They have worked as a clothing buyer, cabinetmaker, personal trainer, painting contractor, psychologist, grant writer, cell biologist, journalist, artist, home builder, and executive coach.
Now they want to teach - art, math, foreign language, business, theater, and social studies.
For some, the motivation is economic, not just altruistic. The recession has produced record enrollment this summer in Burlington and Camden County Colleges' alternate teacher-certification programs and spurred interest in similar Pennsylvania programs.
"I got a bachelor's degree in fashion-industry management from Philadelphia University and became a buyer," said Ashley Carullo of Marlton, "but I hated it." She has preferred substituting as a teacher of family and consumer science at her alma mater, Cherokee High School in Marlton.
New Pathways to Teaching, a partnership between New Jersey City University in Jersey City and 15 community colleges statewide, provides instruction in education theory and teaching methods to college-educated professionals who have passed qualifying exams in the subjects they want to teach.
It begins with six weeks of intensive summer classes and requires students to secure a teaching job by fall to continue with a year of on-the-job mentoring and training.
At Burlington County College, which started classes last month, enrollment is up 50 percent, largely because of changes in the labor market, coordinator Carol Grant-Holmes said. Students range in age from their 20s to their 50s.
At least 42 students are attending classes at Camden County College, the most since New Pathways began there seven years ago.
Home building "has just dried up," said Anthony Pagliuso of Medford, who is in his family's construction business. "I have spec houses just sitting. The phone isn't ringing."
Pagliuso, who is attending Burlington County, started as a substitute business teacher this year in the Lenape Regional School District. "I just want to give back what I've learned over the years," he said.
Mortgage financing has fallen off for Paul Soutar of Mount Laurel, who has degrees in business and finance. He hopes to teach middle school math.
Sportswriter Aaron Bracy of Merchantville said he was after good hours and a job with a solid future.
"Newspapers are pretty unstable right now," said Bracy, a veteran of three of them.
About a third of this summer's 44-member Burlington County class is male - the highest percentage ever.
"I'm so happy to see the number of men here," Grant-Holmes said. "Administrators want to bring diversity to their buildings, especially at the elementary level."
In Pennsylvania, multiple programs ready career-changers for jobs in the classroom. At La Salle University in Philadelphia, Steve Downs, director of graduate programs in education, said that the recession had created more applicants for the school's program, which prepares those with bachelor's degrees for teaching careers, then gives them three years to earn a master's degree in education.
Some applicants never got a footing in the professions they had planned, said Downs, who came to education after a degree in zoology and a career in marketing. He said the program had seen a growing number of recent college graduates who had difficulty finding employment in their undergraduate major.
"They're looking at the job market and saying, 'Do I really want to be an accountant when I can't find an accounting job out there? Maybe I want to teach,' " Downs said.
New Jersey was the first state to allow alternate teacher certification, beginning in 1985. Though programs differ throughout the state, they are based on a 34-week model of mentoring, supervision, and evaluation. Most of the 200 hours of formal instruction occur concurrently with on-the-job experience, said Richard Vespucci, state Department of Education spokesman.
The state has granted more than 28,000 alternate-route certificates. In the 2007-08 school year, about a third of all first-year teachers in New Jersey were alternate-route candidates, Vespucci said.
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