Welcome to National Board candidacy and the Stanford Summer Teaching Institute

Welcome to National Board candidacy and the Stanford Summer Teaching Institute.  We are looking forward to welcoming you here next week and beginning what we hope will be a great learning journey.

There are a few points that we want to clarify in terms of schedules and events. This is the second year that Jump Start has been offered as part of SSTI.  We are sincerely grateful to the Center to Support Excellence in Teaching (CSET) for including this opportunity in the summer institute.

When we originally designed these sessions we planned on a day that began at 8:30 and ended before lunch at 11:30.  However, the institute schedule will allow us to work longer so we have designed our session to include the option of finishing around 11:30 or12 or joining the rest of the institute’s participants for lunch and then spending the afternoon continuing to work in small groups in the afternoon. If you choose to do that, we plan to work until about 2:30.

There are some very good events during the week that you may participate in. The first one is during lunch on Monday when the keynote speaker is Lee Shulman. (Lee is often referred to as the “Father of the National Board”.  He is a true advocate for good teaching.  Worth hearing!)  The other is a private screening preview of a documentary called American Teacher.  That will be on Wednesday at 4:15 followed by a reception featuring one of the producers of the film. This event is co-sponsored by Accomplished California Teachers  which is a group with origins at the National Board Resource Center.

Before coming next week there are some things you should print from the National Board website.  It would be good to use three hole punched paper when you do this. They are as follows:

·            Download and print: “What teachers Should Know and Be Able to Do” which you can find on the National Board website, http://www.nbpts.org. You can find it by entering the title in the search bar at the top right side of the homepage. It is an old document and is hidden on the site so your browser might come up with some odd thing.  I have included it as an attachment on this email, just in case.

·            Download and print the portfolio instructions for your certificate from http://www.nbpts.org/for_candidates/the_portfolio   You need to scroll to the bottom of the page to select your certificate area.  Do not print the general instructions, just the part that pertains to your certificate.

Print only the pages that start with the exercisetitle and description and stop just after the “written commentary format specifications”. (This should be about 8 -10 pp. for each entry.)

·            Download and print the Evaluation of Evidence for each entry of your certificate at:

 http://www.nbpts.org/for_candidates/scoring 

·            Download and print the Level 4 rubric for each entry of your certificate found in the scoring guide called “Understanding and Applying Scoring Criteria” This is at the same URL.

·            Download the standards for your certificate at:

http://www.nbpts.org/the_standards/standards_by_cert   

 Eventually you may want to print these but there are a lot of pages so you may want to hold off until we discuss exactly which parts you need.

We will have wireless access for you during the sessions, but we cannot print anything onsite so be sure you do this part before Monday.

Finally, if you have not paid for this session, please do so when you come on Monday.  Remember, that your payment also enrolls you in the regular support group.