National Board Certification Re-takes

Last Monday I retook two sections of my National Board Certification exam. And I think I did really well. Yay!

I retook the sections about Breadth of Knowledge and Connections in Science. In case you're in a similar position, here's what I did.

Some National Board Certified science teachers recommended that I read Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. It's wicked long and mostly focused on biological subjects, but it certainly felt thorough. I learned tons and felt like that was pretty decent studying. Another book that was recommended but didn't have time to read was Science Matters by James Trefil. Bill Bryson's book took me like three months to complete, but ironically some of the best studying I did was within 24hrs of the test.

I found a short list of "major themes" in science and then attempted to relate each of these themes to the three sciences I don't teach: bio, chem, and earth sci. Just this mental exercise helped immensely as some of the connections I thought of turned out to be exact questions on the test. So there we are. *whew*

Next November will tell if I was right!

National Board Certification: A Humble Post

Soooooo... some of you may know that last spring I applied for National Board Certification and in case you didn't guess from the title of the post, I didn't get it. Sad face.

It was definitely tough news since I received it in the beginning hours of a day-long training session with my other Knowles Science Teaching fellows, and Casey (a fabulous physics teacher, and Knowles fellow) from California did get it.

No, I didn't cry - I wanted to at times, but mainly I had to fairly quickly digest the details of my failure, accept it, let it go, and move on. Of course everyone was sad to hear it and the air in the room was understandably tense until the next break when I got to explain to folks the details of my failure.

I had a really strong portfolio (representing about 90% of the work), but my test score was abysmal. I knew coming out of that test that I had bombed it, and I knew ahead of time that if I didn't get it it would be because of the test. So at least I anticipated that piece correctly.

Here's the good news, my portfolio scores will be kept for 2 years during which time I have the opportunity to re-do any pieces I wish to redo for the required score of 275, which I only missed by 6 points. So here's what I'll do: I'll schedule another testing, study my butt off, and I probably couldn't help but do well a second time around.

Aaaaaand back to the bad news. Now I've got to break it to people at school, family, colleagues, students that I didn't get it. :P Not really looking forward to that. However, here's a story to go with this news:

It's like my own grading policy is being applied to me. I let my students redo any piece of work within a certain time limit, and now, I have that same opportunity as well. Learning will occur and I'll get better and I'll have a second chance to show it. There's something satisfying about the reflexive or pleasantly ironic nature of that thought. And I think my students will appreciate it as well.

Things I Wish I'd Known Before I Started My National Board Application

Some of my colleagues at the Knowles Science Teachers meeting wanted to know what it was like to go through the National Board Portfolio process. So I told them and it from that conversation it seems to me that I ought to write a list entitled Things I Wish I'd Known Before I Started My National Board Application.

I wish I'd

• read all the response questions before I even planned the lessons
• joined a National Board Support class/group
• studied harder for the test (harder? this one might be moot, since hindsight is always 20/20, there's no guarantees that I would've studied the right thing - and far be it from me to let slip what's on it)
• I think it probably would've been a really good idea to the Take-One option, so to get my feet wet, feel the whole thing out and then go for the rest of it.
  

Maybe this list will get longer, but that's it for now. (I'm sure I'll refer back to this post when Knowles asks me to present about my NBPTS experience at their summer meeting in July).

National Board Crunch Time

As the National Board deadline approaches candidates everywhere are hopefully wrapping up their four entries, and going through the arduous process of packing up their years-worth of work to be sent out for judgment. And then we shall all hold our breath until next November.

So where am I in this funny business?
Teaching a Major Idea Over Time: Done!
Active Scientific Inquiry: 10% of the writing is written, but I am filming on Monday!
Whole Class Discussion: Done!
Documented Accomplishments: 97% done ~ I have to decide on the most effect artifacts to send in to document my accomplishments.

Even with basically one whole entry to go, I'm feeling pretty satisfied, pretty chill about the whole thing... at least compared to last week, when Teaching a Major Idea and Whole Class Discussion weren't quite done.

It might just take me a whole week to package it!

Teaching Big Idea Over Time

I realize I take a risk by saying this, but ...

I'm going for National Board Certification this year. Like 4 teachers from my school went for it last year, and 3 got it, and that one teacher... well, I'm sure she wishes that she hadn't told people she was going for it. :P

Anyway, I had my first real freak-out session this week. Ok, so freaking out for me mainly includes listening to loud music and combing my fingers through my hair and since I just got it cut that means it just sticks straight up. Yes, I have stress-o-meter hair. "Oh my! Looks like the Lorax's not having a great day - her hair is pretty much on end! I thought you needed Elmer's glue to get it to stick out like that!"

I'm working on the entry entitled "Teaching a Big Idea Over Time", for which I've chosen F=ma, aka the relationship between force and motion. That's huge. For this Big Idea you have to submit 3 lesson plans, which ideally show
1) a connection to technology
2) a connection to other disciplines
3) how you accomodate your lessons for the specific needs/abilities/interests of your students

And

4) Each lesson has to produce individual student work which shows a progression of the student's understanding towards this Big Idea.

There's a bunch more, but I think just even finding lessons which meet these requirements is tough. I mean, I've got stuff which will work for this, but took a lot of thought to put it all together. Anyway, it was this fourth item which had me in fits this last week. So I re-thought through my 3 lessons, got a new plan (after my hair was 2x normal volume), and in the jubilation of having worked it out danced around my living room to the "King of Spain" by Moxy Fruvous.

Let's this version of The Plan works out. :P