Grants Help Switch Careers to Teaching; Aid Offered at UT, BGSU

By Meghan Gilbert, The Blade, Toledo, Ohio

Oct. 28–Switching careers from engineering to teaching could have been easier for Patrick Farley if he’d only waited a few years.

But you won’t hear the math teacher at Toledo Technology Academy complaining.

Mr. Farley saved for years to go back to school to become a teacher, which he did in 2004. He worked full-time as an engineer, a job he held for 10 years, and took night classes at UT.

It was a struggle, but an unexpected helping hand came in late 2005 when a classmate told him about the UT3 program which provides grants for people doing just what Mr. Farley was doing — switching careers to become math or science teachers.

Mr. Farley applied and got the $12,800 grant just in time for student teaching.

“I couldn’t afford to stop working to do student teaching and take the classes,” he said. “I couldn’t have done it without the money.”

If that scholarship was a help for Mr. Farley, new programs that not only offer scholarship incentives but also fast-track the process of getting a teaching license could encourage more to do the same thing.

A grant from the National Science Foundation is allowing UT to expand that UT3 program to get more math and science teachers into school districts more quickly.

And Bowling Green State University has joined a consortium with U.S. Department of Education funding to get more special education and bilingual teachers in classrooms.

Teacher shortages While there have been alternative licenses available for any subject in secondary education since 2001, science, math, foreign language, and special education are historically areas of need for school districts, said Jennifer Kangas, associate director in the Ohio Department of Education’s office of educator licensure.

People with skills in math and science might go into careers of engineering or scientific research, rather than the high school classroom.

And special education teachers are in high demand as more students are identified who could be helped through such programs and because there is a high turnover rate for such educators.

While some midcareer professionals become teachers on their own, programs such as those at BGSU and UT help encourage and support the process, Ms. Kangas said.

“You can get people to the classroom more quickly,” she said.

In addition to speed, both the UT and BGSU programs will help diversify the teaching staff at the high-needs school districts they are working with. Such districts are determined by the number of students living below the poverty line and the number of teachers working with a temporary license or no license in their subject.

A teaching crash-course With the grant of $750,000 over four years from the National Science Foundation, UT will be able to recruit midcareer professionals to become math and science teachers with a $17,000 scholarship incentive.

The Robert Noyce Scholarship Program not only provides the scholarship for 12 credit hours of instruction focused on teaching methods and classroom engagement, but the participants can get credit for the knowledge they already have from their day jobs, said Charlene Czerniak, a professor of education who administers the program.

The program is aimed at professionals already in the fields of math and science, such as accountants or engineers. They take the content test required for new teachers first, and then take classes to learn how to convey that knowledge to students as Noyce scholars before taking the second part of the teaching exam that deals with instruction methods.

The participants get an alternative teaching license to teach for two years, gaining classroom experience and taking additional support classes through UT.

“We license plenty of teachers, but they don’t stay in the profession,” Ms. Czerniak said, citing statistics that 30 to 40 percent drop out in five years.

That’s where the support classes come in during the Noyce scholars’ first years, she said.

The 40 additional teachers created with this program — 10 each year — then will join the more traditional license process for teachers.

School partnerships As part of Project CUE (Consortium for Urban Education), BGSU is working in collaboration with the Toledo and Sandusky school districts to recruit and train 75 nontraditional students to become special education teachers.

Cleveland State University and Wayne State University in the Detroit area also are part of the program training teachers for both special education and bilingual teachers for school districts in their immediate areas.

With a $2.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Transition to Teaching program, the students will be offered a scholarship of up to $5,000 to pay for roughly one-third of their tuition.

Bowling Green State also chips in one-third of the cost.

The BGSU program consists of about 30 credits that take about two years to complete on a part-time basis. The university works closely with the Toledo and Sandusky school districts to place teachers in their classrooms.

“The one thing we don’t want to happen is they get all their coursework for their alternate licensure and there is nobody interested in working with them,” said Stacey Rychener of BGSU’s Center for Evaluation Services.

“So essentially we get the nod from them.”

The new teachers are required to commit to work with the district for at least three years.

That typically isn’t a problem because participants are usually local and committed to the community, Ms. Rychener said.

That was the case for Mr. Farley.

He’s a lifelong Maumee resident and had always considered teaching, but the fire was really lit while he coached wrestling at Maumee High School from 1996 to 2006.

“Working with the young people there is really what kind of sunk the hooks into me,” he said. “[Teaching] was something I started thinking about when I was an undergraduate, but I was so close to graduating I thought I should really give this a try before making a change.”

Contact Meghan Gilbert at: mgilbert@theblade.com or 419-724-6134.

—–

To see more of The Blade, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.toledoblade.com.

Copyright (c) 2007, The Blade, Toledo, Ohio

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.