He begins class by pointing to a Barbie doll in a hot-pink dress. A few students giggle as he guides the doll along a pulley, explaining the concepts of power and work in physics.
The doll is a gimmick, but it gets the students’ attention, exactly the point for teacher Jon Shemwell. In his quest to make a difference as a pioneering physics teacher at Chicago’s Steinmetz High School, Shemwell has tried all sorts of creative approaches. He was also the first teacher in Steinmetz history to introduce an advanced-placement physics class, which has turned some unlikely students into math lovers.
For Shemwell, formerly a nuclear engineer for General Electric with a master’s degree in physics from Johns Hopkins University, there’s a lot riding on his ability to succeed in the classroom.
As one of the first graduates of Illinois’ controversial new effort to bring professionals into schools through a fast-track alternative certification program, Shemwell faces a good deal of scrutiny.
“I didn’t know how I’d relate to teenagers,” he said, “but it just makes me feel that being a teacher is what I’m called to do.”
As many education schools confront mounting criticism for their failure to adequately prepare teachers for the realities of the classroom, national and local political leaders are turning to people like Shemwell to force dramatic change in traditional teacher training programs.
In all, 40 states now provide faster routes to the classroom for people with undergraduate degrees outside of teaching. In New Jersey, one of the first states to launch an accelerated program for midcareer professionals, in 1985, about 25 percent annually of the state’s new teachers are graduates of alternative programs.
And while many education school deans at Illinois’ public universities initially opposed the state’s first fast-track alternative, designed by the Golden Apple Foundation three years ago, many of their universities are now joining the arena with shortened programs of their own.
Because of a change in state law in 1997, Illinois colleges and universities, along with Golden Apple, can also provide certification to be used statewide. The original Golden Apple program was limited to applicants committed to teaching in the Chicago Public Schools for the first several years.
Governors State University in University Park has been approved by the Illinois State Board of Education to start an alternative program. Illinois State University in Bloomington, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and SIU at Edwardsville also plan to submit applications to the state board. Eastern Illinois University leaders are interested in the idea.
None of the new proposals would be as abbreviated as the Golden Apple program, which is a partnership among the foundation, Northwestern University’s School of Education, and the Chicago Public Schools.
The Golden Apple program gives teachers eight weeks of orientation and training. That includes six weeks of observing and working in a summer-school classroom in a Chicago public school with a teacher who has won a Golden Apple award for excellence. The program also includes after-hours classes with Northwestern faculty.
After that, the teachers become interns for a year, heading up their own classes in a Chicago school and earning salaries equivalent to those of full-time teachers. If they pass program requirements, they become certified teachers.
By contrast, the education school proposals generally require at least six months of training and at least five years of work experience before teachers can take over a class.
However, the course work for some proposals can be done in creative ways. For example, Illinois State’s proposal allows candidates to complete nearly all requirements through Internet courses.
Proponents of the programs argue that people with expertise in their subject areas can be at least as effective in the classroom as traditionally trained teachers, whose course work is often heavy on educational theory and light on actual classroom experience.
“The traditional pathway is tremendously appropriate for the 18- to 22-year-old, but for the 25- to 50-year-old who has a greater sense of self and a stronger command of the subject matter and a stronger knowledge of children, possibly having raised one or two of them, a different path of teaching is needed,” said Dom Belmonte, director of teacher preparation programs for Golden Apple.
But even as states such as Illinois move ahead, the shortened programs remain controversial. Some opponents contend they lower standards in a profession that already confronts intense public criticism for poor quality.
“They may be brilliant in their fields, but that doesn’t mean they can then extend their knowledge to a classroom of kids,” said Chicago Teachers Union spokeswoman Jackie Gallagher. “It’s almost like a buy-a-degree kind of thing. You don’t have the credentials, but come to our summer school for eight weeks and we’ll get you a teaching job.”
Stanford University professor Linda Darling-Hammond, a national expert on teacher preparation issues, has described some shortcut programs as the equivalent of “educational malpractice.” She has warned that reducing the course work required of teachers could be detrimental to students, especially minority students in urban areas where the programs are particularly popular.
Yet even some of the original critics in Illinois now see a benefit to alternative routes, as long as the education school programs are serious about enforcing tough standards.
Mitch Vogel, president of the University Professionals of Illinois teachers union, initially worried about the quality and preparation time for the Golden Apple program.
But he has been pleased with the teachers who have come out of the program and supports the new proposals from Illinois’ education schools. He says education school leaders may also be forced to rethink traditional programs to include more classroom experience earlier on.
Others worry that alternative programs may do no better at keeping teachers in the profession than traditional programs, providing only a short fix to the pressing problem of teacher shortages.
“The proof will still be in the pudding,” said Elizabeth Hitch, dean of the College of Education at Eastern Illinois. “If in fact the thing that happens is the same thing that happens in more traditional programs, where teachers get into a district and spend three or four years and then leave, I’m not sure people will say we’ve really transformed how we’re going to prepare teachers.”
Some of that attrition has already happened in the Golden Apple program, Belmonte conceded.
Of the 16 people chosen for the program’s first year in 1998, only eight are still teachers in Chicago Public Schools, about the same retention rate as education school graduates. Two were let go before the school year began for not meeting standards, one dropped out before school started because of the low salary, two left the state, two decided not to continue after the first year, and one dropped out because of health problems.
“But that’s the first group,” Belmonte said. “We’re fine-tuning our selection process and what we do during the school year and what we do after.”
So far this year, 23 of the 26 interns in the program are still teaching, he said.
Among the current Golden Apple teaching pool are lawyers, consultants, scientists and a former professional basketball player for a European league. One intern, Gary Sircus, left a lucrative career as a Loop attorney to join Golden Apple’s ranks.
“I was a very good lawyer. I achieved the objective measures of success,” he said. “But I really had no passion for it. I wanted to do something I could be passionate about.”
In Shemwell’s AP physics class at Steinmetz, students who never dreamed they’d enjoy a math class are now fans of advanced-placement physics, an honors course that qualifies them for college credit.
They say Shemwell makes the concepts more understandable by applying them to everyday life. In one recent class, they ran up flights of stairs with stopwatches and rulers to study power and the rate of energy over time.
“I didn’t think I was capable of doing this at first. The idea of the class being college level is what scares you,” said Vanessa Carreon, a senior. “But you know, it’s really interesting. I’m learning a lot.”
Shemwell’s six-figure engineer’s salary certainly kept him comfortable, but he said he felt bored and unfulfilled. He had considered teaching but didn’t think he could afford two years of lost salary while earning an education degree.
In his first weeks in the classroom, he was exhausted by the fast pace and challenged by students who ignored his basic rules.
“It was a stressful time,” he said. “But I’m in a much better situation now. I feel I’ve made real progress.”
