Did a Challenging Class Doom this National Board Portfolio Entry?
By John Thompson.
As explained in the first post of this three part series, since my book, A Teacher’s Tale has been released, I’ve been rereading the manuscript’s first draft and some of its original sources. Mostly, I did so to revisit the stories of students that were edited out, but I also reread accounts of my National Board (NBPTS) teacher certification. I received good scores on lessons similar to those of many suburban teachers, but rock bottom grades on equally good or better lessons for hardcore inner city classes. Even so, I believe the National Board process was great and it left a record of the best and the worst of my school’s “Year from Hell” in 1998-1999. (All names are pseudonyms)
NBPTS required two videos of class instruction. One video featured an Economics class for students who failed those subjects in 9th grade or who recently moved into the district. (Few people who move into our school are moving up the social ladder.) I loved this class because both groups of students brought an unusually high number of fascinating (though often tragic) experiences to class discussions.
This class was Survivors 404. After one day Ester, who had just transferred from a standard “read the chapter and answer the questions” class but who would become a star of the video, was so frightened by our format that she asked to transfer, but her classmates talked her out of it. When viewing the video, it would be easy to fall in love with one exceptionally mature class leader. She had shot her father. One of the sweetest kids had been forced to stab her stepfather.
The only drawback to teaching this class was the emotional toll. The empty seats in the video testified to the Did a Challenging Class Doom this National Board Portfolio Entry? - Living in Dialogue: