In the span of three hours, a Harvard student can move from falling asleep in lecture to teaching a local middle-school class.

A diverse array of Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA) programs allow students who have any sort of interest in education or children can literally jump right into the classroom with just two brief sessions of teacher training.

The University's more career-oriented programs such as the Undergraduate Teaching Education Program (UTEP), administered by the Graduate School of Education (GSE), and Summerbridge--a worldwide teaching organization--tend to gear their training toward students interested in pursuing careers in education, but most PBHA-affiliated programs focus on just bringing interested volunteers to a level where they can participate in the afterschool teaching or mentoring programs included under PBHA's umbrella.

The result is that volunteers often face their students with little formal teachers' know-how.

But student leaders of PBHA programs say volunteers generally are prepared for the challenges imposed by teaching. And a new budget geared toward program training promises to increase the range of trainings offered within the organization.

Crash Course?

"We try to get our volunteers familiar with the academic and psychological needs of classrooms," says Shawanna L. Johnson '01, a member of the Dearborn Afterschool Program, which provides tutoring and academic enrichment in Roxbury.

"We try to get guest speakers who have been teaching for a long time to talk to the group," she says. "But there's no real training for how to tutor."