First love now a second career for sailor-turned-teacher

? Bill Venohr wrapped up nearly a quarter century aboard U.S. Navy submarines eager to launch a new career.

After weighing his options, the Lawrence resident landed a job selling computer software to the banking industry in a 13-state region. But the work didn’t inspire him like serving as second in command on the USS Alabama did. Nor did it trump a dream he harbored of being a school teacher.

“I can’t say that I was really crazy about the sales side if it,” he said.

While surfing the Internet for job opportunities, Venohr hit the jackpot.

“Ten minutes in, I found myself on the Web site,” he said. “The whole program looked like it was made for me.”

Venohr had discovered a site outlining the Kansas City Teaching Fellows, a collaboration among the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Kansas City, Mo., and Kansas City, Kan., public school districts.

The fellowship program, started in 2001, puts adults who want to change careers on a fast track to the classroom. Instead of spending years in college earning an education degree, fellows are placed in a teaching job after a seven-week orientation at a summer institute.

The program targets chronically understaffed teaching disciplines, particularly math, science and special education.

After two years of on-the-job training and night classes at Pittsburg State University’s campus in Johnson County or the University of Missouri-Kansas City, each fellow earns a teaching certificate and a master’s degree in education.

Bill Venohr, Lawrence, a retired Navy officer, has started a second career as a high school science teacher. Thursday at Washington High School in Kansas City, Kan., Venohr greeted students in the hallway before entering his physical science class. Venohr is participating in a program that allows him to teach while taking classes and working toward a teaching certificate.

Why would highly paid doctors, corporate executives, engineers, lawyers and small business owners turn their lives upside down for a teaching job that pays less than $30,000 a year?

“The impact these fellows make in the lives of students is tremendous,” said Angela Williams, executive director of Kansas City Teaching Fellows.

“These teachers bring rich diversity and experience to the classroom, since all had other careers before entering the teaching profession.”

There are 200 fellows working in the two school districts. Most are in secondary schools, but some teach in elementary buildings. They were chosen from nearly 2,500 applicants. The organization will begin taking applications for the 2004 class in October.

“We get a ton of applicants,” Williams said. “We look for folks very accomplished in their personal life to date.”

It isn’t easy landing a fellowship, even for Venohr. He already had a degree in aerospace engineering from the Naval Academy, and a master’s degree. Before assignment to the Navy ROTC program at Kansas University, he was a lieutenant commander of the Alabama, a nuclear-powered, ballistic-missile submarine.

Like everyone else, the 23-year Navy veteran had to survive a six-hour interview to make the cut. He joined 77 people selected for the class of 2003-2004.

For the past week, Venohr has been making the 35-minute drive to Washington High School in Kansas City, Kan. It’s a four-year school with a demographic profile quite different from Free State High School in Lawrence, where Venohr’s son, Logan, is a sophomore.

Minority students account for 70 percent of Washington’s enrollment compared with 17 percent at Free State. And 54 percent of Washington’s students are in the federal free- and reduced-lunch program, while those students make up 18 percent of Free State’s enrollment.

“We could have been in the summer institute an entire year and they could have never imparted the experience part like when you get in the classroom,” Venohr said.

But he said he wouldn’t trade his opportunity to teach physical science, chemistry and biology at Washington for anything else.

“My entire life I’ve either been a student or a teacher, many times both. It is part of who I am,” he said.

And he said he was in education for the long haul. “That’s my intention. This is my second career.”

If he runs into trouble in class, Venohr can always turn to a colleague across the hall. Science teacher Jim Kearney, who played defensive back for the Kansas City Chiefs from 1967 to 1975, is ready to assist the rookie.

“He’s a good man,” Kearney said of Venohr. “We’re glad to have him.”