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Maryland needs teachers. It鈥檚 filling classrooms with laid-off federal workers.

Wanting to do good for others led to something good happening to Amanda Leiter 鈥� right on time.

Ms. Leiter was a law professor at American University in Washington, D.C., for 12 years before taking a job in the office of the general counsel of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Joe Biden. She knew she wouldn鈥檛 be able to transition into the current administration. She also kept up with friends working in government and read the headlines about massive layoffs that the Trump administration started once in power.

鈥淚 was actually doing some volunteer work as I came out of the Biden administration, as soon as we saw that the Trump administration was letting a lot of people go, a group of us got together, and we were trying to pull resources together to help people who had been let go,鈥� Ms. Leiter says.

She compiled a list of job banks and r茅sum茅 review programs.

鈥淎nd one of the things that I found was this really inspiring video by Governor [Wes] Moore saying, essentially, if the federal government doesn鈥檛 want our dedicated public servants, we in Maryland can put you to use.鈥�

Mr. Moore made the video and seized the moment to fill jobs in his state with laid-off federal employees. His state had a gaping hole of teacher vacancies in Maryland, which numbered more than 1,600 as of March. The initiative, , started in June and is part of a $1 million grant given to 11 colleges in Maryland to help train new teachers and place them in classrooms. This approach is specific to federal employees, but ultimately is a continuation of the state鈥檚 Alternative Certification for Effective Teachers (ACET) program. Under ACET, trainees can get licensed to teach, but not degrees.

Schools in the Feds to Eds program include Montgomery College, the University of Maryland's College Park and Baltimore County campuses, Morgan State University, and Bowie State University.

鈥淢aryland is mobilizing. We refuse to stand idly by while the new federal administration fires public servants without cause, and [we] are doing everything in our power to put Marylanders first,鈥� Governor Moore when Feds to Eds was announced.

By the end of September, the Trump administration had either let go or given buyouts to some 300,000 federal employees. Last Friday, more layoff notices went out.

Maryland鈥檚 approach to funneling those in search of jobs to teaching positions is finding support.

鈥淚 love the idea. I think we always want professionals from other fields to consider education, and sometimes we can get them, and sometimes we can鈥檛,鈥� says Paul Lemle, president of the Maryland State Education Association, which represents 76,000 teachers and school employees.

Mr. Lemle, a teacher himself, says that if a biologist or a computer scientist wants to try working with students and sharing their expertise with them, Maryland would love to have them. He notes that teaching salaries start at $60,000 and average more than $90,000 a year. That doesn鈥檛 match the salaries that some federal workers make, he says, but he knows that there are thousands in the state looking for work.

鈥淓verybody benefits when we find a great teacher: that teacher, the kids, and our society,鈥� he adds.

Montgomery College received $100,000 from the grant and used it to put together two cohorts. It and Bowie State University were the only two schools to offer a summer cohort, which finished in August. Sixteen of the 18 students from that first group are teaching in classrooms now, says Glenda Hernandez Tittle, who heads the program. When the second cohort, which is in training now, heads to the classroom, they will do so with full pay and benefits 鈥� and on-the-job assistance when needed. For the Feds to Eds program, Montgomery College boiled what normally takes six to nine months down to three months.

Of the Montgomery College recruits, all of them have college diplomas, and 60% to 65% have advanced degrees, Dr. Hernandez Tittle says. Of the advanced degrees, 70% are Ph.D.s; some have gone to colleges and universities such as Harvard or Stanford.

Ms. Leiter, who will be teaching high school biology in Montgomery County, Maryland, just outside of Washington, is in the second cohort of the program at Montgomery College.

鈥淭his just felt like an important point in time to be really making a commitment to the next generation,鈥� says Ms. Leiter, who was enthusiastic about seeing whether she could apply her law school teaching to a different setting. 鈥滻鈥檝e really been enjoying learning from [the instructors]. In fact, I sort of wish I knew some of what they鈥檙e teaching me when I was teaching law school.鈥�

She is one of 18 members of her cohort, who meet two to three evenings a week at the Rockville campus of Montgomery College. Sometimes, they meet online. Trainees are taught by teachers from Montgomery County schools. They will be assigned mostly to middle schools. If there are critical shortage areas, such as science, technology, engineering, and math, some could be assigned to high schools.

At the beginning of the program, instructors stress how vastly different teaching in public schools will be for professionals who thrived in other places, says Dr. Hernandez Tittle. They also get plenty of feedback on what they do right and wrong, because teaching isn鈥檛 for the weak.

鈥淚t鈥檚 hard for them. Imagine you鈥檙e changing careers after being somewhere 15, 20, 25 years, and you鈥檙e learning something completely new. Where you go from getting all these accolades to, you know, good job with this,鈥� to criticism of how to do things better. But it鈥檚 necessary, she says.

Teacher shortages in Baltimore are a reality that the state has to address, says Joe Manko, the education program officer for the Abell Foundation, a private, Baltimore-based group that focuses on health, economics, and education.

He notes that Feds to Eds is analogous to initiatives such as Teach for America and the Baltimore City Teaching Residency program. They have track records of success, which he thinks bodes well. What has to happen for the program to thrive, he says, is for mentoring to continue once the new educators are in schools. The new recruits will need time to learn and flourish.

鈥淵ou have individuals where teaching is a second career, and they have become very successful educators because they are using their previous work experience and they are able to parlay that into strong instructional benefits for their kids.鈥�