As I mentioned in my last post, I’m currently working my way through the World Languages National Board standards and sharing my journey with you. Before we dive in with the Standards content, let’s take one step back and do a quick intro to National Boards for those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about (ain’t no shame!).

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards heads up the National Board Certified Teacher process. Directly pulled from their website, “National Board Certification was designed to develop, retain, and recognize accomplished teachers and to generate ongoing improvement in schools nationwide. It is the most respected professional certification available in K-12 education.” Basically, the National Board certifies the very best teachers in the country by putting them through a rigorous (read: difficult, time-consuming, and expensive) process, and then allows those teachers to operate with four precious NBCT letters after their name. 

In many school districts around the country, becoming a National Board Certified Teacher is one of the only ways (in addition to getting a graduate degree) that you can increase your salary. It links you to other outstanding teachers in your area and around the country, and it truly forces you to hold yourself and your teaching to the highest possible standard for your students in a way that no other professional development does. If you’re interested in learning more about why to go through the process from a teacher’s perspective, read the venerable Cult of Pedagogy’s take here.

The National Board maintains and produces Standards documents for a couple of dozen different disciplines and age groups, outlining what makes for an exceptional teacher in each one. To get certified, you submit mountains of evidence to a panel of judges trying to prove that you exhibit these standards every time you step into the classroom. For that reason, merely going through the process of reading the standards is immensely helpful if you’re looking to up your teaching game. You can download and read the World Languages standards here, and two of my absolute favorite language teacher bloggers, Rebecca Blouwolff and Laura Sexton discuss their takes on the process here and here.

Every standards document starts out the same way, with the National Board Five Core Propositions and the Architecture of Accomplished Teaching. In a nutshell, the Five Core Propositions state that accomplished teachers:

1. are committed to students and their learning.
2. know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students.
3. are responsible for managing and monitoring student learning.
4. think systematically about their practice and learn from experience.
5. are members of learning communities.

I recommend you check out the Architecture of Accomplished teaching here; it basically illustrates the keys to excellent teaching in one infographic. To summarize: accomplished teaching starts with the kids; establishes appropriate learning objectives based upon knowledge of the kids, the subject, and pedagogy; implements instruction to achieve those goals; evaluates learning in light of the objectives and the instruction; reflects on the learning; then sets new goals for the kids (and begins the cycle all over again).

My favorite sentiment from all of this is the National Board idea that everything you do should start with THESE students in THIS setting at THIS time. It doesn’t matter if I’m teaching a group of professionals or a group of 11-year-olds, every day I’m teaching I remind myself of this line and force myself to think of my instruction in terms of THESE students in THIS setting at THIS time. It helps me to put my teaching in perspective (it’s all about the learner!) and gives me a starting point to make sure that the instruction is actually effective for the people sitting in front of me. You can design and implement world-class lessons, but if you don’t start with who your students are, what they know, and how they’re feeling in THIS setting at THIS time, you risk selling everyone in the room short.

The World Languages Standards take the five core propositions and adapt them into nine standards specifically for World Language instruction. I’ll be going through each standard one by one in future posts, but I do think it’s instructive to start with the overview. I hope this primer helps for those of you who are new to the NBCT process!