DONE! My National Board Portfolio....

At the end of last school year (Summer 2008), I learned about the opportunity to earn a national teaching certificate through the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS). The Pennsylvania Department of Education decided that our state didn't have enough of these nationally certified teachers, and a grant came through to pay for more PA teachers to earn this certification (application/processing fee is $2500). To entice more teachers in Philadelphia to attempt national certification, a bonus of $3500 per year for the life of the certificate (10 years!) is rewarded.

SWEET! I thought. Get money for showing what a good teacher I am. I can do this.

So I have spent the past year reading, writing, attending workshops, videotaping, collecting, analyzing, and writing some more, in order to complete the work for my certification. I wrote four papers, each over 10 pages in length, looking at student work, student discussion, teaching strategies, and my teaching accomplishments. I watched myself on video leading my kids on group discussions and did my best to analyze why the kids did what they did in my recordings.

Overall, it was a grueling process, requiring hours and hours of time (not paid - yet!) compiling and perfecting my writing.

This weekend, I finally finished my writing portfolio, weeks ahead of the March 31st deadline. I refused to be one of those last-minute people. RL pushed me, really, to get the work done.

It's done!

Next step in this certification process will be a three-hour test on a variety of English Language Arts topics. I'm scheduled for May 2.

Scores come out in December. OMG!! So long to wait after so much work.

I can't wait to get my money :)