Return to Headlines
TEACHER Q&A: Mills Middle teacher earns prestigious professional distinction
Joel Francisco, an English teacher at Mills Middle School, earlier this year became the latest Folsom Cordova educator to earn National Board Certification, a prestigious professional achievement earned through a rigorous application and evaluation process. To earn this distinction, teachers are challenged to examine how they can improve their classroom instruction.
Francisco earned his certification in Early Adolescent through Young Adulthood English as a New Language, a relatively new certificate. Folsom Cordova now boasts 42 active board certified teachers.
Here’s what Mr. Francisco had to say about earning this mark of professional excellence:
What motivated you to pursue becoming a National Board Certified Teacher?
Every year, all teachers in our district participate in different professional development courses with the main intention of improving our instruction. After a year of contemplation and mentally getting ready for a big challenge, I decided to pursue the National Board certification. Honestly, at first, I only wanted to challenge myself knowing that the certification can be very rigorous and time consuming. But when I started documenting one of the entry portfolios, I realized that it was the most meaningful, yet challenging, professional development course I have ever done.
How has this certification helped you as a teacher?
The National Board has made me become more reflective whenever I design, plan, and implement the curriculum. Documenting my own practice as well as analyzing the result of my instruction and students’ overall progress over a period of time gave me the opportunity to find ways to adjust my instruction and create multiple assessments to inform myself of its effectiveness. Rather than thinking about how rigorous the NB standards are, the experience has transformed my instruction to a more challenging pedagogy by presenting the curriculum in a complex way that also provides more formal and informal feedback to my students.
What do you believe it takes to earn National Board Certification?
Committing to National Board, I would say, involves a lot of pressure, stress, and time. Needless to say, the time spent on producing multiple lessons, videotaping them, analyzing and reflecting on what worked well and what needed improvement provided me with great positive effects on my current teaching practice. Aside from submitting videotapes of classroom instruction, examples of student assignments, and evaluations of student work, taking six computerized assessment center exercises for three hours (30 minutes per constructed response assessment) is another challenging part of the certification.
Unlike studying for a degree where assignments and tests are scheduled by the professors, the National Board is totally different because the candidates have to work and plan their own schedule. Although I did all my best to avoid procrastination, I would not deny the fact that there were times where I could not produce even a single-page analysis during the weekends.
Do you have any advice for other teachers who would like to pursue this professional distinction?
For future NB candidates, I believe that the best advice I can give them is to have the time and commitment if they really want to pursue the certification. I would say TIME is the BEAST that will test a candidate’s ability to achieve this goal. I would estimate that the time commitment is between 250 to 400 hours to complete the certification process. I also suggest that they join a cohort or network with other NBCTs and candidates because understanding a binder of more than 80 standards and remembering countless elements of the rubric for each portfolio and assessment center exercise can be nerve-wracking.
After accomplishing everything and receiving the certification, I could not really express how I felt - it was almost surreal, I was able to breathe a sigh of relief. But most importantly, I am very proud to have achieved this certification and join the ranks of the other 41 NBCTs in our school district. I strongly encourage every teacher in our district to pursue this worthwhile undertaking.