It’s 11:44 am on Monday, June 4, 2007, and I am done, baby. Flying high. I feel so good after speed-typing through six half hour essays that I’m sitting at my keyboard in the man zone to write a seventh, just to capture the moment. After a year plus of what has at times felt like biblical agony, I planted my flag in the summit this morning. And now I can truly say, I have been to the mountain.

Here’s the blow by blow. Last night I cleansed myself mentally and spiritually by not drinking alcohol (okay, I had a slight hangover from a friend’s 40th the day before), and watching the second to last episode of the Sopranos. Tony and I both fell asleep clutching shotguns to our chests, ready for the final showdown. Oh yeah, before bed a thought struck me, based on good advice from JC on the comment board, so I went down to the computer to look up BICS and CALPs, the stages of English Language Learners’ language acquisition.

Woke up this morning feeling strangely at ease. Instead of reading the morning paper as I normally do when I walk my dog, I studied a single note card on which I’d written the ELL stuff and the six types of questions. For each, I ran down a few talking points: for a comparison to a non-print text, I figured I’d use a Duke Ellington tune or some other piece of music, as I often do in class; for analyzing a kid’s reading, I reminded myself that meaning is constructed by a series of experiences, etc.

The main thing I told myself, as per feedback on the two (I admit, crappy) practice essays I’ve published here: they’re kids, not questions. In other words, I vowed that instead of mechanically paraphrasing the question (for example if asked to “identify and discuss weaknesses, and provide strategies for correction”), I would respond in a genuine fashion, as if I were really addressing a kid in my class. Sounds simple, but I was distracted by the trees.

Guess what? It worked. I found the good in the student responses before pulling out the ugly, just like I would when commenting on a real paper; the million repetitions of “I really like how you.... but this would be stronger if...” finally paid off. This approach felt natural, and let me address the questions from where I really live, as a teacher. To heck with handcuffs, my flying fingers were telling me. Show what you know-- talk about what you do every day in your class, what you’ve been working on for the past fifteen years (did I just say fifteen?). In the immortal words of Bootsy Collins, P-Funk bassist, I freed my ass and my mind followed.

Back to the blow by blow. As I was leaving the house, a remarkable thing happened. A bird’s nest in the hanging flower basket on our front porch had three chicks in it. We’ve been watching with the boys every day, seeing the eggs first, then the eyes-shut chicks, noting comings and goings of the wren mom and dad. Well, this morning as I was leaving, I swear to god, they fledged. We saw two of the three chicks actually fly out from amidst the purple blossoms into the great big world right before our eyes.

That got me to the testing center, where I had a few moments of bureaucratic angst (what would an NBPTS outing be without it?). First was hand copying a paragraph (NOT printing it, the directions insisted) that said I really, really, really won’t cheat on this test or tell anybody what was on it. The low point, though, was once I had settled in front of the screen and began clicking through the tutorial. I reached window six, demonstrating the use of the back arrow, and couldn’t figure out how to get past it. For a few desperate looking glass moments I was stuck clicking back to go forward and forward to go back. (The test attendant came over and moved me along well before I would have begun cackling maniacally.)

From there, I got it on. There were three minutes of anxiety at the end of the first question when I realized there was a second prompt and I had only responded to the first. After that, I understood that I had to click through each prompt and hit the back button (oh, that’s what it was for) to do the whole question. Mechanics under my belt, I could focus on the questions, and that’s what I did.

Foxes were everywhere. One popped up on a writing sample, and another became my non-print text. Actually, I wrote about a fox hat from my travels in rural Alaska. Somehow, it seemed the perfect prop when discussing how I’d get kids interested in a passage written by a Native American author who contemplated her reality versus Hollywood's versions of Indians. (I don’t want to say more for fear of breaking the “I swear I won’t tell what was on this test” clause.)

BICS and CALPs came in handy, and writer’s workshop, and a generous dash of “HOW does it make you FEEL?” During my break I stretched and splashed water on my face, and before I knew it... I was walking out into the sun. A free man. A teacher man.

And so here I am, at the end of a trek I began on February 16, 2006, with these two questions: Am I nuts? Can I do it? I ended that first post by saying I was climbing this NBPTS mountain because it’s there.

It’s still standing, but now I can answer both questions with a resounding yes, whether I get the initials or not. That mountain? Call me crazy, but after all this work, the view from the top isn't what matters most. Turns out, it was all about the journey.

Anyway, here as a helpful reminder are the “Criteria for Scoring” from Patrick’s simulation, which I assume are pretty close to the real thing.

To satisfy the highest level of the scoring rubric, your response must provide clear, consistent, and convincing evidence of the following:
- an in-depth description of patterns of writing and writing conventions; and
- a thorough understanding of the recursive nature of the writing process.

And below are the prompt and my lame response, for all the world to see. The question is on something I am literally in the middle of doing with students right now, Romeo and Juliet. Specifically, a kid has written a comparison of the play and the cool movie version by Baz Luhrman, the one with guns and drugs and Leo DiCaprio.

My response to my response, other than self-flagellation, is that it doesn’t really reflect my teaching. Part of that is the timed format. I structured my answer, under the conditions, by paraphrasing the questions and then filling in the blanks below each to make a paragraph. It’s not organic, in the way that I normally write. (Ironic, isn’t it, that my response is supposed to reflect my knowledge of “the recursive nature of the writing process.”) But I don’t feel safe in doing that on this sort of essay. What else could they possibly take points off for more easily than not addressing the questions?

This also doesn’t feel right because the kids I have now would never write this sort of response, nor would I ever assign it. In other words, unlike the portfolio, which was based on my actual teaching, this is hypothetical to me and bears no resemblance to the circumstances under which I currently teach.

To whit, my own ninth graders have just finished reading the play, and are working on a final assessment we call “group troupe.” Basically, they are creating fifteen-minute long group dramatic essays by stringing together scenes from the play interwoven with their own narrative. It’s a fantastically complex activity, and beats the pants off, “Which did you like better, the movie or the book?”

As a matter of fact, while I skip school on Monday to take the test, my kids will be diligently rehearsing for performances on Thursday. Whether or not their teacher can muster clear and convincing responses on command in the assessment center, I’m confident the skits themselves will show that my students have engaged in a truly meaningful way with some of life’s biggest ideas via a classic piece of literature. May we all break a leg.

When we read the play, the words are very hard to understand. When Romeo talked to Mercutio and he gives his speech about the queen and everything, it was hard to understand what he’s talking about. In the movie, it was easy to see that Mercutio is really cool and crazy and fun and the party was wild and Juliet’s parents don’t really love themselves.

The guys really like the girl who plays Juliet. She was pretty and enthusiastic and you could tell she really loved Romeo because she fought with her father, her mother fights with her too, Paris is just a creep. So you can see, I liked the movie. We spend so much time on the book and they’re hard to understand. So the movie is so much better. It’s easier to understand when you can see the people talking and hear what they say. I like seeing it in today’s world even if we really don’t know where it is

My Response
There are some significant areas of weakness in the use of conventions by this student. The first is evident in this run-on sentence from the third paragraph: "She was pretty and enthusiastic and you could tell she really loved Romeo because she fought with her father, her mother fights with her too, Paris is just a creep." The sentence expresses several ideas jumbled up together: that Claire Danes (the actress who played Juliet) was appealing, that she is in conflict with both her parents, and that this student didn't like the character of Paris, the suitor favored by Juliet's parents.

A second area of weakness in the use of conventions by this student has to do with agreement. In paragraph one, she says, "When the movie’s setting was changed to today, the meaning becomes much more clearer." Later, in the last paragraph, the student writes, "We spend so much time on the book and they’re hard to understand."

In addition to these mechanics problems, there are weaknesses in organization and content. The most glaring of these is the lack of development. The main idea is that she likes the movie better than the play because she can understand it better. The thesis is vaguely supported throughout the essay. But the last paragraph, especially the first half, refers to a number of supporting details from the plot without elaboration.

If this student were to write a similar piece, I would use two strategies to address the weakness in organization and content. First, before the paper itself was written, I would have the student create a web or outline to more strongly group her ideas. This writing seems to develop as it unfolds, which is fine for a "discovery" writing or journal, but is not adequate for an analytical essay.

A second strategy I would suggest is for the student to read her writing aloud in a revision group, paying careful attention to sentence length and clarity. While I like to review student drafts also and give feedback by conference before the final, I find that often students can help one another find these errors. Simply the act of reading aloud, for example, is often enough to notice overly long sentences or awkwardly worded phrases.

By the way, excuse me for cannibalizing my own board to piece this entry together, but maybe others don't go back and read comments on every post as obsessively as I do. Also, I want to take this close-to-graduation moment to recognize that this blog only exists because there are a lot of us trying to summit what I thought would be a lonely mountain top. Somehow, I'm the one who gets to blab about it every week for Teacher, but what I'm really grateful for are the connections that the opportunity has fostered. We're all in this thing together, after all.

This post is a symbolic and completely inadequate attempt to say thanks for joining me on this journey. Hard to believe it’s almost over. Of course, as Brenda reminds, it’s not over until it’s over. Without further ado, let’s review.

One thing I was not completely prepared for was the timing. On the 3-panel screen, the directions appear and the time begins counting down immediately. BUT, the prompts don't show up until you scroll through all of the directions. I started happily reading the directions (which are a little bit complicated for the Spanish listening exam, and not published anywhere I could find), and then I realized that the time was clicking away.
My advice: scroll down immediately so the prompt appears. (The "how to scroll" tutorial will have trained you to do this--ha, ha.) Assuming it's a normal test (no listening, etc.), you should be familiar with the directions and scoring part already. In the reading comprehension section (again, for Spanish) that top left panel was also where the reading passage was located.
I studied by reading the latest methodology book for foreign language teaching, doing some pleasure reading in Spanish, and watching Spanish TV.
Posted by: Sara | May 20, 2007 8:02 PM

Long time reader, first time poster. I also took my assessment yesterday in EA-ELA. I did probably 10 hours worth of preparation over the last two or three weeks, and used maybe 10% of the new information I used. It was hard to go in and get it done, but a big relief when it was over.
I also made my appointment a long time ago, as the spots on Saturdays and locally fill up quickly. It was a very quick 3 hours - just flew by, and I think 30 min for each question was just enough time. Any more, and I'd be tempted to add BS. My best advice - read through all the prompts first, then try to keep your answers as plain and simple as possible (hard for us English teachers). Also, make sure you put quotes from the samples into your response - they mention in each prompt to be specific and use evidence. Good luck!
Posted by: Meghann Donohue | May 20, 2007 10:29 PM

Hi and good luck. My best advice--> use bullets, be short and sweet, and answer each part of the question. It is exactly what it says it will be.
Lots of luck!
I know that when I responded to the prompts I made a short list of the most important points I wanted to make in my response. I think sketched out approximate times I would need to meet to finish. I know it took away actual writing time....but I think it made me much more efficient in getting the asnwers onscreen and I, at least, knew that I covered the most important points.
Marsha NBCT, EA Science 2000
Posted by: Marsha Ratzel | May 11, 2007 3:25 PM

Good luck with the assessment center. I took my AYA/ELA April 29. All I can offer for advice is to wear a wrist brace for carpal tunnel. I'm a fast typer and managed to get through it, but my right hand, wrist, arm, and shoulder were completely numb by the end. I researched websites of common lesson plans from ESL teachers addressing linguistic acquisition in oral and written forms. Happy testing.
Posted by: W. Warren | May 14, 2007 7:18 PM

I am so pleased that I found this information, particularly the test simulations. I have been studying the sample AYA/ELA prompts on paper, but actually having an opportunity to type up a timed response is enormously helpful. Thank you for posting the link. My test is this Saturday, so hopefully it will go well! I wish you the best - I know it's been a very arduous journey!!!
Posted by: Kelly | May 16, 2007 5:20 PM

I've been worrying about exercise 2, specifically relating the universal theme to something from a "non-print text". I've been trying to imagine every universal theme known to mankind and a song or movie that has the same theme. It's much harder than I imagined, and I'm worried about my mind blanking out during the pressure of a timed test. I've been trying to think of movies with multiple themes, such as "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." I'm stuck on Man vs. Nature, as I'm not a disaster movie fan, nor do any songs I can think of deal with the theme. Any suggestions from anyone else how to approach this question? Am I on the wrong track here? Could a "non-print text" be something from current events? That would make it much easier for me.
Posted by: Hillary | May 17, 2007 11:29 AM

Yeah, I'm worrying about blanking on nonprint text, too--except remember: EVERY SINGLE SHAKESPEARE PLAY IS A NONPRINT TEXT. (Well, and every August Wilson/ Tennessee Williams/ Arthur Miller etc etc etc play...but you get the picture.) Also speeches ("I Have a Dream," anyone?) and NPR bits. So I'd say that a clip from a news program or NPR show about current events should work just fine. NPR did a whole series about people recovering from Katrina, which would fit with the Man vs. Nature thing. "This I Believe" is another interesting series, and of course "This American Life" actually treats themes.
I figure I can tie almost anything to a Shakespeare scene, one of the fine art works I'm familiar with, The Lord of the Rings, or the Andy Griffith show.
Posted by: Allyson | May 17, 2007 5:04 PM

Emmet, I have read your blog for about a year and responded several times. I am seriously hoping you are joking. (Maybe I can't determine the author's purpose!) But I will tell you that you can overestimate how easy you think the test will be. Like you, I had never taught ELLs and studied intensely for that part. I wasn't worried about one or two of the others. Guess what? I scored significantly higher on the ELL question and lower on teaching reading, which is what I do everyday. If it is as easy as you think, please share your scores this Nov. (or Dec. if it is like last year). Brenda NBCT 2006
Posted by: Brenda | April 30, 2007 8:17 PM

Feels great to be finished, I really just tried to refresh my memory re: the 6 types of questions to be asked. Advice:
1) Review questions they're going to ask (and released items from FCPS-NBPTS site as well as NBPTS site)
2) First thing I did in there when computer started was write list of standards from memory on scrap paper. That way if there was free time I could review list and make sure that I addressed additional standards.
3) Use the "review" key at the bottom of the screen (to make sure you addressed each of the parts of the question.) Some questions are on three different screens.
4) Wear pants with deep pockets and/or zippered pockets -- because your ID goes with you on your break and if you lose it or misplace it on break you aren't allowed back into the room to finish (all wallets, sunglasses, etc must be kept in locker.) I wore comfortable running pants with the little key pocket and on break, my ID fell out. I had only a mild PANIC attack, but found my ID before my alotted time expired -- ID fell inside my pants leg and was near my knee..... whew! -- what a stupid/horrible feeling....
Best of luck!
Kathleen Nadherny

The challenging part of the assessment center is the focus on ESOL of a couple prompts in which you analyze student responses. The responses you get to work w/ will bear no resemblance to the work quality of your actual students, so direct your efforts toward ESOL. The lit and poetry analysis prompts will be a breeze for you.
Your grace under pressure serves you well …
Stephanie Floros

The assessment center seems anticlimactic, in a way, after the portfolio. Much as I cursed the process going through, I can’t deny that it was all about what was going on in and around my classroom. Somehow, the test center seems removed from that. It feels like a speed typing test.

This is a dangerous attitude, I know (I’m not cavalier, just toasted). Lord knows, I want to do as well as I can on the written test, at least well enough to get over the hump. A colleague of mine who certified last year has already blotted the math from his mind, but swears that it was the assessment section that was his saving grace.

I went back into the bible for motivation, and found this section on scoring:
For the Early Adolescence/ English Language Arts certificate, the weights are set at 16 percent for each of the three classroom-based portfolio entries, 12 percent for the Documented Accomplishments entry, and 6.67 percent for each of the six assessment center exercises. (EA/ELA 2006 pg 35)

In other words, 60 percent of the grade was in the portfolio. And 40 percent is still to be determined. My colleague was right; that’s a hefty chunk. It seems disproportionate. My year of blood, sweat and videotape versus one day of fast typing is hardly commensurate with a 3:2 ratio.

The rationale for this might be similar to the reasons the International Baccalaureate program, in which I used to teach English, weights the end of course essay tests far more heavily than the two papers written during the course. I remember never wanting to tell kids, during the months that they slaved over the lengthy literary analysis, that these papers were ultimately only worth 15 percent of the grade or so. We teachers saw the value in having the kids write the papers, even if the value wasn’t officially recognized. The bottom line for IB: the papers weren’t as “secure” as the test. There was no way of knowing how much a kid’s teacher had helped him, or how, on a 1500-word typed paper. But given the relative security of a testing environment, the evaluators could be pretty sure those hand-scrawled documents were kids’ own work.

So, does NBPTS not trust us? It’s the only conclusion I can draw based on the disparate weights of the portfolio and the assessment center. I’m not taking it personally, mind you. Standardized testing is what it is: certain measures are pragmatic, and must be taken when attempting to measure the achievement of tens of thousands of anonymous individuals.

The only other option I can conceive is worse: NBPTS doesn’t trust itself. The seemingly skewed weight of the two elements could be a tacit admission that portfolio scoring is more subjective than essay scoring. That’s a scary thought.

Maybe, as usual, I’m being too cynical. The 60/40 split might be a charitable way of giving differently-gifted candidates a chance to succeed. Some of us shine on tape; some perform best under the pressure of a timed writing.

Where does this leave me, little old Candidate # 011something-or-other? Pretty much back where I started this post. Staring out my window as wrens flit about, wondering when to go and get this thing over with.

I only wish I could have somehow included in my final portfolio the very cool Fairfax County-produced news segment currently running on Red Apple TV, or the now nearly finished website that our students designed to document the process.

This summer, we look forward to displaying the canoe and the students’ work on the National Mall at the 41st Smithsonian Folk Life Festival, June 27-July 8, 2007. The cherry on top? A student-designed t-shirt is in the works, to be worn proudly on casual Fridays for years to come.

The trial run, below, was based on a transcription and writing sample from a (probably Hispanic) student who had read Tom Sawyer. Instead of composing in word, I used an online simulation set up by Patrick Ledesma, an FCPS National Board coach, who’s set up a tri-pane display with a timer on the bottom to give you a feel for the real thing.

I found that jumping from box to box and scrolling took more time than I thought. In fact, I didn’t finish. Below is what I managed in exactly thirty minutes. And boy was it fun. For your best marble and a horny toad, I’ll even let you take a turn. Candidates like me should go to Pat’s site for practice. Already NBCT’s are invited to comment with words of wisdom for us wannabes before we take the test for real.

A significant feature of this second-language learner's oral discourse is that he frequently makes lengthy pauses of several seconds between ideas. The pauses do not occur between sentences, but rather between "chunks" of his story. Let me work through the sample, and try to suggest the reason for each pause. After this analysis of discourse, I will offer prescriptive teaching strategies.

The first pause is after repeating the prompt, when he is deciding how he is like Tom Sawyer. He sees a connection: both he and Tom make others do work for them, and get these others into trouble. Once this idea is expressed, there is another break, as the student sorts through his mind how to tell the story about sending his cousin for eggs. There is greater fluency in his oral narration at this point, with three consecutive sentences.

Then, there is another pause, preceding a change in direction: the student back tracks to say that had been playing in a treehouse. In other words, he is setting the scene, something he had forgotten to do at the start of the story. There is a pause at this point, perhaps as the student attempts a conditional grammatical construction: "So I tell my cousin if he go to the store (4-sec. pause) I let him play in the treehouse with me every day."

Following is a four-sentence string, with a pause after the subject indicated by ellipsis around the pronoun "he." The speaker may be considering, possibly subconsciously, the formation of the verb to follow: "go" pops out, instead of the form of the verb-- "goes"-- that would agree with his subject. After this hiccough, however, the joy of the story's climax lends speed to the speech. The cousin falls and all the eggs break. There is a final pause to compose the concluding sentence, stating the reaction of the mother.

As we can see, there are various reasons for the pauses, but in essence there are two categories. Some are related to composition, others to a consideration (perhaps unconscious) of language rules like verb tense. An instructional strategy I would use to address this student's oral discourse is to allow him to prepare for the oral recitation by making a four-square sequence drawing to plan his response. This would allow him time to consciously order the events in his mind, so that the recitation would be smoother and not include digressions related to story construction.

The strategy would also help the student with some of the unconscious decisions regarding half-understood rules, in that it would relieve him of the pressure of composition on the fly, and therefore allow him to focus more on the speaking itself. The strategy would not directly remedy his subject-verb agreement, but would perhaps allow him to speak more naturally and fluently than in this sample, where he appeared self-conscious, possibly due to awareness of the testing environment.

A significant feature of the student's written discourse is that almost all verbs are in the present tense. Also, I don't see evidence of paragraphing. In effect, the story is written in one sustained burst, like a string of sentences with no air.

To address this student's written discourse, I would ask him to revise the piece by reading aloud with a partner. I would coach the peer reviewer to hold up his hand every time the reader paused or took a breath. This would make the author more aware of the rhythm of his writing, and encourage him to control it by using punctuation and paragraphs.

My rationale for this strategy is that, in the process of revision, the writer could see that he can control pace and rhythm in his written delivery to increase the dramatic power of the story in the same way that a speaker controls it in his oral delivery.

Fortunately, the NBPTS website provides “exercises” to help candidates prepare for the assessment center. Copied below is the text from an NBPTS guide (in italics), followed by my comments. Next week, I will turn to the “retired prompts.” For now, let me get tired the first time.

Exercise 1: Literary Analysis
Teachers will analyze the connection between literary devices and meaning. They will be
asked to read a poem, discuss theme and effect, and use details from the poem to show
how identified literary devices affect the text.

Literary interpretation? I do this to kids all the time. But seriously, “How does it make you feel?” are two questions that I consider the one truly original contribution I’ve made to the teaching profession (“But that’s only one question, Mr R!” someone yells at this point.)

To which I reply, “No… it’s two.” First: How does it make you FEEL? Second: HOW does it make you feel? In other words, literary interpretation is based first on a reader’s genuine response to the text; from that, one can attempt to describe how the author manipulated text to inspire the emotional response.

Exercise 2: Universal Themes
Teachers will demonstrate the ability to analyze and understand text. They will be asked
to read a prose selection, determine the theme, and relate it to the human condition. They
will also select a nonprint text and connect it to both the passage and the theme.

I can do this in my students' sleep. Just today I spent two long periods with tenth graders discussing themes in Frankenstein. In a passage from Chapter 7 that resonates eerily after the Tech massacre, Victor Frankenstein expresses abhorrence over “the being [he] had cast among mankind and endowed with the will and power to effect purposes of horror…”. What void must the shooter’s family feel now, I wonder? I don't think this is the sort of nonprint text I should use on the test.

Exercise 3: Teaching Reading
Teachers will show their knowledge of the reading process and ability to analyze student
reading. They will be asked to read a passage, a student prompt, and a student response,
and to determine the reasons for misconceptions in the reading. Teachers will also
provide strategies to correct the misconceptions.

Smells like grading a paper. I wonder if I can bring one from the stack on my desk, and kill two birds with one stone.

Exercise 4: Language Study
Teachers will demonstrate an understanding of language study and ability to determine
patterns in a student's language development. They will be asked to read a second
language learner's oral and written response to a prompt, analyze patterns, and provide
strategies to further develop that student's language.

This one is obviously geared to teaching ELLs (English Language Learners), a population I haven’t worked with formally since they were called ESL (English as a Second Language). The acronyms change, but I still remember fondly how a unit on writing business letters with ninth graders turned into a year-long project during which we obtained over fifty flags to hang in the school library.

Exercise 5: Analysis of Writing
Teachers will demonstrate an understanding of audience and purpose in writing and an
ability to analyze techniques authors employ to make a passage effective. They will be
asked to read a non-fiction passage, discuss audience and purpose, and analyze
techniques that make the piece effective for the audience and purpose.

Funny, I was just talking to a group of teachers last night at FCPS’s 16th Annual Teacher Researcher Conference about this very topic. I was trying to drum up business for the writing-project sponsored course I hope to teach this summer for George Mason. The class will help teacher-researchers and others write for publication to an audience and in a form of their choice. A young teacher-researcher might want to present her findings to colleagues on her grade level team in the form of a workshop; a more accomplished teacher may decide to craft an article for the English Journal to promote best practices across the profession.

Exercise 6: Teaching Writing
Teachers will show an understanding of the writing process. They will be asked to read a
student response, identify and discuss weaknesses, and provide strategies for correction.

And I thought this was going to make me break a sweat.

We all made it through our week somehow, alternating between voyeuristic horror and self-preserving denial according to our natures and how psychically linked we were to Blacksburg. TJ, the high tech high where I teach, was awash in maroon and orange and the awareness that so many of our own were close to the epicenter.

The same sense of family that humanized New Yorkers after 9-11 has drawn strangers together in the aftermath of this calendar-marking day. While sharing the experience communally, each individual is struck by different aspects of it. I can’t stop thinking about the man who survived the Holocaust to die at the hands of a deranged college student.

For us educators, every school shooting is another cautionary tale. Remember that kid who used to write weird journals, one thinks. Or, what about the kid in fourth period now... I felt a chill the morning I picked up the newspaper to see the face of the shooter, followed by a jolt of self-recrimination as the dozens upon dozens of faces of anonymous Asian boys I pass in hallways every day sprang unbidden to my mind.

Another unsettling thought: “Because Cho did well in school, his mother did not seem very determined to get treatment for him,” a great-aunt of the long isolated boy recalls, quoted in Washington Post report this Saturday. The front page piece catalogs “warning signs” next to a middle school yearbook photo of a kid who looks like a million other gangly eighth graders.

Was it only his mother’s responsibility to get that treatment? “Because he did well in school.” Well enough on every test he took to move through his years of elementary and secondary education without calling much attention to himself. Well enough to get into a top engineering school. Well enough to advance, all along the way, because his problems were emotional and not academic.

In what may be the ultimate wake up call for a society obsessed with testing kids for mastery of basic skills, at some undetermined point a deviant, desperate child was left behind. And no one cared until it came to this. Somehow, it feels like we failed the most high-stakes test of all.

Okay, enough Walter Mitty (although it has gotten me this far). To complete the National Board process, now that my four-entry portfolio has been submitted, I must take a six question day-long test at a computer testing center sometime before June. What will the test cover?

The NBPTS website offers a 36-slide online tutorial, complete with a number line along the bottom to tell you where you are in the lesson. Let me save you a trip.

• Slide 3 shows a screen that tells me how to move a mouse and scroll.

• Slide 4 makes me swear on a stack of bibles that I won’t tell what was on the test.

• Slide 6 shows the 3-pane screen: directions, prompt, typing box.

• Slide 11 tells me what keys I can use when I type (I think they just forgot qwerty…).

• Slide 13 tells me that little messages will pop up as I type.

• Slide 16 says the u-turn button at lower left is to review my work.

• Slide 18 talks about the timer that counts down from 30 minutes with every question.

• Slides 19-21 talk about a calculator only math folks will use.

Now that I’ve learned to use the testing tools, the tutorial gets into the nitty-gritty. I hope.

• Slide 24 tells me I can have a 15 minute break after 3 questions. Note to self: pee first.

• Slides 25-27 are directions about directions.

• Slide 29 reveals, if I click a little box to magnify… a prompt! “Describe a contextualized learning activity…”. A lesson?

• Slide 32 depicts the screen with a little red stop sign that I’ll see at the end of the test.

• Slide 34 asks me to complete a “Candidate Exit Evaluation.” Nothing in his test became him like the leaving it.

• Slide 36 thanks me for completing the tutorial. And I thank you for completing this post.

As a reward, I will wait until next week to review the assessment exercises and “retired prompts” down-loaded from the web site. Until then, stay warm. I’m off to count my carabineers.

Nearly a month ago, I wrote about putting one foot in front of the other as I trudged through Entry One ("Day by Day", March 10). Here is another week-in-the-life now that I’m done with the portfolio, to show how much lighter my step has become. While there’s not much about National Board per se, Tuesday’s overnight trip was a memorable stage in the canoe project I wrote about for Entry Four.

Sunday
Ran 10 miles along Rock Creek Parkway with 18,000 like-minded souls during the 35th annual Cherry Blossom Classic (and walked another six to and from various metro stops).

Monday
Took two-year old Will to historical Oxon Hill Farm on a glorious morning and fed an entire bag of carrots to a couple tired old horses whose knees looked as sore as mine.

Tuesday
Cooked cobbler in Dutch ovens on a flaming canoe at George Washington’s Mount Vernon with a full moon overhead as a gaggle of tenth graders pack Potomac clay on the downwind wall to control the rate of the burn.

Wednesday
Sneaked into a ghost school to knock off end of quarter grading I’d put off while finishing Entry One. Rewarded myself with a trip to the fishing store in Arlington to buy a sinking line for my fly rod.

Thursday
Went shad fishing on the Potomac River at Fletcher’s Cove, a storied hot spot for the spring run of this migratory fish, only to find myself in a circle of hell Dante forgot to write about: a guy twenty feet down the bank from me caught a fish every fourth cast while I got skunked.

Friday
Start in on punchlist items including hanging a shed door and cleaning up the long-neglected yard. Cap off the industrious morning on the sun-washed back deck with an after-lunch nap over the New Yorker.

Saturday
Woke up the morning before Easter to a surreal snow-scape, crocuses covered with a delicate dusting of surprise April powder. Painting trim in the house carries the theme inside and completes the “Honey-Do” list.

I hit rock bottom last night between the hours of 1:30 and 2:45 am when I found myself sitting up in bed scribbling about education policy in a little black notebook by penlight next to my soundly sleeping son.

I thought that once the portfolio was signed, sealed and delivered that these middle of the night sessions would be over, but I can see now that I was deceiving myself. If it’s not National Board that’s got me spinning, it’s that kid from second period who didn’t submit his research paper, or ideas for an upcoming lesson. Or rehearsing the first few lines of a blog post. Can you hear a cast iron skillet clanging violently on my keyboard? That's my brain on education.

The particular reason I fell off the wagon last night was a productive midweek meeting with Don Gallehr, the director of the Northern Virginia Writing Project and a GMU professor, and Gail Ritchie, an FCPS guru on teacher development. We were brainstorming ways to promote and structure a course I’ll be teaching this summer that will help teacher-researchers write about and publish their findings.

Our excitement is at the new direction such a course might provide for an established form of professional development, little known outside the teaching world. “Voices from the Classroom,” as I see it, might provide a vehicle for the hard-won knowledge of frontline teachers to come to the attention of the public. Who knows, maybe one day research that’s done by real teachers in the classroom will compete with the “education research” done by wonks in cubicles that seems to currently inform policy making.

Our excitement at these new frontiers occurs in the shadow cast by the recent passing of one of the “founding mothers,” as Gail calls them, of teacher-research, Marian Mohr. Her recent death sent strong waves through both the writing project and T/R communities. Don wrote a touching remembrance. Marion MacLean, Marian’s collaborator on several books that more or less started teacher-research nearly two decades ago, is a current colleague of mine at TJ and has had a heavy heart in the lunch room lately.

More on this to come as the course and the ideas develop. For now, it’s time to do some serious end of quarter grading before spring break is sprung. Don’t want to have sleepless nights next week thinking about those never-diminished stacks.

Who am I trying to kid? Even if I get through the grading, I’ll probably be up a night or two, thinking about kids and learning. At least I’ve accomplished the first step: admitting I have a problem.

I will not even try, at this moment, to assess the long-term impact of this process on my teaching. For now, I simply want to reclaim my life. I started Wednesday night, cracking a second beer after the boys went to bed… because I could. Because there was no nagging voice in the back of my head saying, You really should go down to the computer to type up the cover pages for the Entry Three evidence.

It will be a while before the rest of me thaws. I did a little more healing Friday, allowing my Humanities classes to throw a celebration of the “BTB’s” (Big Travel Books) we’d been reading. No student achievement in sight, but there was a side-splitting skit depicting a day in the life of a TJ kid (nine rows of seats during the class on Dante’s Inferno; in English with Gulliver a spelling test with the first word, “Houyhnhnms”).

Refreshments included deviled eggs (har, har) and sugar cookies shaped like the gold coins Candide clinked in El Dorado. After that, we had a full slate of entertainment including a computerized game of “Whack a Yahoo” on the whiteboard and a Canterbury Tales-style tale-telling contest that required students to act out one-minute fairy tales. Oh yes, and there was the baroque quartet’s happy birthday serenade to my Hum partner Jen, who is marking a quarter century by hosting a Model UN Conference this weekend.

The next step? Make it one more week to spring break, when I can do the house chores I’ve been putting off for six months. Maybe steal a day to go fishing. Try not to worry about the grades due when we get back. Give my wife a break by watching the two-year old. Lots of baby steps.

Then? After tending to home and hearth, reconnecting with the family, doing some me-time… what’s next, you ask?

Not yet, friend, I reply, feebly holding up a hand.
Please. Just let me feel the sun.

An unexpected favorite part was drawing diagrams of the classrooms to go with the video tapes. A part I still haven’t done yet is to attach typed descriptions to the evidence (assignment sheets, student papers) for the videotaped entries.

In neatening up these last minute details, it became apparent that the bible itself is inconsistent. In more than one instance, two sets of directions from different parts of the bible offer incompatible suggestions about how to properly submit the work.

“Final Inventory” cover sheets are provided for each entry. They are schematic drawings of big stacks of paper, showing what order things go in and where to put the paper clips. Unfortunately, these final inventory cover sheets DO NOT MATCH the exhaustive directions given in earlier sections of the bible. I get the distinct feeling that the bible has been revised and these diagrams represent earlier versions of the portfolio with, in some cases, significantly different requirements from those that exist now.

For example, the Entry 1 Final Inventory suggests that there are three paper-clipped bundles after the written commentary: Assignment #1 with response from Student A and then Student B; Assignment #2 with the same; and Assignment #3, ditto.

In fact, this entry as currently devised calls for four assignments per student, not three, and these don’t even have to be the same assignments. In the bible (EA/ELA 2006 pp108-9), the order suggested under “For Your Entry 1 Envelope” is first a packet with four assignments for Student A, and then a packet for Student B with four assignments.

This is not an isolated incident. Every one of the Final Inventory cover sheets attached in a helpful appendix of forms at your fingertips contains significant inaccuracies, as compared to the version of the entry given in the bible proper. For Entry 2, for example, the Final Inventory suggests that the written commentary can be 12 pages and allows for 6 pages of attached instructional material. The Bible (pp 117-19) clearly states that there can only be 11 and 3 pages, respectively. In fact, the directions include stern language: “If you submit a longer Written Commentary, only the first 11 pages will be read and scored” (boldface theirs).

If, therefore, a candidate were hapless enough to only use the cover sheets from the appendix as a guide, that candidate would fail. However, in a masterful Catch-22, even candidates like me who recognize the discrepancies are required to sign and submit the (incorrect) Final Inventory cover sheets in a “Forms” envelope, representing cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die sincerity that we have not only assembled our portfolio completely according to directions but checked it twice.

Something else about portfolio assembly that bugged me was the dehumanizing aspect of putting a number and a bar code on everything, instead of my name. I appreciate the purpose of anonymity, but the act of actually whiting out one’s own name on emails that show how your dialogue with a parent has changed a kid’s life for the better underscores the irony that these entries are at the same time drenched in blood, sweat and tears, yet devoid of voice and personal identifying characteristics.

Sunday
Start writing Entry 1 in the morning and don’t stop until four in the afternoon. Wife and kids disappear for a trip to the petting farm and then a birthday party. Note to self: thank wife for disappearing. During a break, publish on the blog my response to three reflective questions from last support class. Don’t bother to edit out the snark. Decide to get a sub for Monday. Knock out a quick lesson plan before bed.

Monday
It’s me and Entry 1. Mano a mano. Chain myself to the computer while wife manages to disappear again, this time to a skating rink and pizza lunch. Entry balloons to about 18 pages by mid morning. I lay it out on the table and ruthlessly red-pen: 1 page and 8 lines of analysis alloted per piece of student work. As I’m writing, I think about Kelly’s ideas from the conference. Could I have made this kid learn better by giving more feedback in process? At last, I email the entry to my reader, Stephanie.

Tuesday
Instead of writing about teaching, I decide to actually do it. Go to school, do a lesson helping freshmen mine their writer’s notebooks for topics for our next assignment, an attempt to write “creative nonfiction” a la the “storm books” we’ve been reading (The Perfect Storm or Isaac’s Storm). Teaching is so fun, I decide to do it again that night: at NOVA, we work on how to integrate quotes into our writing. Students type examples on the computer, we shine it on the big screen and edit live.

Wednesday
Back at school. My tenth graders present charts comparing one of four “BTB’s” (Big Travel Books) they’ve just finished reading: The Inferno, Canterbury Tales, Gulliver’s Travels or Candide. A characteristic of my teaching I forgot to add to the reflection for Entry 1: snappy assignment titles. During the day, I click over to Certifiable, and notice that the response to last post was deafening. I read emails from various superteachers on the TLN listserv, and feel guilty about the snark. I’m saved by an email from Stephanie. She likes Entry 1.

Thursday
A late opening! Should I: a) dive back into another entry, b) knock out the blog post for this week, c) head into school early and do some power grading, or d) head back up to bed for an hour. Taking the middle road, I choose b, but what to write about? What have I done this week? It’s a blur. Oh yea, there was that conference on Saturday. I should write about that...

I don't think, by the way, that mine are entirely representative. Many of my classmates seem more positive about the experience. I'm not sure if I'm being too honest, or just tired. Either way, I find it hard to revel in the experience at this point. I'm just looking down at the trail, putting one foot in front of the other as I try to shift the canoe to some place on my shoulders that isn't sore. We gotta be getting close to the next lake.

1. How has working through the National Boards process impacted your teaching?
When all this is behind me, I am sure I will have a different, more charitable take on the experience. I remember wanting to fling the canoe from my shoulders during long portages between lakes in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota; now I look back on my time as an Outward Bound instructor almost twenty years ago as a formative period of my life.

But at this moment, a month before the portfolio is due, I feel that the main impact National Boards has had on my teaching is to stress me out. Time I might use for grading papers is spent gathering up assignments and rubrics. Energy I could put into planning a lesson is spent fussing with video tape or poring through a 3-inch thick sheaf of directions trying to make sure I am meeting every requirement.

Another impact of the process is that I have altered some lessons, not to make them better but to make them better for my portfolio. For my second video tape, for example, after numerous attempts to get the first one right, I carefully staged a lesson that I knew would work well, and got usable footage on the first take. I’m not sure if I learned how to teach better, but I definitely learned how to videotape my teaching.

2. What have you learned about yourself as a teacher as you go through your candidacy?
I have seen the big picture: how a lesson fits into a unit fits into a year. Being forced to describe what is often an unexamined continuum has confirmed for me what I had hoped was true when I started; that I do what I do for pedagogically sound reasons and in the context of a larger plan.

I’ve also appreciated the chance to look closely at individual butterflies flitting amidst the flowers of learning, something we don’t often give ourselves time to do during our purposeful daily march through the fields of academe. This too gives me satisfaction: I can see progress in my students, with the evidence pinned down and labeled under a display case. There’s validation in such meticulous cataloging that tempers, to a degree, the resentment I feel at the extraordinary effort required to get a raise.

3. What do you feel are the implications for your future as you work through this process?
I have added my voice to a national discussion about teaching. I confess that at times this blog has been more important to me than the portfolio itself. It seemed more immediate (due each week and not at the end of a year), fulfilling (feedback comes immediately via readers’ comments) and useful (published for all the world to read, not just sent off in a blue box to anonymous readers). As a result of blogging my National Board experience, I was interviewed by a Washington Post reporter, engaged in a debate in a different national publication with another reporter, and joined a nationwide network of teachers, called TLN, dedicated to impacting education policy. In short, I have come to feel connected to a community that extends beyond my classroom walls, my division or my school. That sense of being part of something larger than myself will stay with me for as long as I remain a member of this maddeningly complex yet profoundly rewarding profession.