Yesterday, Saturday November 17th was "score release day" for NBPTS certification candidates-in-waiting.

Some teachers will open their NBPTS profile to a message of congratulations, others will have to dust themselves off and think about whether to bank scores and attempt to give it another go.

Either way, in my opinion, any teacher who participates in the process should come out the other side having grown. There are always naysayers and exceptions both good and bad, of course, but going through the kind of self-assessment and close examination of practice that is demanded of the NBPTS certification process no doubt pays dividends.

To those of you who now can post those four letters after your name, congratulations and welcome. For those who read and post here–what has pursuing or earning National Board Certification meant to you, your practice, your students and your school?

At some point in nearly every writing assignment I submitted in high school, those three letters were scrawled in the margins: "awk." To clarify for those who have clearer syntax and diction than I do, "awk." stands for "awkward."

What that means, and how specifically to remedy it, is kind of hard to pin down.

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By Kristin    

This article is just fabulous.  Written by an ex-police officer and Marine who now teaches physics, it outlines why teachers deserve more credit than they're getting.

The reason it fits in this post is that Matthew Swope mentions things teachers do that blur the professional boundary between student and teacher.  It's risky to cross that line, but teachers do it every day in order to let a kid know someone cares about him enough to stand by his side even if there's no learning target involved.  Even if it could be seen as inappropriate.

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On my 18^th birthday, I practically sprinted to
the school library to register to vote. I don’t think I was really as excited
about the democratic process as I was about the right of passage it marked. It
happened to be just a few months before a presidential election, and all of a
sudden I started to notice the ads and the news stories and quickly became
aware of how complex voting could be.

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By Tom White

It’s often said that receiving unsolicited advice always
sounds like criticism. That’s unfortunate, since giving unsolicited advice isn’t
usually intended as criticism; it’s usually just one person looking at another
person and articulating where there’s room for improvement. Which, now that I
think about it, is a pretty good definition of criticism.

So it’s in that spirit that I’m about to give advice to the
National Board. Advice that is entirely unsolicited. Keep in mind that I love
the National Board. I love what it stands for and I love what it’s done for the
teaching profession. In fact, other than marriage and fatherhood, National
Board Certification is perhaps the best thing that’s ever happened to me. But
just like marriage and fatherhood, National Board Certification is not quite
perfect.

And they apparently know this. In fact, under their new
leadership, they’ve signaled that big
changes are in the works; changes that will hopefully make the National Board
more relevant to the current educational landscape, while making the
certification process more accessible to today’s teachers, and without
compromising the high standards that are at their core. So here goes:

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By Kristin

Here's an old fashioned Polar Bear exhibit.  Some effort has been made, but even if you haven't spent much of your life glued to Frozen Planet on the Discovery Channel you instinctively know that this isn't the kind of home a polar bear would choose.  The tire swings and poolette are intended to give the bear some mental and physical stimulation, but I doubt this cage provides a quality of life worthy of such a magnificent creature.  Zoos are getting better, but they still face the challenge of being ambassadors of wild creatures even as they keep the creatures in exhibits that, at best, mimic small parts of an animal's habitat – kind of like trying to design a school that serves the needs of all its students.

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