Health & Fitness
U City Teachers Seek Nation’s Highest Teaching Credential
Six University City school teachers are seeking to achieve National Board Certification - the teaching profession's highest professional certification. Written by Kim Deitzler
Teachers tend to be busy. Really busy. Between lesson planning, grading, meetings, conferences, training (not to mention teaching) free time is not something most teachers possess in abundance. So what could possibly motivate six School District of University City teachers to willingly take on a grueling three-year, 400-600 hour-long project (!)? Could it be a sadistic love of paperwork? Or perhaps an aversion to quiet evenings spent with loved ones? Maybe a strict adherence to that old wives’ tale about idle hands? Most likely it is the satisfaction of knowing that once the work is completed they will rank among an elite 3 percent of educators nationwide who hold the most prestigious professional certification available in their field: the National Board Certification.
National Board Certification is an advanced teaching credential, similar to certification in fields like medicine and law. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards website describes it as “a rigorous, peer-reviewed process that ensures that Board-certified teachers have proven skills to advance student achievement” through which “teachers expand and refine their content knowledge and pedagogy. The outcome is more powerful teaching that improves student achievement and reflects college and career readiness.”
Retired Jackson Park Elementary teacher Kelly Mueller was the first in the district to earn the distinction, and now she serves as the NBC coordinator for Maryville University and works with NBC candidates both locally and nationally. She says that the importance of the National Board process is easily understood when you think about it this way:
“Other professional development tells us what to go back and do in our classrooms. The NB process simply says ‘Here are the highest standards in your teaching profession - recognized across the country. Give us evidence of how you meet them.’ They recognize there are countless ways to get there. Each of us is an individual. We teach different children in different settings at different times. Each is a professional, and in that role makes thousands of decisions in a week. An accomplished teacher uses his/her knowledge of the students in the class, knowledge of the subject area, and knowledge of available resources to plan worthwhile lessons to meet the goals they children need to learn at this point in time. WE say what we did, giving the rationale for our decision(s) as to what to teach, how to teach it, and how to evaluate student performance. THAT is teaching.”
The certification process involves a series of performance-based assessments that include teaching portfolios, student work samples, videotapes and thorough analyses of the teachers' classroom teaching and student learning. In all, teachers spend hundreds of hours beyond their normal workload preparing materials and being tested in order to attain this lofty distinction.
Although the process is entirely voluntary, the School District of University City has stepped up to not only cover most of the registration fees, but also to provide a generous stipend (which Ms. Mueller notes is on par with some of the best in the country) to all district teachers who become National Board Certified.
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Candidates claim that this sort of financial support is a great motivator and a wise move, as research continues to show that the students of National Board Certified Teachers (NCBTs) out perform those of non-NCBTs on achievement tests (particularly in STEM fields), and that the impact is especially significant for minority and low-income students.