PRESS
RELEASE
310.450.8338, ext. 341 28 FEB 2008
SMMUSD Recognizes National Board Certified Teachers
At its
February 21st meeting, the Board of Education recognized the
accomplishments of the district’s seven newly certified National Board
teachers.
The
teachers who have earned this certification are Anne
Keller from Malibu High School, who has been
teaching for thirty-six years; Judith Anderson at Lincoln Middle School; Martha
Diaz Chacon from Santa Monica High School, who has
been teaching for nine years; Margo Dunn from Point Dume Marine Science School, who has been teaching for
nineteen years; Katie Jaroch from Lincoln Middle School, who has been teaching for eight years; Laila Taslimi from McKinley Elementary School,
who has been teaching for ten years; and Geoff
Tipper from Santa Monica High School, who has
been teaching for eight years.
Though support for this process varies nationally, SMMUSD offers
support to its candidates by reimbursing them for all application fees,
providing one-on-one support from current NBCTs, providing sub days while
working on the process, and a monetary reimbursement for supplies when they
complete the process. When they achieve certification, the district offers a
stipend for the ten years teachers are certified in return for service hours in
the area of Professional Development for colleagues.
Currently,
the district has fifty National Board Certified Teachers, six of whom are now
administrators.
Dr.
Samarge-Powell, Coordinator of Teacher Support in SMMUSD’s Educational Services
Department, introduced the newly certified teachers at the board meeting, and
explained the history and process of National Board Certification.
The National Boards for the Professional Teaching Standards
is an independent, non-profit, nonpartisan and non-governmental organization
governed by a board of directors, with the majority of its members being
classroom teachers.
The NBPTS was created in 1987 in response to the 1983
President’s Commission on Excellence in Education report. The report, in
addition to the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy’s Task force on
Teaching as a profession report led to the development of the National Boards.
National Board Certification is a symbol of professional
teaching excellence. It was created so that teachers, like professionals in
other fields, can achieve distinction by demonstrating through a demanding
performance assessment that they meet high and rigorous standards for what
accomplished teachers should know and be able to do.
Teachers must demonstrate their knowledge and skills through a series of performance-based assessments that include student work samples, videotapes and rigorous analysis of their classroom teaching and student learning. Written exercises probe the depth of their subject-matter knowledge and their understanding of how to teach those subjects to their students.
Teachers who have earned this certification say that they
are strengthened in their practice and the beneficiaries of their improvement
are the students in their classrooms.
Currently, SMMUSD has candidates from across the district
pursuing National Board Certification. The teachers range from elementary to high
school and their years of teaching experience vary. They will complete their
process this June and will find out of they have certified from the National
Boards in December.
In California, 250 teachers achieved certification this
year, for a total of 3,878, which helped make California fourth in the nation
in the overall total of National Board Certified Teachers.
“As exciting as that sounds,” Sarmage-Powell concluded
during her presentation to the board on February 21st, “only about
1% of California’s teachers are Nationally Board Certified; whereas in our
district, we have just over 8% of our 624 teachers who are certified. We are
small, but mighty!”
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SANTA
MONICA-MALIBU UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT
1651 16TH
Street, Santa Monica, CA 90404
ph: 310.450.8338;
fax: 310.581.1138
www.smmusd.org