Transition to Teaching: Collaboration and Innovation in Education
By Stanley S. Litow, Vice President, Corporate Community Relations, and President, IBM International Foundation

The importance of collaboration in education has long been acknowledged. We know that schools can't do the hard work of educating children on their own. As former Deputy Chancellor for Operations and Chief Operating Officer of the New York City Board of Education and now in my role as Vice President of IBM Corporate Community Relations and President of the IBM International Foundation, I know full well the importance of businesses and community organizations working together with schools to improve student learning.

But while collaboration is key, innovation in every aspect of schooling has become critical. If you talk to our most successful business and community leaders, you will learn that they have few priorities higher than innovation. At IBM for example, "Innovation that matters for our company and for the world" is one of our core values; we work to put this value into action every day to remain competitive as we create new technologies and services that make a difference for our customers around the globe.

In education, innovation is imperative if students are to meet the increasingly complex demands of the global economy. Only by designing and implementing new strategies and by creating new tools and resources can we help our students achieve at higher levels. Schools alone cannot be the breeding ground for innovation; businesses and community organizations will play a critical role in igniting innovation in education.

To that end, IBM, as an extension of our efforts in education improvement, announced in September that it will help address the critical shortage of math and science teachers by leveraging the brains and backgrounds of some of our most experienced employees, enabling them to become fully accredited teachers in their local communities upon electing to leave the company.

The IBM Transition to Teaching program will begin as a pilot in January 2006 with as many as 100 United States employees in various geographic areas participating and, if successful, will expand significantly and engage other companies. Each employee will be able to participate in both online course work and more traditional courses, participate in online mentoring while remaining at the company, as well as student teach for up to three months in order to meet state certification requirements and prepare them with quality experiences. IBM will reimburse participants up to $15,000 for tuition and stipends while they student teach as well as provide online mentoring and other support services in conjunction with partner colleges, universities and school districts.

IBM developed this initiative because we know that new economic demands require new thinking about what we should do to improve our schools. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, jobs requiring science, engineering and technical training will increase 51 percent through 2008. This increase could lead to 6 million job openings for scientists, engineers and technicians. In order to prepare today's young people for these careers, more than 260,000 new math and science teachers are needed by the 2008-2009 school year. Simultaneously, 76 million baby boomers are approaching traditional retirement age, with many reporting they plan to continue working in fields where they can give back to their communities.

Many of our experienced employees have math and science backgrounds and have made it clear that when they are ready to leave IBM, they are not ready to stop contributing. They want to continue working in positions that offer them the opportunity to give back to society in an extremely meaningful way. Transferring their skills from IBM to the classroom is a natural for many – especially in the areas of math and science.

We hope that our new effort in education improvement will encourage other businesses, community organizations, as well as schools themselves, to bring greater innovation to education. If 100 other U.S. businesses initiated an effort like ours, placing only 100 of their mature workers with math and science backgrounds into our K-12 schools, then that would result in 10,000 new math and science teachers – every year. Innovation – the driver of economic opportunity and job creation and, yes, advances in education – is for all of us to understand, to become infected with, and to become incredibly infatuated with as we move forward in the 21st century. We all must become innovation experts.



Other articles in this edition:
Successful Leaders Value Diverse Views
Leadership, Change, and Technology