When you consider what it means to be a teacher in today's world, a new program at California State University, Channel Islands, really makes sense.

This program, called Willing Workers: Teacher Preparation Partnership Program, takes classes of would-be and will-be teachers out of the university lecture hall and into the laboratory -- our classrooms at Ocean View School District. It's brilliant really. Why wait until these future teachers get to the student-teaching component to show them what it's really like?

Imagine the shock of a college graduate entering a credential program who learns only then that teaching and testing the rigorous California standards is only part of the job, and that the job also includes ethnic awareness, multiple languages, social work, nursing, nutrition, and, of course, compassion.

Today's academic standards are demanding. We need the best and the brightest in the field to make sure our children can meet those goals. But we also need these future teachers to know what they're getting into.

It's reality teaching with a community service element, also an important part of education. We think the university chose well when it picked Ocean View classrooms for its laboratories.

Here at Ocean View, in the rural fields that support the county's agriculture, we can provide the university students with the full spectrum of the elementary and middle school student population. We have the children who have all the advantages of upper- or middle-class, stable, intact homes with involved, educated parents who set good examples with their own lives and then carry through to see that their children do their homework and come to school rested and with a good breakfast in their tummies.

We also have the children whose parents have only recently brought them here from another country, Mexico in most cases. Some of these parents are not literate themselves and don't have much time or energy to help their children if they could, since both parents are working long hours in the fields. Many of these children get their best meals at school.

And, we have those students in between, the children of hard-working parents who are doing the best they can for their kids. Ours is a diverse laboratory for these university students and we are happy to open our doors.

This university program is obviously wonderful for us at Ocean View. Last year in the program's inaugural year, we had 46 bright and eager young adults working in our classrooms and giving our teachers a helping hand at two schools. At the end of their day in the classroom, their professor, Robert Bleicher, arranged for seminars on various education-related topics. The students' presence, together with these seminars, has been professionally invigorating for our teaching staff here, as all are invited to listen and some to speak.

But, it's truly wonderful for the university students. They learn what it's really like to be a teacher in California schools. It's the standards and so much more.

There is of course the classroom curriculum, which is the given in teaching, the core seven hours of the classroom day. But then there is the testing and assessing, and overcoming language barriers, and calling parents to find out why a student is sleeping at school or fighting or not learning.

Some of our teachers connect our kids to social service agencies, get them signed up for doctor or dentist appointments when the mobile clinics are on campus. Some of our teachers even find help for their students to get new clothes or shoes.

Sometimes, you have to find out what the barrier is before you can even begin to help a child learn.

Perhaps most important, those who would be teachers need to know that they will work long hours for not very much pay, and that some of that pay will go to turn their own classrooms into the environments they want to teach in. No one expects teachers to do that, but they do it, everywhere.

Many people have the perception that teachers work from 8 to 2:30 each day, with all those school holidays and the three-month summer vacation. But many people aren't aware that most teachers are working many extra hours every day, every weekend and every summer, preparing for their classes or grading papers or taking courses to keep their credentials current.

Future teachers need to know this stuff. It's the reality of teaching. For unless they have a passion for teaching, they probably shouldn't be in the profession.

But if they come to teaching fully aware of the requirements of the job thanks to the CSUCI Teacher Preparation program, and they have followed their hearts, they will find themselves in a career where the rewards are written all over their students' faces.

And that's got to be the reason they come. It can't be for the money, because it's not there. It can't be for the hours, because they're long. It's got to be for the kids.