ST. LOUIS (AP) – Serena Rowan has been an Army drill sergeant, recruiter, sergeant major, and director of personnel, on top of civilian jobs she’s held with a phone company and a boys home.

She’s now settled happily into teaching – “my calling,” she says – through a re-energized federal program that helps former military personnel find jobs in public education.

Her assignment: teach special-education youngsters in a suburban St. Louis school where 93 percent of the children qualify for free or reduced lunches, one measure of poverty.

She came to the Ferguson-Florissant School District last year through Troops to Teachers, begun in 1994 when the military began downsizing and given a much-needed boost two years ago with a public endorsement from former teacher and first lady Laura Bush.

Like the Peace Corps and the old Vista volunteer program, the former soldiers must work in places considered by many people as less than desirable.

Troops to Teachers pays participants either $5,000 toward earning their teacher’s certification or a $10,000 bonus for teaching three years in schools that serve poor children. They also receive a paycheck from the school district.

Educators are divided over the program.

Some, such as Scot Danforth of the University of Missouri-St. Louis’ College of Education, believe military discipline doesn’t work with an 8-year-old.

“Public schools and children don’t work that way,” said Danforth, the college’s chair of the division of teaching and learning. “The chains of command are loose, authority is always questionable, even the authority of teachers.”

Supporters, however, say the former troops bring efficiency, organization, dedication and discipline to the classroom, as well as pride.

“I observed one who was strict, fun, and fair,” said Susan Adler, director of teacher education at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, who acknowledges seeing her own “child of the ’60s, antimilitary bias” crumble.

“He had classroom management licked,” Adler said. “He was strict, but not in a negative way. That’s not untypical.”

Adler’s initial reaction to the former troops was not unlike that of many in the teaching field, said Peter E. Peters, assistant chief of Troops to Teachers at its national headquarters in Pensacola, Fla.

“It was a hard sell at first,” Peters said. “People didn’t want to deal with the federal government and the strings attached, and they were apprehensive about hiring military people. They don’t want a drill instructor or a fighter pilot teaching kindergarten.”

Dick Andrews, dean of the College of Education at the University of Missouri at Columbia, doesn’t come down on either side.

“There’s no evidence that military are any better as teachers,” Andrews said. “But they’re an available pool of people; their interest is a first step. The question is can we teach them to be effective teachers?”

The answer is a resounding yes from Luther Ginger, assistant principal of Johnson Wabash Elementary School, where the ex-drill sergeant Rowan teaches. Rowan, he said, arrives early, stays late, sets high standards for her charges and has made a difference in their lives.

“We have not been disappointed,” Ginger said. “She’s here for the kids.”

Rowan said she learned of Troops to Teachers after retiring in 2002 with 30 years in the military. She’d taught adults part-time off base and knew she wanted to do more teaching, with children this time.

She chose children with learning disabilities because “they need more than anybody else,” she said. “They need someone who is caring, steadfast, who never runs out. I’m that person.”

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On the Net:

Troops to Teachers: http://www.proudtoserveagain.com

AP-ES-08-04-03 0156EDT

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