On December 11th, Mrs. Chatterton, Mr. Clark, Señora Connelly, Mrs. Rizer, Mr. Rychwalski, and Señora Williams earned their National Board Certification. The National Board Certification is “created by teachers, for teachers” and now has 189 nationally board-certified teachers all throughout elementary, middle, and high school in Harford County, with 48 being added this year.
Fallston High School has ten teachers who are currently Board Certified. To make this number even more impressive, only 133,444 out of 3.2 million teachers in the country are certified.
Before teachers apply, they must have a bachelor’s degree, teaching license, and three years of teaching experience. Once teachers are accepted into this program, they are offered a salary increase of $10,000 a year for five years and specific leadership opportunities to incorporate into their classrooms.
Before the teachers started their application process, they had the opportunity to choose how long they would spend on it, choosing between one, three, or five years. In the selected time frame, they needed to complete the four required components.
The first component is a Content Knowledge Assessment. This assessment includes three thirty-minute essays and 45 multiple choice questions.
The second is Differentiation in Instruction. This included a 7-page paper on assessment material and a 15-page paper on student growth over time, collecting multiple students work to show progress over several months. Teachers had to show how they could change their teaching technique to help students succeed in their class.
The third component is Teaching Practice & Learning Environment. Teachers had to include lesson plans and a reflection in a 12-page paper. They also had to video record two different types of classes, one being student led and the other being teacher led.
The final component is Effective & Reflective Practitioner. This component had four parts: a two-page paper on how teachers connect with their students, a 15-page paper on a formative and summative assessment, a six-page paper on how they have helped with professional and student needs inside and outside of the classroom, and a twelve-page paper as an overall reflection.
The actual breakdown of the components each teacher had to complete differed based on what they taught. For example, adding a speaking section for language teachers, and specialized questions based on units of teaching. “Everyone had their own twist on it based on what would fit and what would work in their classroom,” said health teacher Mrs. Carlie Chatterton.
National Board Certification became a big part of the new blueprint recently introduced in Harford County with last year being the first year it was implemented.
All six teachers completed this certification process with a scholarship from the county. This scholarship was introduced last year as a new part of the blueprint for our county. This blueprint changed the salary of being board certified from $2,000 for ten years, to $10,000 for five years. And to make it even better, the blueprint dropped the price for admission to only a $75 fee if the teacher filled an application out. “If you were up for the challenge, they would be up to fund you,” says Mrs. Chatterton.
Having the option to complete it in one, three, or five years, each of the teachers chose to get through it all in one year.
After finding out they got the scholarship in October, teachers only had seven months to submit the coursework, since it was due in May.
“When they say, ‘one year,’ they really mean a few months,” says English teacher Mrs. Katie Rizer. Through that period, the teachers saw this challenge as “chaos.” It had “a lot of ups and downs, building confidence, testing it, and staying up late working,” says Mrs. Chatterton. “It definitely wasn’t easy, but it was worth it.”
Mrs. Carlie Chatterton is a health teacher at Fallston and has been for ten years. She has shown interest in being certified for many years explaining that “[she] used to go to the interest sessions about it” but ultimately, Ms. Rizer was “the one that got [her] on board with it last year.”
Talking to a previously board-certified teacher, Mrs. Majewski, helped her see this certification process as the best professional development for teachers. She says, “It’s a really good way to reflect on your teaching… [and] to take a step back and evaluate yourself which we rarely ever do.”
“I was confident when I turned it in, but then you forget kind of what you worked on because it was so long ago,” said Mrs. Chatterton. “It was just in the back of my mind and everyone else’s for a long time.” But “it’s really cool to feel this accomplished because it’s not a feeling you get very often,” expressed Mrs. Chatterton. Now having her certification, she hopes to use what she has learned – after a nice long break – to help mentor teachers who will go through this same process in the future.
Mr. Patrick Clark is a special education teacher, co-teaching in English and math, here at Fallston for 11 years. Since the National Board Certification became a big part of the new blueprint, Mr. Clark seized the opportunity to try for the certification.
“I like learning, I like the craft of teaching, I like honing that craft, and I like to make myself better,” expressed Mr. Clark.
Ms. McFadden and Ms. Majewski helped Mr. Clark with several papers and with his overall understanding of the questions. Not only were the questions a struggle throughout, but also “the physical time that was needed,” said Mr. Clark. Mr. Clark made sure to collaborate with the other five teachers throughout this entire process and says, “it’s nice to like be with like-minded group of people because it doesn’t always happen.” “I hope I can get more people to do it too and make our school even better,” ended Mr. Clark.
Señora Rhonda Connelly is a Spanish teacher at Fallston, working at Fallston for 16 years. Sra. Connelly says that she originally had “no intention” of completing this process, but ultimately decided that it would be worthwhile when they came out with a bigger incentive and other teachers decided to do it.
“I thought, okay if a lot more teachers are doing it then I’ll have a lot more support and be able to work together, so I decided to do it really at the end of the previous school year, so not that much time,” said Sra. Connelly. Sra. Williams was the biggest help for Sra. Connelly during this process, saying “we didn’t know what we were doing so we helped each other as much as possible.” Another big help was a Nationally Board-Certified Spanish teacher working at Bel Air high school, Sra. Rosales. Sra. Rosales came to Fallston to talk about her experience with the process, helping both Spanish teachers with this process. “She is one of the nicest people that I ever met,” expressed Sra. Connelly. Though this process was a lot, Sra. Connelly remembers fondly the meetings with giant Wawa subs saying, “It was fun to hang out with teachers that I would never have gotten the chance to hang out with since we’re kind of in different subjects.”
“I am very proud of myself and the other teachers in this building because we survived,” concluded Sra. Connelly.
Mrs. Katie Rizer has been working as an English teacher here at Fallston for 12 years. She has continued to set “personal and professional ladders” for herself and in her job as an educator saying, “I really do strive to be the best educator I can be and also evolve with the times and shift my own perspective and styles,” said Mrs. Rizer. “I also believe in a lot of careers and professions having career ladders [that] set goals and standards”.
Accepting help from anyone who would lend a hand, Ms. Rizer especially appreciated Mr. Collins for his overall help with giving her and the other teachers who applied, time and resources saying it “felt like it was now attainable that we actually had hours scheduled out where we could be working.” Her cohort group met each month and the meetings with the other applicants at Fallston helped her the most. “I don’t know if I could have done it in a year without that,” says Mrs. Rizer. Waiting the week leading up to the scores being released, Mrs. Rizer was anxious as anyone would be, saying that without a doubt this proved “that time is a social construct.”
Mr. Edward Rychwalski has been a science teacher at Fallston for six years. Always having this certification in the back of his head, Mr. Rychwalski decided to do it this year saying, “It was my last professional development pursuit,” next up possibly being going into administration.
The questions he had to answer “were all there in some roundabout kind of way without actually telling you what you needed to do,” says Mr. Rychwalski. “It was like death by information overload.” But he had help navigating it all from other teachers at Fallston and from other schools. After finishing components two, three, and four, Mr. Rychwalski ended up collectively with 55 to 60 pages over the seven-month period. Finding out if he got accepted on his birthday, Mr. Rychwalski woke up bright and early at two a.m. to a confetti-filled screen! He says, “I couldn’t go to sleep afterwards.” Looking forward, Mr. Rychwalski is planning on taking a long-awaited break. “I’m kind of burnt out,” he said. “I want to literally do nothing for like a year or two and just exist for a little while.”
Señora Jessica Williams has been working as a Spanish teacher here at Fallston for 17 years. Sra. Williams said that she wanted to get this certification to “see if [she] could do it,” but “mostly it was just going to be the financial reward for [her] family.”
Sra. Williams worked alongside Sra. Connelly through this process both attending the county sessions every month together at Bel Air High School.
Even if the process was “a very nerve-racking experience,” said Sra. Williams, it was “nice bonding over [their] misery.” After what Sra. Willams describes as “lots of anxiety” and “just a long time of waiting and second guessing,” she saw fireworks symbolizing the seven-month process was all worth it. “It feels fantastic! I am just going to celebrate for the first year or two and then I’ll start thinking about the re-certification process,” said Sra. Williams. Thinking of the nice break, Sra. Williams ended by saying she’s looking forward to “going on a big vacation,” which is well deserved.
Unanimously decided, the hardest part of the application process was understanding the millions of questions in the 50-60 pages. Having to respond with complex answers that would easily grow into twelve-page papers for only one of the components was easily the most time-consuming and stress-ridden part of it all. “You were so limited in space and size of your response,” said Ms. Rizer. “You had to fit so much of a quality response with evidence and analysis, which made it very hard.”
Many of the teachers did not expect this to be the hardest part of the application. “I was really just trying to figure out what they wanted,” said Mrs. Chatterton. “If your idea is a little bit off, all of your work stemming from it isn’t going to be what they are looking for, so I think it was a lot of re-reading the directions.”
Senora Williams also agreed that the hardest part was not knowing what they were looking for, as she says that she’s used to the AP test, where the scores are more straight-forward and easy to tell. She also explains that they weren’t allowed to discuss the process and directions were vague, making the process more challenging, especially since there was “only one other [Spanish] teacher in the county that is certified” and that teacher was certified when the process was different, so it was challenging “not knowing what to expect and be able to say, ‘Hey, what’s this look like to you?’”
Each component was specialized depending on the subject, meaning many teachers were the only ones that they knew completing a certain question. Even if the questions were specified for their subject for most of the certification process, the teachers relied heavily on each other to help get through these long, confusing months.
After the long certification process, the teachers feel even more connected than ever.
“I was working with teachers that I know and enjoy being around, but I didn’t get a chance to be around them until this,” said Mrs. Chatterton. “It’s kind of like a little social part of it where I feel like we have this little bond now that I would have never had if we didn’t go through this whole thing together.”
“Mr. Clark and I walking down the hall kind of tip our hats off to each other like we’re on the same wavelength, it’s kind of neat,” said Mr. Rychwalski.
“Going and hanging out with Mrs. Chatterton and catching up with her really honestly helped so much through this process,” said Ms. Rizer.
Knowing this process inside and out, Mrs. Majewski has helped tremendously throughout this entire process for all the applicants. “She helped me out quite a bit with reading,” said Ms. Rizer. Mrs. Majewski helped encourage Mrs. Chatterton to apply and would not hesitate to lend a hand to any teacher who asked for help.
Many teachers aspire to follow in Mrs. Majewski’s footsteps and help any teachers that decide they are up for the challenge of applying because of how much they appreciated the help that they received.
This process was not for the weak, showing the value of hard work and persistence. “I was proud of the work I did and I’m glad it paid off,” Mr. Clark says.
“It’s a relief, after many little mini heart attacks,” said Mrs. Chatterton. “A huge breath of fresh air after months of work and months of waiting you can now officially close the door.”
Congratulations to all six of you, you have done something truly incredible. All that anxiety and stress is over, you are now a part of the 4% of teachers in the nation who are Board Certified! Fallston is tremendously proud of you and your hard work and can’t wait to see what you do next!
