Bradley R. Stamm '87, a Government concentrator who has dropped out of the program says, "They require you to spend four hours a day doing teaching while you're taking classes--if you're doing honors, there's no way."

"For someone who's sure they want to teach right after they graduate, it's good," he says.

While the requirements are numerous--particularly for the six seniors who have only one year to meet them--program standards are all based on Massachussesttes state guidelines, says Kay Merceth, director of UTEP. "The state is quite picky," she adds.

Despite the stringent requirements, UTEP has generated strong student interest, Leape comments. "The expression of interest has been so strong that we have no concern that we're going to have as many as we can handle." UTEP is expecting to receive as many as 100 applications for next fall, says Merceth.

Rindge and Latin's Tabor says she is also struck by the student interest in UTEP. "I haven't seen a lot of Harvard undergraduates express such an interest in public education in a long time. Frankly, I'm thrilled," she says.

Carroll notes that across the nation the trend is that fewer students are entering teacher education programs. "When you ask young students about going into to teaching you almost get laughed out of the place."

Most UTEP students do more smiling than laughing, however, when the question of teaching in public schools comes up.

"Public school teaching is an environment where you are in a position to help disadvantaged kids help themselves," says Lowell House resident Andres Fajardo '86.

"I'm really tired of being a passive student. It's exciting to go into the high schools and see people doing broad thinking for the first time," says Janet S. Bixby '86, who lives off campus.

"Teaching is a really good way to know you have made an impact on a certain amount of people. It's invigorating. There's always the hope that you can inspire [high school students]."

Carver, who is doing his field work at suburban Carlisle High School in Concord, has learned how hard it can be to fulfill that hope. "The teachers are alive, the material is alive, but the students aren't," he says.

Bixby, who has been observing teachers at Boston Latin and Cambridge's public high school, says he has especially benefited from the field service portion of the program. "I pay closer attention to discipline--how [teachers] control their class to create an environment to get their material across," she says.

Fajardo, who has been observing at Madison Park High School in the Boston neighborhood of Roxbury, has been concentrating on the particular difficulties of teaching at an inner city high school.

Recalling his first day at Madison Park, he says, "It was definitely very shocking, principally in the difference of the racial makeup [70 percent Black, 20 percent Hispanic, and 10 percent white] and everything we'd heard about Roxbury. The first thing we saw were two armed gaurds in front of the high school."

A graduate of a Palo Alto, Calif., Fajardo says he has noticed at Madison Park a "much higher priority on the personal side of teaching, being able to gain the respect of students and maintain discipline."