Teacher talk: What

does ‘board

certified’ mean?
By Caroline Monday
cmonday@mountaintimes.com

North Carolina leads the nation in its number of National Board Certified teachers and administrators, and Watauga County plays a part in that achievement.

Annually, more and more area teachers and administrators achieve this certification.

Approximately 20 percent of North Carolina’s teachers are board certified, placing the state far ahead of any other state in the nation in that respect. About 17 percent of Watauga County’s educators have this certification, with increasing numbers of certifications received each year. In December, 17 Watauga County teachers received certification, the highest number in the history of the county’s participation in the program.

Those teachers are Debra Gandy and Wendy Smith at Blowing Rock; Kimberly Bentley and Brady Rochford at Green Valley; Shelly Campbell, David Davis, Jennifer Lacy, Amy Mueller and Susan Wells at Parkway; Barbara Myers at Mabel; Dacia Trethewey, art teacher at Mabel, Cove Creek and Parkway; and Lisa Combs, Robin Lowe and Kimberly Woodrow at Watauga High School.

In order to receive National Board Certification, educators must complete a rigorous process that takes one to three years to complete, Parkway teacher and facilitator for the school system’s National Board Academy Susan Wilson said. The certification process requires teachers to devote hundreds of hours of effort in addition to their regular work load. They must complete a portfolio to be submitted and undergo content-area testing in order to achieve certification.

Wilson said certification is specific to the subject and age group in which a teacher works. She said the process focuses on reflection, requiring teachers to closely examine their teaching methods. Wilson said her personal experience with board certification has lead her to believe that this examination is one of the key reasons board certified teachers are so successful. She said teachers rarely have time after a lesson to ask themselves, “What worked and what didn’t work and where do I go from here?”

Research on this program has been consistently positive, showing results that suggest certified teachers are better able to adapt lessons to a specific group of students. The program also offers resources, mentoring and team building opportunities to educators going through the certification process. Research shows that even if a teacher does not achieve certification, the process will likely still improve their teaching practices.

Wilson said the certification process emphasizes that “you can’t teach the same way every single year.”

In order to be maximally effective, she said, teachers must be able to adapt how they present lessons to the specific group of students they are working with. “It pushes you to look for better, more inventive ways to present the subject,” Wilson said.

The certification also encourages communication between educators and the community, Wilson said. She said she learned the importance of receiving feedback and information from parents and about how to take advantage of community resources. “For me, it dramatically changed the way I taught,” she said.

Watauga County and the state offer several incentives and support mechanisms to encourage teachers to pursue National Board Certification. North Carolina offers teachers a 12-percent salary raise once they have completed certification and covers the cost of the first year of the certification process. It also provides teachers with up to three days of paid leave, which they may use to work on their certification materials.

Watauga County Schools works to support teachers seeking certification by offering resources through the National Board Academy. The academy mentors new candidates, helping them navigate the process.

Wilson said another incentive is that National Board Certification is valid in all 50 states, no matter what state the teacher was working with when he or she received the certification.

National Board Certification is administered by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, a nonprofit organization. For more information about certification or the National Board, visit www.nbpts.org.