Teachers union encourages national certification

In recent years, Tennessee has lagged woefully behind neighboring states in the number of teachers who earn the highest professional education certification.

So armed with a grant from the Tennessee Education Association, officials here are encouraging — and helping pay for — as many teachers as possible to earn certification from the National Board for Teaching Standards.

Hamilton County has 13 board-certified teachers, and six signed up and started the process with the help of a similar grant last year. But Hamilton County Education Association officials are hoping to have 25 teachers sign up for the Take One initiative by the Dec. 31 deadline.

“It’s not like some workshops or training sessions. This is really a transformational process,” said Rhonda Catanzaro, a liaison with the Tennessee Education Association. “Teachers really question, ‘What am I teaching? Why am I teaching it this way? How can I teach it differently so my students understand it better tomorrow?’ It’s the reflective piece of teaching that really creates excellence.”

Through the grant, Hamilton County can offer up to 100 teachers the opportunity to complete one of the four components of national board certification for $100 instead of the typical $395 per component. As an added incentive, Superintendent Jim Scales stepped in last week and said the district would pay that $100 for the first 25 educators to sign on.

HCEA President Sharon Vandagriff also organized an agreement with the Chattanooga Area Schools Credit Union to provide one-year, no-interest loans for teachers interested in the certification, which costs about $2,500, including administrative and testing costs.

Part of the grant also paid to train 26 candidate support providers who coach anybody interested in pursuing the certification. Coaching may include candidate videotaping, critiquing and reflecting on their own teaching.

Some of the coaches are not nationally certified themselves, but Ms. Catanzaro said that doesn’t matter.

“Coaches encourage people to go deeper, help (the candidates) ask tougher questions of their own critique,” she said. “You don’t have to be the star quarterback to be a good coach. A coach is trying to bring out the best in other people.”

Debbie Rosenow, a fifth-grade teacher at Battle Academy, recently became the third teacher from there to earn national board certification in Hamilton County. She took advantage of a $1,250 stipend from the state Department of Education.

Now she’s encouraging others to get certified, too, she said.

“It really makes you reflect on your practice and what you’re doing, whether the way you’re teaching is helping (students) to succeed academically, rather than you just going through the motions,” she said. “It strengthened me as a teacher.”