Last week the National Board Certified Teachers launched Maintenance of Certification (MOC) as the pathway for Mississippi’s NBCTs to keep their National Board Certification active. This transition to a 5-year MOC ensures that NBCTs continue to grow professionally while maintaining a strong impact on student learning, and is intended to align with state licensure renewal requirements while encouraging the retention of accomplished, Board-certified teachers. Arizona, Rhode Island, Utah, and Wyoming have recently streamlined teacher licensure renewal requirements in this way, while Pennsylvania legislators introduced a bill to alleviate teacher shortages by granting automatic cross-state licensure reciprocity for NBCTs. Sample policy language can be found here.
If you are looking to understand and speak to how teachers are faring during the COVID-19 pandemic (and how to help), the National Board recently surveyed accomplished teachers and found:
- Nationally, three-quarters (50% in Mississippi) were working more hours during COVID-19; of these, nearly 1 in 5 were working more than 15 hours more per week during COVID-19.
- Only 1 in 4 (21% in Mississippi) report their school or district provides adequate access to counselors and mental health supports for both students and teachers.
- Only 1 in 4 (26% in Mississippi) report their school or district has provided the needed professional learning supports during COVID-19. The areas where additional professional learning is most needed include:
- Supporting colleagues
- Teaching anti-racism
- Supporting student social-emotional learning
- Supporting students and/or families with distance learning
- One in 7 (17% in Mississippi) is considering leaving the classroom because of COVID-19, but virtually all of these teachers could be convinced to stay with stronger commitments to health and safety, resources and supports, flexibility, or greater compensation.
If you are looking for professional learning resources for teachers, the National Board is offering the following:
• The FREE Core Connections webinar series. Led by NBCTs, these webinars share teacher expertise on a range of distance and hybrid teaching strategies and tools, including posting FREE recordings and resources from prior webinars. Over 230,000 teachers have attended since March. We encourage you to share this teacher-developed resource statewide.
• Short-term licenses to the Accomplished Teaching, Learning, and Schools (ATLAS) library of videos of accomplished teaching, for educator preparation programs, school districts, or as a state-wide resource. ATLAS videos feature an authentic, unedited 15-minute video clips of a Board-certified teacher in the classroom alongside written commentary and reflection. ATLAS can support professional learning for new and aspiring teachers. If you are interested in an ATLAS tutorial, please contact Marcia Foster to schedule a time.
• Access to NBCTs, who are reflective, thoughtful, expert practitioners. Our survey revealed that only 10% of NBCTs nationally and in Mississippi felt they were adequately tapped in decision-making in the transition to hybrid learning. In Mississippi, 37% of NBCTs did not feel their expertise was tapped at all. Please consider ways to bring your NBCTs into the (virtual) conversation and encourage other leaders to do the same. If you are interested in connecting with NBCT leaders in your state, please contact Michelle Accardi, NBCT.