As a young soldier in 1978, Joseph Cofield took a train to Berlin. The trip from West Germany through East Germany was a reward for outstanding service in the U.S. Army, but Cofield was ambivalent about the honor. He recalls unrelenting bleakness on the far side of the Iron Curtain—"Everything was nice and green in the West; in the East, it was gray"—and he couldn't wait to get back home. Still, the trip gave Cofield a personal connection with a place and its history, one that he uses these days to help his middle school students better grasp the magnitude of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
"I never thought, in my lifetime, that that wall would come down," says Cofield, now a social studies teacher at Bonita Springs Middle School in Florida. His long-ago trip changed his perspective "about what's possible in life," and he wants his students to truly understand the life-transforming impact of dismantling an infamous icon of the Cold War.
The ability to bring real-world experiences into the classroom is one of several advantages of hiring career-changers for teaching positions. Results from a survey conducted by the National Center for Education Information show that those who come to teaching from alternate routes are more mature and satisfied with their roles in the classroom. What's more, according to C. Emily Feistritzer in Profile of Alternate Route Teachers (2005), most second-career teachers are confident about their competence and therefore are less likely to bolt when the going gets tough.
Persistent, but Flexible
John Gantz sees this persistence among the former military personnel he encounters. Gantz directs Troops to Teachers, a joint program of the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Defense. He says career-changers in his program see teaching as a calling. That sense of duty helps prepare teachers for today's emphasis on accountability, he notes. If students fail to grasp certain concepts, for example, former-soldiers-turned-teachers know how to analyze what went wrong—not make excuses, says Gantz. Most already know how to ask, "What can I do to motivate these kids?"
Cofield says military experience nurtures that mindset. During his 21 years in the Army, Cofield lived by the Boy Scout motto: be prepared. When operations didn't run "according to script, you had to have a Plan B," he recalls. As a result, he doesn't become frustrated when student learning doesn't go according to plan. "I can make changes," he states.
Adjusting instruction to help K–12 students meet learning goals is not all that different from managing a military law office, notes Sandra Sessoms-Penny, a retired Air Force senior master sergeant who is now an assistant principal at Windsor High School in Virginia. In the Air Force, she trained inexperienced airmen and women to be paralegals. "In the military, we set goals. I held my troops to high standards and I provided counsel when needed," Sessoms-Penny recalls. "Failure was not an option then," she says. It's a notion she embraces as an educator today.
Identifying, Overcoming Challenges
Persistence and flexibility help career changers become good teachers, agrees Maureen Scharberg, a chemistry professor who also directs the science education program at San José State University in California. Still, she cautions to not forget pedagogy.
New teachers, whether completing a traditional or alternate program, have to learn to use proven, effective instructional approaches. "We know, based on research, how students [best] learn science," says Scharberg. New teachers, including those who "didn't learn it that way," have to be comfortable teaching inquiry-based, hands-on science, she states. If prospective teachers don't want to do that, "they won't get a credential through me," asserts Scharberg.
Then there's classroom management. Scharberg says it's probably the number one issue.
Wesley Brown agrees. Learning how to deal with students "was an eye opener for me," says the retired Army officer who is now a mathematics resource teacher for the Prince George's County (Md.) Public School District. As an officer, Brown had become accustomed to "a certain respect that came with [the] position." He expected at least a modicum of that deference when he became a teacher. "That didn't happen," he says.
To better manage his own classroom, Brown found it helped to observe how other teachers dealt with their kids. He discovered that the most effective teachers consistently apply classroom policies but strike a fine balance between firmness and fond respect.
Teachers helping teachers is key to career changers' success in the classroom. Sessoms-Penny, who started her second career as a middle school teacher, says she was fortunate to have been on a team "where all my teammates were mentors." She learned practical things, such as how to keep the grade book up-to-date. She also learned to provide students with timely feedback, use technology as a management and learning tool, and communicate effectively with parents. Mentors were "crucial to my success as an educator," says Sessoms-Penny. Now that she's an administrator, she ensures that all new teachers in her building have such a guide.
A cadre of retired science teachers assists Scharberg's beginning teachers, sharing ideas to try when they get stuck dealing with tough situations. Still, she believes experience is the best teacher: She advises career changers to become substitute teachers first and work in a variety of grade levels before switching full-time to the classroom. "The most successful career changers are the ones who are fully aware of what will be involved," she says.
Meeting a Critical Need
For many, however, formal alternative certification programs are the only way to go. Retired Air Force Senior Master Sergeant Eric Combs says he would not have become a social studies teacher at Fairborn High School—let alone become Ohio's 2006 Teacher of the Year—without the Troops to Teachers program. "There's no way I could have done what was required," says Combs.
The program helped Combs become a qualified teacher faster, which ultimately benefited the students with whom he now works: those considered at risk for dropping out. "I wanted more of a challenge," says Combs, who had originally taught Fairborn's ROTC students. "That was a breeze—the kids wanted to be there," he recalls. But he wanted to help break the cycle of failure for students who didn't necessarily want to be in school.
Working with "kids who have not been successful" required Combs to "enter their world and understand them." He played the online games his students found so compelling, for example. He learned (and learned not to be offended by) their slang. Showing students that he cared made them more willing to work hard to meet Combs's high expectations. "My students always rose to the occasion," he says.
Many career changers share that willingness to accept more challenging teaching assignments. Phil Riley, a retired officer whose father, aunt, and sister were all teachers, carried on the family tradition while in the Army. He taught psychology at the United States Military Academy and often served as an adjunct professor when stationed overseas. When he retired, Riley became a school administrator, substituting in the classroom whenever one of his teachers was absent.
Then Riley and his family moved to Alexandria, Va. There, although he was only two courses shy of a Virginia mathematics certification and although he thoroughly enjoyed substituting in middle school math classes, Riley signed on to teach 8th and 9th grade science at the SEED School in nearby Washington, D.C.
"It's a pretty intense environment," he says. The 7–12 public charter school provides a college-prep boarding program for urban children with varied backgrounds. "We have literacy gaps, we have math gaps—the challenge is to help these kids find their own motivation," Riley states. The former math specialist has had to get up to speed with current science standards while wrangling with classroom management issues and making better use of technology. "As a young captain, I always had a company clerk. As an administrator, I had secretaries to handle administrative stuff," says Riley.
Those hurdles aside, Riley is satisfied with his school choice, for very personal reasons: He owes his life "to an inner-city black kid" from New York. "I would have perished in Vietnam if he hadn't been there to help me," Riley explains. Teaching at the SEED School in D.C. gives him a chance to honor that heroism. Says Riley, "It gives me a chance to do some good."