Blog

If you were dreading renewal as you remember the 300-600 hours of work it took when you first certified, don’t.  The NBPTS is not asking you to demonstrate that you are an accomplished teacher— you’ve already done that.; What the National Board wants to know NOW, is, “What have you been doing for the past eight to ten years?”

The National Board wants to know that you are a life-long learner. There are, of course, the prompts and the standards to consider, but this won’t be the same process you went through before.  Part of the reason is because you already understand what it means to BE and accomplished teacher.  You’ve had your A-Ha moment. Now let’s build on that.

Component 1 of your renewal is to describe four professional growth experiences (PGEs) that you’ve been involved in.  One of these has to include technology, and another has to include knowledge you’ve acquired in your content area since your certification.

After your description of these four, multi-faceted topics, you complete Component 2.  This is where you elaborate on the PGE your wrote about where you learned something new in your content area.  This Component is most like your original certification, with a 10-minute video.

Component 3 is demonstrating your impact on learners—these can be students OR adult learners.  And the impact is demonstrated in the evidence you collect and upload—student work OR a 6-minute video.  The thing that’s important in renewal, I think, is the idea that you are using these Components of evidence of at least 8 years of life-long learning.  Your Components don’t need to be just one instance or example, they can be activities that took years, or groups of activities that all fit under the same “umbrella” of activities.;

Finally, you will analyze Components 1-3 for patterns and trends and reflect on your work.  You’ll even get to make a prediction about what those trends say about your future (if anything.)

Renewing your NBCT will take you around  a fourth of the time it took you to certify originally.  Once you sit down to actually do the work, the understanding of the process kicks back in. 

After you’ve completed your writing, you can use this free checklist to examine your work from different angles.

Photo by Toni Cuenca on Unsplash