Last week marks a

new day dawning in the state of Georgia in terms of addressing teacher

shortages in public school classrooms. The Teach for Georgia program,

an "alternative certification program designed to fill classrooms

with working professionals without education degrees," sponsored

callers had jammed the commission's e-mail server and phone lines. What

is Teach for Georgia, and what can we expect to see in the wake of this

wave?

For starters, Teach

for Georgia will train teachers. Participants must have a college degree

with a minimum grade point average of 2.5. They must pass the Praxis I

teachers' exam to take the course. Then within the two years of their

provisional certificate, they must also pass the Praxis II teachers' exam

and take whatever subject area courses are required to be certified in

a particular subject field.

Teach for Georgia

is an interim solution to a growing problem. Enrollment in state colleges

of education is dropping. Many new teachers are leaving their jobs behind

after only a few years on the job. A growing number of veteran teachers

are fast approaching retirement eligibility, and all the while the state

legislature is mandating lower teacher-to-student ratios, pay bonuses

linked to student performance on standardized tests, and the latest volley

in education reform, an end to social promotion.

What we have is an

emerging crisis.

The Teach for Georgia

program does nothing to address the root causes of the teacher shortage,

but rather tries to minimize the impact of the shortage on students.

Some Georgia educators

are insulted by the suggestion that anyone with a college degree can teach

school, and say that this is just another example of the devaluation of

the teaching profession which causes teachers to leave their jobs in the

first place.

Some add that adding

mentoring of untrained teachers to their ever-growing job description

simply takes away from their teaching proficiency.

Those are pretty fair

criticisms, but let's not circle the wagons and doom a program to failure

without at least a fair hearing.

Critics argue that

the 20 percent one-year attrition rate of provisionally certified professionals

in a similar program in Massachusetts means that the program is unsuccessful,

but that means that 80 percent stayed.

Others suggest that

college graduates with no education school background and no classroom

experience do students a disservice in the classroom, but in many classrooms

across the state long-term substitutes are employed with only a high school

level of education. Which is better?

To assess the true

value of this program, we have to look at experience and motivation. Making

it through an engineering program, or dental school, or passing the Certified

Public Accountant's exam, or having working knowledge of technical programs

counts for something in terms of having some knowledge that is useful

to students. Experience gained through a career in the military, sales,

management, communications, journalism, publishing, or production has

some usefulness to students, too.

The assumption is

that if a person was capable of learning the necessary skills for these

jobs, they are also capable of learning the necessary skills to teach.

And learn they will. To be sure, it won't be easy, but it is possible.

Even teachers fresh

out of education schools learn by being thrown into the deep end of a

classroom, for there is no training that can substitute for years of experience

actually doing the job. That much is true for everybody.

When assessing the

value of career experience, we shouldn't overlook family and parental

experience. A parent in their thirties or forties is certainly "trained"

in managing children, at least one would hope so anyway. Just as teaching

is a great proving ground for future parents, parenting is a great proving

ground for future teachers.

The biggest indicator

of the Teach for Georgia program's potential for success will be the personal

motivation of the program participants. For what possible reason would

a moderately- to well-paid individual leave the security of a known job

for the insecurity of an underpaid teaching job? They will because they

want to, because job status means little if you don't believe that the

job you are doing is making a difference to somebody.

Sadly, though, it

won't be the program participants that determine the success or failure

of the Teach for Georgia program. It will be the educational establishment

itself.

If no one is willing

to hire these wannabe teachers, then the program will be worthless. If

administrators and veteran educators aren't willing to take a chance on

a few people who are willing to take that chance themselves, then the

true value of this program will never be known.

Whether we avail ourselves

of this opportunity or not remains to be seen, but I hope that we don't

miss the forest while we're analyzing all the trees.

[Your comments

are welcome at: [email protected].]