Because Williams does not have an Education major, a graduating Eph who wishes to teach has three main options.

1) Enroll in a graduate school of Education

2) Teach at a private or parochial school (they are not required to hire licensed teachers)

3) Enroll in an alternative-route certification program, such as Teach for America, Mississippi Teacher Corps, New York City Teaching Fellows, Chicago Teaching Fellows, and many, many others.

I am not exactly sure of the typical breakdown between these three options for Williams grads who go in to teaching. My (very rough) guess is that around 10 members of the class of ‘07 ended up in #2, and another 10-20 in #3. I only know of a few people who were considering #1. (Note: Plenty of students also go abroad to teach - the phantom 4th option on my list). Perhaps someone more familiar with these numbers (the OCC must know!) could chime in and correct me…

I hope to get few writers from each of these categories, but I’m starting these entries with participants from alternative-route (meaning: not through traditional graduate school) programs. Obviously, as a current member of one these programs, its the viewpoint most familiar to me. But I am also starting here because it is the category that has been receiving the most attention recently - news articles, columns, books, and lots of good buzz about how a big chunk of our generation has chosen to devote two years of our lives to improving our nation’s educational system.

Most aspiring teachers who choose that third category will find themselves in low-income school districts that have a high rate of teacher turnover — and a whole slew of problems that contribute to it.

More below the jump…

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This is the first post in a summer-long series of “Eph Diaries” about the experiences of recent Williams grads who have chosen to pursue teaching after graduation. As an ‘07 graduate, I just completed my first year in the Mississippi Teacher Corps, a two-year, alternative-route program (similar to Teach for America), which trains and places recent graduates in the critical-needs school districts of Mississippi. I’ll be cross-posting some of my own blog entries from this year, as well as thoughts from other young Ephs in the classrooms. Hopefully our stories, observations, and ideas will provide inspiration for other Williams students who are contemplating a career in education.

Perhaps it seems odd that these entries appear over the summer — school is out, we are not necessarily teaching, and our blog entries will often be outdated. I think, in fact, it is the perfect time for these entries - a time in which students and teachers alike can reflect on the year, on what has (or has not) been accomplished, and on what might be achieved when September rolls around again. To those undergraduates adrift in a sea of career opportunities, summer is the perfect time to begin thinking about the future -and hopefully you might gain some insight from those of us newly “on the job”.

So, without further ado, I will give you an entry of mine, recently written, which was required by my program: a reflection of my first year of teaching. This year, I taught Junior and Senior English at a large high school in the Mississippi Delta, one of the poorest (if not the poorest) regions in the country. My attempt to reflect on the year is as follows:

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