National Boards

For the last month or so, a group of teachers at my school, and myself, have been pursuing the first step towards our National Boards Certification. The first step is to apply for the grant that is available to pay the fee for certification. The fee is $2500! Alabama offers a grant so we have been hot and heavy in the grant application process. The window is closing and the applications are due and we are in STRESS overload! We started out with a large group and as the process got harder, we lost a few. We are now down to 3 1st grade teachers, myself, and my best buddy, the other special education teacher. It has been hard and we have had to jump out of our comfort zone right into the "let me video you while you teach" fire. One thing I can tell you about most elementary teachers is this...give us a room full of kids and we are totally comfortable to act crazy and teach our hearts out...put us in front of ONE adult and we start to sweat and it makes us crazy. Literally scares us to death and we flounder around like we've never taught a competent lesson in our lives! Let that adult have a video camera on hand that we are going to send to the State Dept. and you just about need the nurse outside the door in case CPR needs to be administered before, during, or after the video. I'm not kidding you...today I might be physically ill over this! The other part of the process is to write a two page paper on my approach to teaching and how I illustrate their 5 core proposition in my teaching. Whoa! Hold the phone, I graduated from Auburn in 1995 and from JSU in 1999 and I have not touched any kind of writing since then. But I am a finish what I start kind of girl so I have been committed to finishing this step in the process. I may or may not receive a grant but at least I will know that I tried my best and I did not quit. I have plowed ahead and here I am at the finish line...this baby needs to be signed, sealed, and on its way to Montgomery in tomorrow's mail. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and WHAMO, we have hit a BRICK wall in the DVD burning process and it is driving me crazy. I have spent countless hours working on this with lots of help but this camera we have used is horrible, even though it is brand new, and it is so difficult to get your video from the camera to a DVD. There are about 5 steps (not counting the editing I had to do because it can only be an excerpt from a lesson not one second over 15 minutes) and two of the steps takes over 2 hours to load onto the computer. I know one thing for sure and certain...IF I am blessed with a grant so that I can actually start the National Boards Certification process (and I know that is a big IF), Lyn will be in the market for her own video camera and it will not be this one! So in a nutshell, that is what I've been up to and that is what consumes my brain! Please pray that God will do what HE wants with this application. If pursuing my Nat'l Boards is His will, then I trust He will provide the way. If He wants the door closed, then I will trust that to be the reason I don't receive a grant. Either way, I will praise Him and trust that He knows what is best. Boy, I sure can't wait to seal this envelope!!!!