Going Online with MARCO
Maryland initiative expedites certification process for new teachers
By Ronald Roach
When Troy and Sharon Anderson of Bowie, Md., decided to leave behind corporate jobs to become public school teachers, they found little comfort in the prospect of having to spend a year or two taking education courses to gain teacher certification. For the Andersons, knowing they could get into the classroom as quickly as possible would ease the logistical and financial challenges of changing careers.
Last fall, the couple had the fortune of meeting Dr. Brenda Conley, the department chair of education programs at the University of Maryland University College (UMUC) graduate school. Conley, who was in the midst of launching an online education program aimed at speeding up the teaching certification process for people making a career change, persuaded the Andersons to sign up for her program. The initiative, formally launched in January, is the inaugural program of Maryland’s Alternative Routes to Certification Options, or MARCO, and will get the couple and 34 other teaching candidates into classrooms in Maryland’s Prince George’s County school system by fall 2003.
“This has been a blessing,” Sharon Anderson says of MARCO’s fast- track approach to teacher certification.
Since late January, Anderson, her husband and the others have been in a 14-week long online course offered by UMUC that will grant them nine credit hours towards their teaching certification, and the credits can be applied towards a master’s degree in education or the master’s of teaching degree. This summer, the teaching candidates will undergo a teaching internship program that will last five weeks and prepare them for a fall teaching assignment.
“It’s been grueling. We’ve been working quite hard,” says Troy Anderson of the workload he balances while continuing to hold down a managerial position with the Xerox Corp.
