A School's Year in Hell, Through the Lens of a National Board Portfolio Entry
By John Thompson.
As explained previously, here in part 1 of this three part series, and here in part 2, since my book, A Teacher’s Tale has been released, I’ve been rereading the manuscript’s my first draft and some of its original sources. My National Board (NBPTS) teacher certification entries are a contemporary record my school’s “Year from Hell” in 1998-1999. The following describes a challenging freshman class situation as our school was collapsing. (All names are pseudonyms)
My second videotaped National Board session documented freshmen group learning, and I believed it should have received a grade comparable to the whole class discussion’s grade of a 3.00, as opposed to a 2.00. On the other hand, to have followed their rules of evidence, the graders would have to believe my description of the background to that lesson. And those of us who were living through our shared experience often had problems comprehending that what we were seeing was actually happening; too much of that year was a surreal and recurring nightmare. Unless a grader had firsthand experience in the inner city, a suspension of disbelief might have been impossible. Moreover, an evaluation of that lesson under the IMPACT rubric in the District of Columbia in the 21st century could have determined that I was “Ineffective.”
During the fall semester, the class that was videotaped was nearly perfect, and much of the credit belonged to two vocal leaders, Alice and Loren, and two quiet leaders, Kelli and Joe. The entry explained, “Last semester during a great class discussion, Loren interrupted and asked, ‘D.T., you aren’t going to leave us, are you?’” She and her classmates then said that they knew that the best teachers had left for the magnet A School's Year in Hell, Through the Lens of a National Board Portfolio Entry - Living in Dialogue: