The Lure of the Classroom

By Susan Tifft

Teachers usually consider their work a lifetime profession, like doctors or clergy, and look askance at colleagues who "defect" to more lucrative or less demanding jobs. But the traffic is not just one way. A growing number of professionals are turning to teaching in midcareer, taking pay cuts and accepting sacrifices in order to pursue their late-found vocation. Says John Kean, chairman of the department of curriculum and instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison: "They are coming into education in droves."

The boom is being fueled by fatter teacher salaries and efforts by many states to speed up the certification process. As recently as 1983, only eight states allowed full-time staff teachers to be hired without an undergraduate degree in education or previous classroom experience. In the 1987-88 school year, some 2,500 teachers in 24 states were trained through alternative certification programs.

Some states run such courses themselves, while others encourage colleges and universities to tailor them to the needs of career changers, who often cannot afford to forfeit full-time income. At the California State University at Dominguez Hills, one-half of the students at the Graduate School of Education are job switchers. One reason: the program provides salaried internships.

Proponents of this trend say career changers are often more motivated and more effective than teachers who took the conventional path to the blackboard. "These are a different type of teacher," says Dianne Worthy, South Carolina's supervisor of teacher education. "They bring more life experience with them."

Many of them, in fact, make considerable sacrifices to move into the classroom. When Tom Carlyle decided to become a teacher, he quit his job as a manager in a Manhattan publishing firm and invested $10,000 in a one-year program for career changers at Harvard's School of Education. Since 1986, he has been teaching high school math in the New York City public schools. His $30,000 salary is $5,000 less than he made in the private sector -- but $9,000 more than he would have made teaching math five years ago. Carlyle, 39, has no regrets. "Getting these kids through high school is much more satisfying than working behind a desk," he says. That kind of gratification translates into high job-retention rates. In the past school year, only 4% of midcareer teachers in New Jersey left the classroom after one year on the job, compared with almost 16% of teachers with traditional training.

A few of the new recruits end up teaching college courses, the most prestigious positions in the educational system, but most enter at the elementary or high school level. For some, the long hours, the strains of work and the drop in pay and prestige can be sobering. "If you tell somebody you are a chemical engineer for Exxon, that's great," says Nancy Pfeil, 29, who left such a job in 1985 to teach high school calculus. "But if you say you are a high school teacher, they just say, 'Oh.' "

Conventionally trained teachers do not always give their midcareer counterparts a warm welcome. In some states, teachers' unions have opposed laws aimed at attracting job switchers, arguing that teaching is a skill that even the most talented professional must learn before entering a classroom. "Many believe if you want to be a classroom teacher, you should go through the same training that they did," says Karen Joseph of the New Jersey Education Association.

Midcareerists point out, however, that many traditional programs are rigid, requiring even seasoned professionals with doctorates to take two years of undergraduate education courses. In Los Angeles, Jeff Newman, 37, was at first not permitted to teach junior high school drama, even though he is a former actor and published playwright. Behind that bit of illogic was a state requirement that all drama teachers must have an undergraduate degree in English or pass the National Teacher Examination. Newman, who majored in theater arts, finally had to take the exam.

Nor are midcareer teachers immune to the stresses that cause many of their traditionally trained colleagues to burn out on the job. In the fall of 1983, Air Force Major Robert R. Tindall was commanding a lead plane in the U.S. invasion of Grenada. When he retired three years later, he began teaching basic math at Florida's Fort Walton Beach High School. Tindall is still not sure which job was harder. "There were times when I thought, 'My God, it would be easier to fight a war,' " he says. Last summer Tindall abandoned his school work to accept another job offer. "I was nickeled and dimed to death with administrative duties," he says.

For most late-blooming teachers, though, answering the call of the classroom has brought fulfillment. "Today you can put everything into a company and still get pink-slipped," says Ken Bryant, a former assessor and land manager who is now student-teaching in a suburban Chicago elementary school. "No machine can ever take the place of a teacher." That may be so. But most midcareer teachers are also reaping the deeper rewards that come of doing a demanding job well.

With reporting by Michael Mason/Atlanta and Janice C. Simpson/New York