Episode 290: Pursuing Perfection: What it Takes to Become a National Board Certified Teacher

Raechel Bunnell:
And I did what I want my students to do. I looked and saw what I needed, where my deficiencies were, what parts of history did I need to study. How hard is it to watch yourself teach on a video?

Leslie Steele:
It is very stressful.

Anthony Godfrey:
Nobody likes watching themselves or listening to themselves.

Raechel Bunnell”
No, you're like, "Oh, my posture is bad." I keep saying, "Huh?" Like there's all kinds of things.

Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. It is a rigorous, time-consuming, and challenging process. One that produces some of the most highly trained teachers in the entire nation.

On this episode of the Supercast, we meet two Jordan School District teachers who recently achieved National Board Certification. Doing so required them to submit materials from their lesson plans, recordings of their lessons, and many self-reflections that were reviewed at the national level by experts. Find out how their personal drive to be their very best is taking their teaching practices to new heights.

We're talking today with our two teachers in Jordan School District who are newly Board Certified at the national level. We want to talk with them about the process, but first, just introduce yourself.

Leslie Steele:
I'm Leslie Steele and I teach first grade at Eastlake Elementary.

Raechel Bunnell:
Raechel Bunnell and I teach social studies at Riverton High School.

Anthony Godfrey;
We're going to dive right into it and ask what impact has this had on your teaching going through this process?

Leslie Steele:
Oh my gosh, a huge impact. Not just for the kids who I certified with last year, but the kids this year. It asks you to really reflect on your practice. You video yourself and you watch it over and over and over and find places where you ask good questions and places where you could ask better questions. And the goal isn't perfection. It's reflecting on your practice. How can I dig deeper? How can I be better next time?

Also, you really analyze student work. For my path of certification, I'm early childhood literacy. So that's reading, writing, listening, speaking for ages 3 to 11. So it's a big span. But you basically take student work and just like dive in and work with that student one-on-one and help them craft their writing to be much better. So you're just really going deeper with things that teachers are doing every day.

Raechel Bunnell:
How hard is it to watch yourself teach on a video?

Leslie Steele:
It is very stressful.

Anthony Godfrey:
Nobody likes watching themselves or listening to themselves.

Raechel Bunnell:
You're like, "Oh my posture is bad. I keep saying, “huh” like there's all kinds of things. And that just makes you a better teacher. The reflection part of it is absolutely a big part of why board certification.

Leslie Steele:
It's a really good way to reflect on your teaching and always grow and always be better. It's not like, you know, this board certification process it says like, "Hey, these are really excellent teachers." But also it's like these are teachers that are continuing to grow, that are continuing to move forward and not just be stagnant in one place. You know after I got my master's degree I was like, "What's next?" You know, "Do I go admin? Do I go doctorate? Do I get a second master's?" And when I thought of National Board Certification I was like, "Okay that's the thing that's gonna help me be a better teacher for the future."

Anthony Godfrey:
I love your desire to go to the next level. Okay, what do I do now? What's next for me? And it's really impressive that you've both taken this on.

Now when you were speaking earlier you talked about some of the language that has now become just second nature when you talk about your own teaching and your own reflection. So it sounds like going through this process has really given you a structure for thinking about your own teaching.

Leslie Steele:
Yes, completely. 100%. I mean there's like national board speak. I feel like there's like this language that we use it's this very specific way of writing. It's this very sort of scientific way of looking at things and you're a scientist of like your own work and you're like okay. You're analyzing yourself in right next to your students work to see how you can impact that going forward.

Anthony Godfrey:
Which is not always easy to do. As humans, we tend to tell the most favorable story about ourselves in our minds like oh they're probably fine with what I just said oh this probably worked better than I thought it did. At least as a survival method, we kind of tell ourselves the best story we can. But you have learned through this process to really dig into what needs to change and what needs to be better in your class.

Leslie Steele:
A key phrase in National Board is ‘next time I will’. Next time I would and that has really altered my teaching. Just like I say it's just put this lesson to a side it's good enough but like oh you know what I could have done there. If you don't take the time to sit and do that, you know teaching is a fast-moving train, we move on to the next thing. So National Board forces you to slow down and dig deep.

Raechel Bunnell:
Considering the needs of the students is a big part of it and you know I hadn't been a data teacher in the past. I hadn't been somebody who asked the students how they were doing along the way. You know I might have done like an end-of-the-semester kind of a reflection from the students, but if you can get them along the way and get them to self-assess and how their own learning is going then we can help them to mold their learning into the future and make some better students.

Anthony Godfrey:
I love that focus on data and self-reflection and what you said earlier, it's about always getting better and having the tools in place to always get better. One thing that really struck me with this process as I heard from those throughout the state this morning who are newly certified or are maintaining their certification. I like that term it's “Hey I'm keeping up I'm moving forward”.

This is not an easy process this isn't a process where you just decide you're going to do it and you go through the steps and you're all set you check the boxes. You told a story about your pathway to certification can you tell us about that?

Raechel Bunnell:
So it took me a while. I started all the way back in 2020. Our school district wants you to do it in three years, one to three years. Or I guess the state wants you to do it in one to three years. They have had a system in place that they pay for your fees, and if you don't do it in three years then you have to do retakes on your own dime. So I was determined. I was like for sure in one to three years. It was COVID that messed things up, but I was able to get everything in in three years.

So it's you know you submit your work in April. Is it April? March, and then you have to wait all the way until December until you get the results back. It's very exciting, nerve-wracking because there's a lot that you know you're waiting for, anticipation. I had all of my family gather around while we were going to open the results of my certification in 2023. We're sitting there and it's like those Tik-Tok videos when people are opening college acceptance to Harvard. So we're all standing around it's very exciting. We stayed up late you know and I get the email I open it and there's so much anticipation and I didn't certify. I didn't pass. I looked up at my family's faces and I'm like “I didn't get it” and I started to just cry. And they're like “Okay” and they all kind of went away.

It was really anticlimactic and super sad because I started to think who am I? What did I do wrong? Am I even a good teacher anymore? It was really a weird thing to fail, quote-unquote fail because I just thought I was gonna do better than that. So I had to decide if this was really– did I want to try again? Did I want to do retakes or was I done with the whole process? It took a month to really think about it and figure out what I wanted to do next.

I did what I want my students to do. I looked and saw what I needed, where my deficiencies were, what parts of history did I need to study. What parts of geography and economics did I need to study? And I was able to do it. Gosh, it really came down to the wire. I studied. I did flashcards. I did all this and then even when we were waiting, you know Leslie and I took the test on the same day.

Leslie Steele:
That’s where we met.

Raechel Bunnell:
And we're sitting there and I'm waiting in line and I'm even listening to review videos on my phone while we're in line waiting to check in. And wouldn't you know it?

Anthony Godfrey:
You were cramming.

Raechel Bunnell:
I was cramming.

Anthony Godfrey:
You were cramming.

Raechel Bunnell:
I had studied a lot but I also did some cramming. The essay on the test was the exact thing that I had studied on my way in and then I had my phone to my ear and I did well. All of that time, all of the years that I sat there and tried and worked really hard. It is a really hard process, and so I took the test. This last December comes up, and I don't tell a soul. I didn't tell anybody that I was getting my results.

Anthony Godfrey:
You couldn't have a repeat.

Raechel Bunnell:
No, I was too nervous. I was much too nervous. So I was just sitting on the couch everybody was like watching TV. I opened the email and I said “Whoo-hoo” like so excited because I actually certified. It's been a really amazing process and stuff.

Leslie Steele:
And you saw your fireworks.

Raechel Bunnell:
I saw the fireworks.

Leslie Steele:
When you certify, the screen where you log in has like these firework confetti things coming down. So like in the National Board world, it's “Who got their fireworks? Did you get your fireworks?” I would keep logging in and like see them reanimate.

Raechel Bunnell:
Yep. Just so you could see those beautiful fireworks.

Anthony Godfrey:
The fireworks rerun.

Raechel Bunnell:
You know, I don't fail at many things.

Anthony Godfrey:
I wouldn't think so.

Raechel Bunnell:
It was it was hard emotionally and that's a lot of what students go through. You know, they get a paper back and it has a D, an F on it and how do you bounce back from that? Are you going to bounce back from that? Are you going to work at a retake or talk to your teacher and study and do better next time? That's absolutely what they go through. That doesn't end when you're an adult. It doesn't end in your career. So it was an interesting experience to have to go through that disappointment and then understand that it wasn't personal, right?  You can grow from it. You grow from your failures.

Anthony Godfrey:
Absolutely.

Leslie Steele:
And the support from the cohort. That was like a master class to me in teaching and giving students support. The way they would structure those meetings and give us sentence frames and guide the discussion. That alone was great professional development to kind of see how they taught us.

Raechel Bunnell:
Leslie's lucky because she started with a cohort. Back in 2020 when I started, I didn't feel like I had any idea what to do. I was alone and lost for a good for the first two, three years of it and then I figured out that there was support out there. So if I could do it all again, oh my gosh a cohort. There's one through the Utah NBCT, is that the one you did?

Leslie Steele:
Yes, I don't know how you did it without because they break it down for you and kind of say like “Okay this month we're really gonna focus on this”, “this month we're gonna focus on this” and then toward the end we're actually sending each other our papers. Reading papers, giving feedback, it was so incredibly valuable. No shade to National Board but those instructions are insane. Those instructions, I mean you can read them over and over. What do they want from me? So they help to really break it down.

Anthony Godfrey:
Stay with us. When we come back more with two of our National Board Certified teachers.

Never miss an episode of the Supercast by liking and subscribing on your favorite podcasting platform. Find transcripts for this episode and others at supercast.jordandistrict.org.

Break:
Hello, I'm Sandy Riesgraf, Director of Communications for Jordan School District, and we want to invite you to connect with us. So many exciting things are happening in your child's school, your neighbor's school, in every school here, every day. Don't miss out on following the fun or simply staying informed when there's important information we need to share. Join us at jordandistrict.org, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @jordandistrict. We can't wait to connect.

Anthony Godfrey:
What advice would you give teachers who are considering becoming National Board Certified?

Leslie Steele:
I would say you can do it. Dive in. The first step is just deciding that you want to do it. There are people in our district who are here to support you and to help you sort through the process. It seems really overwhelming at first but it's things you're already doing, you're just going deeper. Anthony Godfrey:
There is some financial incentive at the state and at the district level. Talk to folks about that who are listening and might be interested.

Raechel Bunnell:
So at the state level, there is an annual stipend, I suppose, that is about a $1,000 or $2,000 if you are teaching at a Title One school. That is one of the lower that states offer in the United States right but I think that there's a push to get more.

Leslie Steele:
Yes, the tides are turning I feel it.

Anthony Godfrey:
I feel like that's true because they talked about legislators who are interested in sponsoring legislation going forward to provide better support and more financial incentive.

Raechel Bunnell:
In any state where they have a higher financial incentive you, have a higher amount of teachers that are doing board certification. It's not all about money though, like our school district also has a great stipend of $2500 a year, and that's awesome.

Leslie Steele:
The state also pays for you to go through the process. So they pay for your individual components because that would be a couple thousand dollars I think and so the state works with the TSSP funding and that just goes directly into your National Board account.

Raechel Bunnell:
Yeah, and if anybody has questions about that, ask one of the National Board Certified teachers that you know and we can help you figure that out.

Anthony Godfrey:
I've talked with you about how much you love teaching first graders. I have visited your classroom and talked with you about how you handle current events and the difficulties of teaching social studies and the joys of teaching social studies. Tell me just about what you love about teaching first grade and teaching high school.

Leslie Steele:
Okay, first grade is like the growth. I mean from beginning of the year to end of the year it is wild the difference. The kids do a writing activity every month and then I put them together and at parent-teacher conference, I spread them all out. Parents get emotional and just to see from okay this is their August work and this is their latest work. The kids love to see it and just that growth that happens in first grade is unreal. You get kindergartners coming into you and you forget what they're like and then they leave and they're like second graders. So I just love the growth. I love the excitement. Everything is fun, and cool, and special, and magical, and I just love making school a happy place because if they love school in first grade you know we've set them up for success.

Raechel Bunnell:
So for high school social studies, it's exciting. We're in a time that is so important for students to know how to navigate the media, civil discourse, controversial issues and we don't shy away from that. We try to set the kids up with a foundation of civil discourse so that they can handle the big topics so that they can talk to each other in our class without hating each other.

Anthony Godfrey:
It's really fun for me to hear about the experiences at the beginning of a student's time in Jordan School District and toward the end of their time in Jordan and the progress they make.

Raechel Bunnell:
I hope we’re doing fun things the whole way through. It's gotta be fun in first grade and we do hilarious things in high school.

Anthony Godfrey:
Absolutely.

Raechel Bunnell:
Like we have a funeral for Napoleon and we bring out all of the people to eulogize him.

Anthony Godfrey:
Hey, high school kids are full of surprises.

Raechel Bunnell:
You know, a 12th grader will do almost anything for a sticker on a paper.

Leslie Steele:
They're the same.

Raechel Bunnell:
They're the same if they're 6 or they’re 16.

Anthony Godfrey:
We will need to talk more about the trench warfare some sounds really cool. Thank you both for being incredible teachers and for pursuing this next level of excellence. I know you're just gonna keep growing and growing. There are lots of lucky students in your classrooms over the years so thank you so much.

Teachers:
Thank you.

Anthony Godfrey:
Thank you for joining us on another episode of the Supercast. Remember, education is the most important thing you'll do today. We'll see you out there.

(upbeat music)