Old Soldiers Call Classrooms to Attention : Schools reap a ‘peace dividend’ as mustered-out military personnel rely on their leadership skills to become expert and popular teachers.

As a first sergeant in the Army, Robert A. Dumas could muster his platoon and march it smartly across a post with little more than the bark of an order. Now a seventh-grade science teacher in the Baltimore Public School systems, Dumas must find more creative ways to get his unit’s attention.

At Baltimore’s inner-city Lemmel Middle School, Dumas stands on his desk, performs rap songs with scientific lyrics, creates mad-scientist outfits from construction paper and answers endless questions about his 20-year military career.

“As a teacher, I’m a platoon sergeant and my platoon is my class,” says Dumas. “The Army has its own way to enforce regulations. But it’s different here--discipline works for some students and for others, you have to take a different approach.”

Flexibility is the main skill Dumas has taken from the military and applied to teaching. “You always had to adapt to things; things could change quickly,” he says.

Today, Dumas is one of 14,000 current or former soldiers who have traded their Army greens for a chance to lead students. Now being released from the service in record numbers, soldiers are being wooed into another profession that values duty, sacrifice and teamwork--teaching.

The program, started modestly under the Bush Administration, is a fledgling effort to reap the “peace dividend” that seems possible now with the Cold War’s end. It is, in embryonic form, the kind of program that President-elect Bill Clinton has promised to champion--one that would facilitate the conversion of military personnel and production to fill gaps in the civilian sector.

Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a key adviser to Clinton, has proposed an expanded and more costly program of placement for departing service members. The Bush Administration’s program has negotiated alternative teacher certification with states and maintained a data base to link potential employers with would-be teachers. Nunn’s program would allow departing military members to remain on the Pentagon payroll while they get the training and certification necessary to fill teaching and law enforcement positions in the civilian economy.

The Bush Administration’s effort has involved the forging of unusual new partnerships between the military and state and local school systems, which are agreeing to waive traditional certification requirements to bring former soldiers onto their teaching staffs.

So far, since the late 1980s, the Army has helped place roughly 3,000 ex-soldiers in school systems and struck deals to allow further placements with Texas, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Idaho and Alaska.

Most of those states are faced with serious teacher shortages and are hoping to tap into a ready source of disciplined--though not traditionally trained--teachers whose salaries, in many cases, will be supplemented with military retirement pay or special military buy-out packages.

Of the 10,280 soldiers the Army has registered in its data base for potential employers, about half have college degrees and 1,050 have advanced degrees. The other half are considered candidates for teaching jobs at vocational and technical training schools.

While the requirements for a warrior and a teacher may appear incongruous, Army officials administering the program say teaching draws on some of the same motivations that drew soldiers to the military. For one, there is the emotional compensation of serving the community. Few of the 14,000 who have called the Army’s “New Careers in Education” hot line bother even to inquire about salary ranges, says Patricia Hines, the program’s director.

Moreover, many of these soldiers are natural teachers, having led units in training sessions covering everything from safety to tactics to social responsibility. Because many have had specialized training themselves to serve in the high-tech military, many can teach in mathematics and science, where the need for public school teachers is greatest.

Robert Silberman, assistant secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, said, “Most military training is about . . . bonding people together, inspiring people toward a common goal. In an all-volunteer force, you have to lead by inspiration. And inspiration has proven to be very successful method of leadership.”