leslie wrote:

``...Rob Sanchez, who tracks non-immigrant visa issues and is the
Webmaster for the invaluable www.zazona.com, says school districts
fail to look at unemployed local professionals. Many laid off software
engineers, for example, have gone back to school to get education degrees.

"School districts all over the United States are actively recruiting
foreign teachers for our schools. In this case, Filipino math and
science teachers on H-1B visas have just arrived in Nevada.

Yeah. The teachers' union here in Jersey got certain certification restrictions
put in place to reduce competition from computer people. Basically, if you were
a computer science major, you can't get a teaching certificate. Math and "hard"
science majors get preferrential treatment (they're a bit scarce), but even an
art major can get a certificate. CS majors don't qualify as "science" and don't
have the credits in education or the arts to qualify.

Foreigners with math degrees can walk right in, especially if they can also
teach Spanish. The State mandated Spanish classes for all students a few years
ago and is still a bit short of certified teachers.

There are a few ways around it. A friend of mine is teaching in the prison
system. It doesn't pay well, but she doesn't need the certificate she'd need to
teach high school (and her students are nicer). I've known other people who
worked as "substitute" teachers pretty much full time. Again, they're exempt
from the most restrictive regs, and, again, it doesn't pay much.

George Patterson
Give a person a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a person to
use the Internet and he won't bother you for weeks.