Successful Career Transitions: Lessons from Urban Alternate Route Teachers Who Stayed

Autor: Kathleen Topolka Jorissen
Rok vydání: 2003
Předmět:
Zdroj: The High School Journal. 86:41-51
ISSN: 1534-5157
DOI: 10.1353/hsj.2003.0003
Popis: Mindful of the current difficulty and challenge in retaining new teachers, particularly in urban schools, this study examines data from a 1997 qualitative investigation of 6 Black sixth-year teachers in 2 Midwestern urban school districts regarding their views of their alternate route preparation program. The findings indicate that the program assisted them in successfully making a transition from other careers into teaching. Program structures and relationships that enabled the teachers to develop competence and identity included effective instruction in content and pedagogy and the development of close professional relationships with their mentors and with other members of their cohort. The findings imply the importance of addressing the developmental needs of individuals undertaking career transitions into teaching. Successful Career Transitions: Lessons from Urban Alternate Route Teachers Who Stayed Developing and retaining a strong teaching force is a critical issue receiving increasing attention by policy makers across the country. Among the many related issues surrounding this topic are those of recruiting, training, and retaining teachers in urban schools. Historically, urban schools have experienced a persistent shortage of professionally educated teachers, no matter how many teachers were being prepared nationally. This problem manifests in the small number of new teacher education graduates who seek positions in urban schools, the large number of teachers who transfer out of the most difficult urban schools within districts, as well as in the number of teachers who leave urban schools to seek employment in suburban schools or in other occupations (Haberman, 1988; Ingersoll, 1999). One widespread response to this problem has been alternate route certification programs. The proliferation of alternate route certification programs in urban areas attests to the presumed viability of such programs to staff schools that are plagued by high turnover rates. According to Zumwalt, Alternative certification is viewed as an answer to endemic shortages of qualified urban teachers. Certified teachers generally prefer or find it easier to get hired in suburban or urban middle-class schools, leaving many urban schools staffed by emergency licensed teachers who have high attrition rates. Alternative certification attracts more diverse, mature, academically able teachers, it is argued, who want to teach in urban schools, are more likely to be successful, and are more likely to stay there, breaking the cycles of high turnover. (1996, p. 41) Staying there, as well as providing quality education for urban students, are primary expectations of teachers prepared in alternate route programs. Yet, some studies on the retention of teachers prepared in alternate route programs indicate that even these teachers do not remain in urban schools. As reported by Zumwalt: Although initially more likely to teach in urban schools either because of personal choice or necessity, there is little evidence indicating that alternative certification teachers are less likely to flee urban schools or are generally more responsive to the needs of urban students. Much depends on their personal histories and the nature of their abbreviated preparation programs (1996, p. 42). The nature of the preparation of alternate route teachers is, therefore, of central concern to teacher educators, school personnel, and policy makers invested in this approach to staffing schools. The concern has heightened with the release of the "No Child Left Behind" Act of 2001, in which alternate route and traditionally licensed educators alike, who can demonstrate competency in the subjects they teach, meet the definition of "highly qualified." This, despite the fact that there is substantial variation in requirements of the programs that 44 states and the District of Columbia now offer (Blair, 2003). …
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