Learning to teach

Steve AmRhein stood at the front of his Algebra II class in Columbus East High School, hesitating a bit before announcing the dreaded news.\n"Okay, guys, change for tomorrow. We're going to have a quiz," he said.\n"Awwwww," the class moaned in unison.\n"But it's a Friday," a girl in a blue shirt whined.\n"And it's your last day," a boy in the back row pleaded.\n"I know, I know," AmRhein said, calming the class. "So we'll have a quiz and a party. Anyone who wants to bring in snacks, feel free."\nLess than two years ago, 47-year-old AmRhein wasn't making plans for quizzes or parties -- he sat behind a desk all day, crunching numbers for a casket company.\nAs a student teacher at Columbus East High School, AmRhein is working through the transition-to-teaching program at IU, a two-and-a-half semester-long intensive program tailored to certify anyone with a college degree in a content discipline to teach, according to IU's School of Education Transition to Teaching Web site. In accordance with state mandate and the general need for teachers with "real-life" experience, programs like this have been sprouting nationwide in the past decade.\nAs required by the state government, every teacher-accredited university in Indiana must offer a transition-to-teaching program, according to the Indiana Professional Standards Board Web site.\nIU programs, which began in 2002, include elementary and secondary education, both of which have different requirements and timetables. Elementary transition-to-teaching candidates must complete three semesters of intense, full-time field experience, creating a 24-credit-hour certification, including six credit hours of reading courses. Secondary candidates complete a summer session and two academic semesters of field experiences, student teaching and seminar classes to earn 18 credit hours as state legislation requires.\nThis year's 24 secondary education interns come from backgrounds ranging from graduate students to Hungarian missionaries and ages 22 to 55, respectively. The students become close during the course of the program and are able to share their unique experiences with each other during the seminar.\n"The seminar part of the course is where the students can reflect, which is basically the most important part of all of this," said Dave Kinman, the assistant dean for the School of Education and secondary transition-to-teaching supervisor at IU. "It's the glue that keeps it all together."\nKinman supervised AmRhein, who finished his student-teaching experience March 11 and is now continuing the seminar course.\nAmRhein worked as a business analyst for Batesville Casket Company for nearly 20 years before deciding he needed a change in his life.\n"It was a 24-7-365 job," he said. "I decided with the stress and the time commitment to pursue different options."\nIn 2003, he began substitute teaching in Greensburg, Ind., his hometown, where he also had his farm to fall back on. That December, he realized student teaching could become more than a temporary experience and decided to sign up for the transition-to-teaching program.\nLyndsay Cowles, a graduate of IU's inaugural secondary transition-to-teaching program in 2003, completed her student teaching for a senior-level English class at Mooresville High School.\n"It's not all happy faces, but it's really rewarding," said Cowles, who is now working toward a Ph.D. in education. "It's important that people know what teachers go through."\nKinman, one of Cowles' mentors, described Cowles' student teaching experience as "special," because she had two of her students die -- one from a substance overdose and the other from a car accident -- within two weeks of each other.\n"It was hard, because you expect to prepare these students for the future," said Cowles, who transitioned from a financial job. "And then suddenly they don't have a future."\nAlthough the transition-to-teaching program doesn't have a particular curriculum to help teachers deal with these sorts of issues, Kinman said the courses that accompany in-class work help the students adapt to the experiences.\nOther difficulties include the fact that teachers sometimes are hesitant to give up their classroom to a student teacher for six weeks. Nevertheless, East High School played host to more than 15 student teachers this spring along with AmRhein.\nEast High School is very innovative with freedoms it grants its students and the respect they give in return, Kinman said, so using the school for placement of transition-to-teaching interns wasn't difficult.\nLynette Farless, AmRhein's cooperating teacher at East, saw a vast improvement in AmRhein's teaching over the past eight weeks.\n"He's very excited about teaching, which is refreshing to see," Farless said. "It's been interesting to see him progress. He's always been good with working with small groups, but now he's a lot more comfortable with larger groups."\nShe also said his previous experience has helped him become confident in his career change, increasing his level of passion in the classroom.\n"It's been a long time since he studied mathematics," she said, "but Steve is dedicated to transitioning from his previous employment to teaching."\nFarless said it would be advantageous for East High School to hire transition-to-teaching interns like AmRhein due to their academic and real-life experience.\nBecause of the relative youth of transition-to-teaching programs, not all teachers who have had previous careers have taken a transition program path.\nJeff Fisher is a business teacher at Bloomington High School North, but 20 years ago as an Army paratrooper and furniture plant manager, he'd have laughed at the idea of teaching.\nFisher dropped out of high school to join the Army. Although it took some coaxing, the Army helped him earn his GED to eventually take courses to become a teacher.\n"I wanted to help the kids," Fisher said. "It kills me when I see teachers who let their kids fall behind like I did when I was in school."\nFisher's hard work and determination to earn his teaching certification eventually paid off while in the Army and working as a manager at a manufacturing plant for Kimball furniture. He is now able to share those experiences in his classroom.\n"Being a business teacher, it's pretty easy for me to implement my life skills from the military and Kimball into the classroom every day," Fisher said. "Even if I don't purposely plan it, it comes through."\nThe government has supported the movement of professionals from all backgrounds changing careers to teaching by offering five-year grants to create transition-to-teaching programs. The transitional teachers then must work in "high-need" schools, according to the U.S. Department of Education Web site.\nThis summer, the secondary transition-to-teaching program at IU will bring 30 or 32 fresh faces from various careers and locations worldwide into the world of teaching.\nAlthough the basic structure of the program will remain the same, the seminar course will have some differences, Kinman said.\n"We felt that we needed to have a more team-based approach to the instruction so the candidates will experience a wider range of faculty members," Kinman.\nAlso, the seminar will focus more on classroom management in the fall and working with students with special needs in the spring.\nEast High School Principal Gary Goshorn has been very accepting and pleased with the program. He said he is open to making plans to expand its boundaries in the future.\n"As the program grows, East High School could play a bigger role in the instruction component of the student teaching experience," Goshorn said. "Teachers and administrators could be a resource for a weekly seminar."\nAmRhein plans to continue teaching math in a school district near his hometown when he completes his certification.\nHe said his job at the casket company gave him the experience of daily planning and basic math skills, but neither that nor the program training could have completely prepared him for his first day on his own in the classroom.\n"Until you live it -- until you're really there," AmRhein said, "do you really understand what you're about to take on?"\nTalking over his students' whispers of "Napoleon Dynamite" quotes and plans for the weekend, AmRhein continued his quiz review for the next day -- his last day, rattling off definitions of the Pythagorean Theorem and trigonometry functions, slowly changing his students' lives while changing his own.\n-- Contact Business Editor Lori Snow at losnow@indiana.edu.