It's official

Last Sunday morning I found out that I am officially a National Board Certified teacher. In an ironic twist, I have been feeling particularly unsure about my teaching methodology lately, and as a result, have spent most of the last two weeks in a blue funk, questioning whether or not I should be a teacher, whether I am actually teaching my students anything, and whether or not I will ever be able to do things that normal married people do, like buy a house or travel.

Or retire.

Ugh.

Anyway...kudos to me...whooo.

Tested

Today is the culmination of my part of the National Boards process. In half an hour, I am leaving to go to a testing center where I will spend 3.5-4 hours writing to answer 6 questions over the entire history of humankind. I didn't know what to study, so other than reading a couple of AP study guides, I haven't. If I pass these tests, I will be done with the National Boards process for ten years. If I don't, I will have to repay and retake bits and pieces of it until I do pass it.

Fingers crossed!

PS. If you are like me, you have been seriously frustrated when trying to post comments on a blogger blog. To fix it, when you are on the internet, go to Tools, Internet Options, Privacy, Sites, and enter http://www.blogger.com/, then click allow. Close everything, then reopen the internet and it should work.

Reflections about the National Boards Process

I believe I have mentioned this before on the blog but just as a refresher, I have been working on getting my national boards certification over this past school year. It has been an exhausting process, to put it mildly.

my special message on the back of my box....sent this morning

So, while it is still freshly, traumatically engraved in my brain, I wanted to write down my thoughts on this process.

Why did I do this?

One reason I completed this process was in an attempt to get a bonus given by the state of Washington to National Board certified teachers. It is a nice bonus, for a teacher, but halfway through the process the legislature proposed cutting it. It hasn't happened for sure, but most likely will. I also did this because I really do want to be a better teacher and other teachers at my school that had completed the process talked about how this was a great learning tool for them.

What is involved?

There are many different iterations of this, but in my version (Social Studies for Young Adults), there were four entries.

• Entry 1 was an analysis of student work, and my ability to teach social studies writing
• Entry 2 was a video of a whole-class lesson and demonstrated my ability to teach civic competence
• Entry 3 was a video of a small-group lesson and demonstrated my ability to teach social understanding and civic competence
• Entry 4 is a compilation of work that demonstrates my work as a leader or learner, a community partner, and as a collaborator.

I ended up writing about almost 19,000 words on 56 pages and collecting around 50 pages of documentation between all four accomplishments.

How do I feel?

I'm exhausted. My brain races all the time. I have nightmares. I've been going to bed around 11 and waking up between 2:30 and 4 am for over a week. I'm so tired that I'm shaking. I've gained weight, then lost most of it over the past week because I passed the point of stress eating and entered the land beyond, where nothing is appealing and I'm too tired to cook. I've had numerous emotional breakdowns both in public and private. My house hasn't been cleaned in months.

It doesn't help that I have also been doing the following this year:

• senior class advisor, which involves the equivalent of herding 4 ADHD cats in one common direction
• helping to organize the annual Multicultural Show (which of course, is happening this week), and which also involves the equivalent of herding 150 ADHD performing cats in one common direction
• pushing my senior advisory class to just do their senior project and presentation already...and did I mention I got a brand-new senior last week?
• working with the new district mandates (they do love their acronyms!)
• oh yeah, and teaching as best I can

No personal life, you say? Well, something had to give, and that was the thing that did.

But I'm not done yet. Still to come...

• Multicultural Week rehearsals are next week and there are 4 shows the week after that. There are three of us running things, but one is very pregnant with a high-risk pregnancy and one is in the midst of helping her Alzheimer's afflicted mother move into a group home, so I am on deck.
• the next round of standardized testing in April
• track meets once a week from now until the end of May
• prom
• the assessment center test for national boards, where I have 6 multi-part questions to answer about any subject in economics, government, US and world history, and I have only 30 minutes for each test
• graduation rehearsal and graduation itself, which normally requires no effort on my part but my presence and help has been requested this year
• not to mention all the usual school stuff - meetings, grading, planning, copying - apart from the actual teaching...

Have I mentioned I'm exhausted?

National Board Certification

This school year I will be attempting to get my National Board Certification, in order to become a National Board Certified Teacher. This is done through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and is a very intensive, yearlong process that involves creating a portfolio and taking a test showing your expertise in your subject area.

The portfolio has four entries, each between 30 and 50 pages of material, and two of the entries have a required video documentation and analysis piece. One entry is about student work, one focuses on teaching civic competence (small group), one on parent and community involvement and one that has to be done as a large group, but I don't remember the topic. The portfolio is due in March, and after that you take a test at an assessment center that has 6 questions. Each question has multiple parts, you are given 30 minutes to complete each question and each part of the question has to be addressed in your answer.

All that to say that this coming school year will most likely be an insanely busy one. I am still reading and commenting on blogs, but may not be able to post here as much. I think the payoff will be big and the teachers that have done it previously at my school have all said it is very much worth it, but it will be time consuming.

Reset Buttons Would Be Nice

5:15....alarm goes off, I get up and discover that the cat is apparently mad at me and left me all kinds of fun presents in the hall, the bathroom, and the kitchen. So awesome to discover when half asleep.
6:00...racing out the door to take some friends to the airport, forget my water on the counter (this will be important later...)
6:05...forget which side my gas tank is on, pull into the gas station backwards
6:07...attempt to zip up my jacket, only to discover I have put it on inside out
6:30...discover that everyone in Seattle is taking off from the Southwest terminal this morning, and have decided to creatively park in the dropoff lanes, so instead of being able to get out and give my two best friends a proper sendoff, I have to basically push them out of the car while it is still moving.
6:35...get on I-405 instead of I-5 to return a misplaced engagement ring (long story) and come to a total halt at milepost 3. I proceed to spend the next hour and a quarter going so slowly that it doesn't even register on the speedometer. It took me that long to go 4 miles due to a flaming bus crash on the smallest, busiest freeway in Seattle.
8:15...almost get into an accident by missing the exit and nearly heading to Canada instead of Edmonds
8:20...GPS sends me PAST the school my conference is on
8:25...park in the very last row of the parking lot and RUN to try and make the 8:30 class on the second floor on the far side of the building.
8:45...realize I forgot my water and go to vending machine. Put in $1.25 and am given the message that the water is sold out. Push the coin return and get back 60 cents.

Some days, it would just be better to push the reset button and start over. =)

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It's been a busy summer. I took off the weekend after my last post and spent three weeks with my dad helping him farm. I had internet access, but no time to blog. I got back on Sunday and the next day my two best friends came in to visit. They left this morning and I am in the midst of a conference regarding a teaching program that will be consuming my life for the next 8 months (more on that later), so I am going to leave this here, and pick it up later. School is starting soon and I am itching to get into my classroom on Monday!