Degrees of Preparation

Becoming a teacher once meant four years of university. But community colleges are fast becoming a real alternative.

By Ed Finkel

It’s second period on a mild, breezy June Friday in Los Angeles—a perfect day for getting distracted from social studies. But the 7th graders in Jacqueline Cardona’s Bell-Cudahy K-8 School classroom are intently comparing projected slides of classical, medieval, and Renaissance art. As the images beam up before them, her 25 students lean forward over their desks, shoes nuzzling the punctured tennis balls that cup the bottom of each chair leg.

Attired in a magenta blouse, jeans, and a bandanna, the 29-year-old seems coolly in control as she peppers them with Socratic-style questions about the subtle differences in religious content and facial expression among the sculptures and paintings. Most of the cascading responses are correct, but she’s looking for more.

“ Chicos , I want you to come up with at least one reason for your answers,” she tells the kids, most of whom, like her, are Latino. When they correctly place Fra Filippo Lippi’s painting The Madonna and Child With Two Angels in the Renaissance period, they hoot and holler “Yeah!” in celebration. “Two angels hold the baby up to her,” Cardona says, gesturing at the picture. “One seems proud to be doing what she’s doing and looks at the...