Fascinating idea from Andy Rotherham at Eduwonk today, who blogs about creating a mechanism to open schools to part-time teachers, especially retired teachers:
There are some national service ideas floating around on this but they tend to focus on full time teaching. Another way to approach it would be to create more adjunct teachers, especially at the high school level. While teaching full-time may be more intense and more of a time commitment than some people want as a post-retirement option, capturing some of their time is one way to help address the various human capital challenges education faces….There are other part-timers out there, too, for instance mothers with young children, who could be tapped.
I’d add corporations in science and technology to the list of talent sources. If turning out qualified students is their concern, might as well help out. “Facilitating all this would be an attractive niche for a non-profit, too,” Andy notes.
This is an excellent idea. I am a retired physics professor or who would love to get a part-time teaching job on the senior high level. I have had much experience teaching elementary college physics on various levels, and enough high school volunteer experience so that I am confident that I could do an excellent job. I am not certified, so public high schools are excluded, as well as most charter schools. As things stand stand now private high schools are the most promising option.
I suspect that there are many retired academics like me.
I would like to see TFA expand its recruiting program into the professional world.
Maybe part time teaching in a K-12 school should be a requirement for all faculty in education schools…