Next month, specially trained recruits will start work at 39 schools. The program aims to ease a city teacher shortage.

The Philadelphia School District for years has faced a midyear shortage. New teachers quit. Older ones retire. Some take sabbaticals. Some get sick. Some exit for other reasons. Their classrooms often are left to substitutes.

Next month, the district will take a new step to combat that problem when it sends into those vacant positions a new cadre of instructors, specially recruited and trained to plug the midyear gaps.

Run by the New Teacher Project, based in New York, the program will send 62 "teaching fellows" - who have bachelor's degrees in subjects other than education - into 39 city schools to begin work on Feb. 8.

Just how many of the current vacancies they will be able to plug is uncertain, though the program at the very least is expected to leave the district with its fewest midyear vacancies in recent memory.

As of the first week of this month, the district reported 69 vacancies among its 11,000-member teaching force.

Among the new recruits - ranging in age from 22 to 59 - are psychologists, electrical engineers, and former Catholic school teachers. There's an insurance agent, a pastor, and a creative-writing instructor.

"I feel it's something I should have always been doing. It's where my heart is," said Angelo Williams, 46, pastor of the Word of Life Church Ministry in South Philadelphia and former senior director for North City Congress' senior centers.

Over the next several weeks, Williams and his colleagues will learn how to teach. At first, they'll watch veterans. Then, they'll teach small groups and design their own lessons. By week four, they'll teach a full block of classes.

They will also begin their required course work toward teaching certification at Temple University.

The New Teacher Project is a company that has recruited and prepared more than 13,000 nontraditional educators for hard-to-staff schools around the country since it started in 1997. It advertised nationwide for the Philadelphia jobs, largely on Web sites such as Monster.com, said Amy Lynch, the Philadelphia site manager for the project.

More than 700 people applied. Those selected for interviews had to write essays and teach sample lessons. They had to show that they had related experience or content knowledge in their field of interest.

"We were looking for people who we thought could weather the adversity" of filling some of the district's toughest teaching assignments in the middle of the year, said Michelle Rhee, chief executive officer of the New Teacher Project.

Rhee said the problem of midyear vacancies is typical in large urban districts, and the group hopes the Philadelphia program will become a national model. Wachovia Bank kicked in $250,000 for the project, while the district paid $106,000.

The New Teacher Project is one of several programs in the district that brings in educators who have degrees in fields other than education to stem shortages. The New York-based Teach For America is the largest; it has placed nearly 200 recent college graduates.

Ted Kirsch, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, who in the past has criticized the placement of instructors with noneducation degrees, said he supported this program. The teachers are trained, and they will be required to obtain teaching certification, he said.

"Hopefully, these people will have a good experience, and they'll be retained permanently," he said.

Nearly half of the recruits, who will earn about $38,000 to start, will teach special education. Other major areas include English as a second language, physical education, computer science, science, and math.

Chaneena Banks, 24, a mortgage-loan processor who had previously taken some education courses and has a bachelor's degree in telecommunications, will teach special education at Stetson Middle School. Stetson faced adversity this academic year after an 11-year-old boy was charged with raping a male classmate inside the school.

She said she was aware of the incident, but not daunted by it. She recalled a cafeteria riot, which was covered by the media, that occurred at Strawberry Mansion High when she was a student there in 1997.

"It wasn't that bad. We weren't as disrupted as it may have appeared," she said.

After visiting Stetson for the first time on Friday, she said: "They were very welcoming. It seems like there will be a whole lot of support for us."

Williams, who has a master's degree in human service management, taught for two years as a substitute at Turner Middle School in Philadelphia in the early 1980s.

His wife, Wanda, has taught special education for the last 15 years at Southwark School, which is only a few blocks from Furness High, where he will teach. So he has a live-in mentor.

Furness principal Hiromi Stone-Hernandez said that after meeting Williams and another recruit on Friday, she was pleased they would be working at her school.

"It's so much better than trying to fish around and find someone in the dark," she said. "When I got a picture of the fullness of their background and how they are ready to just dive right in, I felt much more confident. They're well-suited."