Transition programs make the jump to the classroom less of a daunting leap.
By MELANIE AVE
Published September 8, 2003
TAMPA - Senor Bueno is deep into a lesson on subject-verb agreement in his Spanish I class.
He darts around the room, stands on chairs to get attention, points to charts, corrects students, directs them to recite phrases glowing on the overhead.
"This is not to embarrass anyone," he says.
"Tu estudias," a girl reads and quietly translates. "You study."
"Muy bien," the slight teacher in Levi's says. "Muy bien."
Meet James Goode, or Senor Bueno or Senor Goode as he is known around the halls of Riverview High School.
Last year his peers voted him the school's teacher of the year. His principal talks of his ability to reach students at all skill levels. Students praise his toughness and his quirky love of rapper Vanilla Ice.
And when they learn of his former life, far from the classroom, their mouths drop.
"He was a doctor?" asks 17-year-old Remy Echavarria.
Goode, 47, is one of a growing number of people who have traded in their private sector careers for the classroom. These career changers have taken teaching jobs, enrolled in training courses provided by the school system and eventually received a state teaching certificate within three years - all without taking extra classes at a university.
It's a process known as alternative certification.
The state cleared the way for such programs in 1998, allowing people without education degrees to teach. All Florida school districts are now required to operate programs.
Some educators question whether such programs place unskilled teachers in the classroom, but many districts say it has helped them fill vacancies caused by a flood of teachers leaving the profession after only a few years.
Hillsborough County was Florida's first district to begin its outreach to professionals. From 74 participants in 1998, the program had 308 signed up last year. So far this year, 450 invitations have been mailed to potential teachers.
Pinellas County's year-old Transition to Teaching program has 150 people in classrooms.
"We wanted to find creative ways to get highly qualified people to bring to our students," said Vicki Meredith, Pinellas' program coordinator.
High-growth districts like Hillsborough look at every opportunity to recruit teachers. And now, with all school districts required by state law to lower their class sizes, many are looking everywhere for people who can teach.
"A four-year teaching degree doesn't make someone a good teacher," said Riverview High School principal Bob Heilmann. "You love kids. You have knowledge. You put those two things together and you've got a good teacher."
Almost every school in Hillsborough has teachers who are former executives, engineers, soldiers, musicians, athletes or accountants. Even doctors.
"These are individuals who are retired or were successful in their careers," said Sarah Brown, Hillsborough's supervisor of non-certified personnel. "They know what they're getting into."
Dr. James Goode did, for the most part.
Goode was an Air Force brat, born in Niagara Falls, N.Y., one of four children. His family skipped from Peru to Massachusetts to Chile. By the time he was 9 years old, the dark-haired Irish-American boy had spent eight years in Spanish-speaking countries.
Even then, his mind locked firmly on his future career.
"I wanted to be a doctor," Goode said.
So off to Spring Hill College he went, in Mobile, Ala., earning a degree in premedicine and Spanish. He later moved to Spain and enrolled in the medical school at the University of Zaragoza.
He took some time off from his studies and taught at the Zaragoza Air Force Base.
Then he married and decided he'd better finish what he started. In 1995, he completed his medical degree.
The next year, he moved his family to the United States and began work as a clinical assistant for a group of cardiologists. He was working toward getting a license to practice medicine in Florida.
"Whatever they needed done, I did," Goode said. "It was very labor intensive."
It was tough on Goode and his family. His marriage was struggling. He rarely saw his children, now ages 9 and 5.
"I went to work and they were asleep. I came home and they were asleep," Goode said. "My wife said, "I married you. I don't want the paycheck.' "
That was the end of James Goode, the physician, and the beginning of Senor Bueno, the teacher.
To qualify for Hillsborough's alternative certification program, a person must be hired by the district. They also need a bachelor's degree and to have taken the necessary subject courses in college to earn a temporary certificate.
They pay $600 for the program, and the district pays the other $600.
Participants receive ongoing coaching by experienced educators and courses in classroom management, testing and ethics. They must pass three state exams.
Of course not everyone who starts actually finishes it. Some find the children too disrespectful, the schools too bureaucratic, the teaching profession too tough, the salary too low.
Pinellas' success rate so far is 87 percent. In Hillsborough, 85 percent of its 300 graduates are still teaching.
"There are always going to be people who come into something and are unsure," Brown said. "We also have college education graduates who step onto the scene and it isn't at all what they expected."
One key to success is support, said David Lussier, an official with the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in Arlington, Va. Career changers are most successful if they have people backing them, such as mentors who are veteran teachers.
After they are in the classroom, they should be considered as teaching equals.
"Regardless of how they enter the profession," Lussier said, "we believe once they're there, they need to be held to high standards."
Goode's five classroom rules spell out his philosophy.
Attitude. Academics. Attendance. No gum, candy or drinks. If you want respect, give it.
If students happen to snooze through his lessons, they might get a stuffed toy thrown at them or the comment, "Lump on a log. Lump on a log grade."
Goode relied on intuition to get through the early days of teaching. And then he learned a few surprises, like how far teaching goes beyond academics, way beyond.
"Kids bring a lot of baggage," Goode said. "We're being forced to teach manners, responsibility. They need to come to school with it, but they don't."
Goode also felt something he wasn't used to as a doctor.
In Goode's first year as a teacher, the Riverview principal brought a Japanese tour group to his classroom unexpectedly. They were looking for tips on things that work in the American education system.
Afterward, Goode asked the principal what the visitors thought of his class.
"He laughed," Goode said. "They told him, "That was a show. Your kids smile too much. You did that as a show just for us."'
It's true Goode has a good time teaching. His students too.
Echavarria called him humorous and thorough. "I got through Spanish IV with everything he taught me in Spanish I," the Riverview senior said.
Junior Natalie Person, 16, remembers Vanilla Ice playing before and after class when she took Spanish II with Goode two years ago. "He'd do this little dance. It was so funny," she said.
Unlike being a doctor, "Teaching is fun," Goode said. "The physicians told me I'd be sorry. But you have to pick what you value in life."
Goode says he knows he made the right choice when he sees that spark of understanding in a student's eyes. Still, he wishes teachers were paid better.
He now earns $38,000, half of his former salary and a fraction of what he would have made had he continued with his medical career.
To overcome the salary, Goode recently completed a master's degree in educational leadership and plans to interview for assistant principal positions this fall.
"If I could get paid what an administrator gets, I'd stay in the classroom," Goode said. "That's a defect of the system."
He's far from his profession as a doctor, but Goode still gets asked for medical advice. On Friday, one colleague asked about her ailing mother.
When asked if there are any similarities between being a doctor and teacher, Goode shook his head.
"Night and day," he said. "I get up in the morning and my kids get up with me."
