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<\/a><\/p>\nAfter 23 months of working and waiting Maureen has become a National Board Certified Teacher (thus making it official that she is indeed the best teacher in the world). This is a huge accomplishment and I\u2019m very proud of her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Before she started this process I thought that becoming a Nationally Board certified teacher required some studying, a big test, and maybe writing a few letters.\u00a0 I was very wrong. The assessment for National Board Certification consists of a multimedia teaching portfolio consisting of 4 entries that include word-limited essay and in-class videos. This portfolio is used to evaluate pedagogy (the science of teaching) and student outcomes. After one finishes all that (it takes about a year, teachers then need to successfully\u00a0complete\/pass a three-hour examination.<\/p>\n
There are only 64,000 Nationally Board certified teachers (of the 4,000,000 teachers currently employed only 1.6% have this certification).<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s some more information from Wikipedia.org<\/p>\n
Mission<\/strong><\/p>\n
The mission of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards is to advance the quality of teaching and learning by:<\/p>\n
1. Maintaining high and rigorous standards for what accomplished teachers should know and be able to do<\/p>\n
2. Providing a national voluntary system certifying teachers who meet these standards, and<\/p>\n
3. Advocating related education reforms to integrate National Board Certification in American education and to capitalize on the expertise of National Board Certified Teachers.<\/p>\n
History<\/strong><\/p>\n
NBPTS was formed in response to a 1986 report issued by the Task Force on Teaching as a Profession, a group funded by the Carnegie Forum on Education. The report, entitled A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century<\/em>, called for the creation of a board to \u201cdefine what teachers should know and be able to do\u201d and to \u201csupport the creation of a rigorous, valid assessment to see that certified teachers do meet these standards.\u201d The founding president of NBPTS was James A. Kelly, and the original chair of the board of directors was the Honorable James B. Hunt Jr., former governor of North Carolina.<\/p>\n