SEARCY — Arkansas Teachers for National Board Certification board members have been recognized for strategizing ways to increase board certification among state educators.
Clara Carroll, professor of education and associate dean of the Cannon-Clary College of Education at Harding University in Searcy, and Nancy Fancyboy, first-grade literacy interventionist for the Beebe School District, are among the five state educators who constitute a team that was named one of 12 finalists in the national Agents for Learning challenge, presented by Learning Forward and the National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future.
The Agents for Learning challenge asks teams across the country to strategize the best use of professional learning funds under the Every Student Succeeds Act.
Other members of the state team include Lori Martin, Otter Creek Elementary School in Little Rock; Leslie Sharp, Carnall Elementary School in Fort Smith; and Deb Walter, Rogers New Technology High School in Rogers. All team members are National Board Certified educators.
The team’s proposal centered on how to use ESSA funds to promote board certification among Arkansas teachers. The team will present its proposal to a panel of judges at the Loews Chicago Hotel in Chicago on July 21 and 22.
Fancyboy said being named a finalist is an “incredible feeling.”
“We work really hard in Arkansas to spread the national board-certification process,” she said.
About a month ago, the board held a retreat in Rogers, and the team members came together to begin work on their Agents for Learning submission.
“The people on this team are phenomenal teachers,” Carroll said.
The team had about three weeks to complete the nine-page proposal, and members met via Google Hangout because they live across the state. Carroll said board certification is the “gold standard” in teaching.
“It is the standard that shows that a teacher has reached the highest credential of teaching,” she said.
Carroll said about 6 percent of Arkansas teachers are board certified, and about 3 percent of teachers are nationally. She said board certification is a rigorous progress that can take up to three years and can be costly. Lack of knowledge about the process factors into why many teachers don’t become board certified.
“Teachers have so many extra duties that they have to do, and this takes extra time, about 400 to 600 hours over the process of the board certification,” Carroll said.
Carroll said the team’s proposal also includes making board-certified teachers mentors for noncertified teachers who are going through the process.
Fancyboy received her board certification in 2007 over the course of seven months. She said it improved her teaching because board certification requires teachers to study themselves through video recordings and to reflect on their teaching approach.
“It was more difficult than doing my master’s,” she said.
Fancyboy has taught in the Arkansas Delta, as well as rural Alaska, which she said has similarities to the Delta in terms of poverty. If students in the Delta had access to certified teachers, she said, the economy would benefit positively.
“We have to have public schools, and we have to have great teachers,” she said. “We have to have funding, and it has to be watched carefully.”
Carroll said that many young teachers leave the profession within their first five years, and board certification can improve that.
“Teachers who are board certified — they themselves have increased their teaching quality,” she said. “We know that by research. We know also that board-certified teachers stay in the classroom.”
Though team members had only three weeks to complete their proposal, they’ll have only four minutes and four slides to present it to the judges in Chicago. Carroll said the Agents for Learning challenge is not about winning but is designed so that teams receive feedback on how to implement the proposal in their state and communities.
“I want my grandchildren to be taught every single year by a board-certified teacher,” Carroll said. “I just truly believe this is our answer to improving education.”
Staff writer Syd Hayman can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or shayman@arkansasonline.com.