Becoming a Great Teacher Takes Reflection

 Edutopia is always a good resource.  For all of us who are striving for excellence, I thought maybe you'd like to skim this article on How to Become a Great Teacher!  I hope your year is off to a good start.

Setting the Tone for a Discussion Based Classroom

Some tips on how to encourage student participation in class discussions!

Preparing For the New School Year

Some of you will be thinking about the first day of school and making some preparations.  Here are a couple of things you can do to prepare for your National Board candidacy that will help you later on.

1. Consider writing a nice introductory letter--2 or 3 short paragraphs explaining that you are doing your national board certification work this year and letting parents know this is about your efforts to perfect your teaching and that only the National Board will see their child's work and/or video tape that you have to turn in.  Send it with item #2 on this list.
2. Go to the board certified teachers site and print the Student Release form.  Run it off for every student and pass it out the first day when parents are already signing everything.  Run off a form for each adult or co-teacher you have, too.
3. Think about a time your could carve out for NBCT work--can you come in to school an hour earlier?  Leave an hour later?  Or is there a place in your house you can work without being interrupted?  Talk to your family about your need for 300-600 hours to do this extra work.  (Depends on whether you are hoping to complete half the process or all of it this year.)  That would be about 7-14 hours a week.)

My opinion is that it would be best to just send these to all your students in case you end up using a different class than you thought you would.  All your bases will be covered.  If you were a founding member of the Harrison County NBCT program, let us know in the comments if there are other tips you can think of for starting the year as an NBCT candidate!  :-)