However, many college students and graduates consider teaching as a career option later in their college or post-college journey. A few of our sons’ best teachers have entered the education field through either Teach For America, or one of many Teach For America alternatives. Most of these programs look for college graduates with strong academic credentials, and they involve a summer- or year-long intensive training program, a period of supervised teaching, and an assignment to a classroom as a solo teacher (or in some cases, an apprentice teacher).
If you’re looking to pivot toward teaching late in your college years or after you’ve already graduated, check out these options:
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Post-Baccalaureate Certificate or Degree
The most traditional route into teaching for a non-education major is a postgraduate certificate or master’s degree in education. Depending on the program and whether you’re going for a certificate or a degree, these programs can range from 1-3 years. In most states, the program will end with you taking a state teaching license exam. Looking for programs near you? Decide the state you’d like to teach in, and Google the state name with “post-baccalaureate teaching programs.”
Teach For America
Many of the intensive teacher training programs incorporate a post-baccalaureate certificate or degree in their approach. However, they often include intensive on-the-job training while you are learning, often in the form of a full-time teaching job.
Teach for America: TFA remains the most prominent of these programs and has programs in around 50 different parts of the country, from cities like Los Angeles and Chicago to rural regions including the Mississippi Delta, the Rio Grande Valley, and Native American reservations in South Dakota. (Disclosure: I worked for TFA for a couple of years, though not as a teacher).
TFA heavily recruits and selectively accepts more than a thousand new corps members each year, with a 15% acceptance rate. selecting on qualities including academic performance, resilience, and commitment. In applying for TFA, applicants can share preferences of where they would like to serve, but if you are selected, you’ll be given one offer to a specific region, and won’t have the opportunity to negotiate a different placement.
Before moving to their corps region, new corps members attend summer Institute, in one of a handful of cities. At institute, they live in dormitories, take intensive coursework in instructional skills from TFA (and a partner university), team-teach summer school classes in the local school district, and work long, hard hours into the night to keep everything moving forward. TFA partnered with several university programs and, during the 2-year commitment, corps members take coursework and earn a master’s degree in education. According to a Harvard study, about 60% of TFA teachers stay in teaching beyond their two-year commitment. A third stay in teaching for more than 4 years.
Teach For America Alternatives
The New Teacher Project/fellows programs: The New Teacher Project has a range of projects, including teaching fellows programs in Baltimore, Indianapolis, and New Orleans.
Urban Teachers: The Urban Teachers program “believes in developing and supporting committed, well-prepared, culturally competent teachers, and supporting those teachers to empower students through learning. Urban Teachers seeks to use education to combat racial and socioeconomic inequality.” The organization runs programs in Washington DC, Baltimore, and Dallas.
ACE teaching fellows: based at the University of Notre Dame, ACE (Alliance for Catholic Education) Teaching Fellows “forms talented, faith-filled college graduates to renew and transform Catholic school classrooms. ACE teachers form a select cohort of the nation’s top emerging Catholic school teachers and leaders, and through ACE’s innovative instructional model, they develop the skills and knowledge necessary to serve some of the most under-resourced schools in the United States.” Before teaching, participants complete an intensive summer program at Notre Dame and are placed in Catholic schools around the Midwest.
Teaching-Adjacent Programs:
There are also education-related programs that may put you into the classroom, but not with primary responsibility for running the show
City Year – City Year is an Americorps-affiliated program that operates in more than 20 places around the US. Americorps volunteers aged 18-24 are placed in teams at local public (sometimes charter) schools and provide services to schools and students. City Year teams focus on interventions to improve attendance, behavior, and core skills. In some schools or cities, City Year members run after-school programs or other activities. (I served on the Associate Board of my local City Year chapter for several years and was constantly impressed with the caliber and commitment of the volunteers).
Jesuit Volunteer Corps – JVC places volunteers in groups around the country. JVC volunteers receive a small stipend and live in community, in group houses with other volunteers. Volunteers work with local organizations that need assistance. These assignments vary but can include schools, food pantries, or other charitable or service organizations. (There is also an equivalent international program: Jesuit Volunteers International).
International Teaching Opportunities
JET: The Japan Exchange and Teaching Program places American young professionals to work and live in cities and towns across Japan and serve as cultural ambassadors. Most participants serve as assistant teachers, providing instruction in English, and the program runs for 10 months.
Fulbright: The Fulbright English Teaching Assistant program places college graduates in various countries around the world, assisting English teachers in those countries. The teaching commitment varies from 10-30 hours per week. Some countries include a requirement to speak the native language.
