Federal Grant Helps ‘Transition to Teaching’ Program

By Jillian Cohan, The Wichita Eagle, Kan.

Sep. 11–Teresa Wiebe studied pre-med in college. Afterward, she raised three sons and helped support her family through a career in banking. She nurtured her love of science by working for a while in a nursing home and earning an EMT certificate, but she never became a health-care professional.

Now, after a summer’s worth of classes at Wichita State University, Wiebe is teaching science at South High School while earning credit toward her teaching license.

As school districts across the country struggle to recruit new teachers, WSU has excelled at placing people from all walks of life in Wichita classrooms.

The university’s long-standing Transition to Teaching program has been so successful, it’s part of a $6.8 million federal grant to develop a national model for alternative teacher certification.

“It’s a great program if anyone out there has their science degree, math degree, English, social studies or business degree,” Wiebe said.

The alternative licensing program started in 1991. At the time, it focused on training former Peace Corps volunteers to become teachers, said director Judith Hayes. Over the years it has received several federal grants and has expanded to provide teachers for Wichita public schools in high-need subject areas, especially science and technology.

The two-year program allows participants to teach and collect a paycheck while completing coursework at WSU. They’re eligible to take the test for a full teaching certificate after the second year.

An entry-level teacher with a bachelor’s degree could expect to earn about $37,000 working in Wichita public schools. A first-year teacher with a master’s degree could earn closer to $40,000.

Unlike in traditional teacher-training programs, Transition to Teaching graduates may stay in the classroom longer because they’re making a conscious decision to teach after having worked in other fields, program administrators say.

The program’s retention rate in Wichita schools is more than 90 percent, according to Terry Behrendt, grants director for the school district.

Efforts such as these are crucial as Kansas and other states grapple with a looming teacher shortage, he said.

“Teachers are too precious for us at this point in time, so we need to do all we can do to keep them.”

Education officials estimate that 36 percent of Kansas teachers will be eligible to retire in the next five years. More than 40 percent of the state’s teachers leave the field after seven years and never come back. And in the past six years, 25 percent fewer college students have chosen to go into teaching.

The new national Transition to Teaching grant will help address the shortage by recruiting and training at least 545 new teachers in the next five years, with 95 of them to work in Wichita and Topeka public schools. The rest will be recruited through partner institutions in Nebraska, Ohio and Texas.

As part of the grant, WSU plans to bring its alternative-certification model to other Kansas colleges and universities such as Pittsburg State and Fort Hays State, Hayes said.

“We’re hoping that through our partnership with Wichita public schools we can nurture emerging alternative-certification programs to develop that same sort of teacher preparation,” she said.

Part of the reason the Transition to Teaching program has done so well here — and has gained national attention — is its approach to mentoring.

“It’s very sophisticated…. The support system for that beginning teacher really is there,” said Belinda Gimbert, an Ohio State University professor who is leading the national project.

Along with their professors at WSU, new teachers are assigned a mentor in their school for daily guidance. They also are paired with peer consultants — experienced teachers who guide them through policies and procedures — and can draw on other Transition to Teaching students for moral support.

For some, there are more daunting aspects to teaching than giving a lesson on human physiology.

“Some have never been in a classroom, so they struggle a little with classroom procedure — how to I set up a grade book, what’s going to be my procedure for handling late work, that sort of thing,” said peer counselor Lola Pfeifer, who works with nontraditional teachers at seven middle and high schools.

At the same time, their life experience makes these new teachers more likely to pass on real-world lessons to their students, said Marshall Middle School principal Mark Jolliffe, who has three of the program participants working at his school.

Science teacher Wiebe, for example, comes from a farming background. In a recent lesson, she illustrated the concept of diffusion by showing her class how to make pickles.

“Already, some kids who didn’t think they could do science are realizing they can,” she said.

She knows not all of her students will go on to be doctors, but if they learn from her how to preserve food or treat a wound when someone’s bleeding, then maybe science will become a part of their lives, as it has hers.

As students filed into her classroom Monday morning, Wiebe reflected on her reasons for becoming a teacher. In the end, she said, it was simple:

“I didn’t want the education I had to go to waste.”

Reach Jillian Cohan at 316-268-6524 or jcohan@wichitaeagle.com [mailto:jcohan@wichitaeagle.com].

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Wichita Eagle, Kan.

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