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Making the Career Switch to Teaching

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. . . .

For the rest of the article, please go to the url below.



— Melanie Ave
Making the switch to teaching
St. Petersburg Times
2003-09-08
http://www.sptimes.com/2003/09/08/Tampabay/Making_the_switch_to_.shtml

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