experience is given consideration, and candidates often now won't have to complete a background course in their field of expertise, which Moore considered slightly superfluous. All alternative teaching candidates in Arizona, like many other states, are required to have a bachelor's degree, pass state teaching exams and spend a semester unpaid as a classroom assistant before they can become certified.
Moore says: "It can be grueling. We're seeing an upswing in the number [of alternative-background teachers] coming into school because of the economy. Some drop out, and I'm curious about exit rates. If you haven't worked with kids and are coming straight in from business, it can be tough. Kids are extremely bright but can be lacking in social skills.
"But I love it. Knowing you're with high-school kids at the moment they have to make a decision on their careers, guiding them through assignments and life in general, that's the role I have really enjoyed. When I go home I think I made a difference."
David Keeling, of The New Teaching Project's Teaching Fellows program, a national body that works with state education systems and local school districts that embrace non-traditional teacher programs, says the "significant increase" in number of non-traditional teacher applicants is "in part because of the recession, and also motivation of folks to think about their careers in different ways." He says many deadlines for applicants have been closed early because of "overwhelming demand," or a 44 percent increase in applications, with recent college grads making up a significant proportion of the increase.
Keeling says more than 24,000 teachers have entered high-need classrooms through the Teaching Fellows programs since 1997. In 2008 its program sites drew more than 43,000 applications with acceptance rates of about 15 percent, a rate comparable to many universities. Of these about 3,500 hires, 81 percent were in subject areas such as math, science and special education, areas which traditionally suffer shortfalls in educator numbers. Some 86 percent of the hires worked with low-income students. Such teachers made up about 20 percent of all new teacher hires in districts they served. Non-traditional teacher salaries trail those of traditional teachers nationwide by about 10 percent generally.
Sabrina Kidwai, a spokeswoman for the Association for Careers and Technical Education, says there are many teaching advantages of the alternative route. "Students gain first-hand knowledge in terms of skills they need in the workplace, and it gives them the latest trends going on in that industry. Teachers also have business connections and can set up internships and job placements. These connections help the school and children prosper."
She says career-switch teachers will be schooled in teacher learning, pedagogy, and classroom management. "Problems can include a significant pay cut for, say, former engineers, But a lot of teachers have a drive to help educate the future workforce, and have that passion to give back to their community."
Phyllis Adcock, an associate professor at the University of Nebraska, who has researched trends in non-traditional teaching, says the "No. 1 reason" candidates take the alternative teaching path is "they have to continue to work to support their families, they can't take time off during the day to take traditional class. Non-traditional programs offer classes in the evenings and at weekends. Many already have a degree and don't want to go back through a full program."
Goerge Noell, a professor of psychology at Louisiana State University, who has spent a decade researching alternative teaching trends and comparing traditional and alternative teaching models across the U.S., and currently is studying retention rates in the alternative teaching sector, says: "At this stage in work we have non-traditional prep programs designed for people who already have bachelor's degrees that range from semi-traditional master's programs, to ones of mentorship, or those who go into teaching through fast-track summer training and go into teaching with a mentor,
"We've found that these programs are neither inferior to nor superior to traditional programs. Some do extraordinary jobs and some do badly across the spectrum. In conclusion, one general prep model is not superior or inferior, it's the quality of what you do in the prep program. The heart of the matter has much more to do with faculty, pedagogical training and student teaching experiences. It's not traditional versus non-traditional, or masters versus mentorship, it's the overall quality of the training experience."
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