You know what they say about hindsight

I have never been one of those people who are "ahead of the game." If it weren't for this job of teaching, I probably wouldn't have the meager organizational skills that I now possess. This profession has forced me to figure out better ways of managing the paper & other "stuff" in my life. That said, I feel like I missed the boat this year in one are of professional development. I've spent the past few weeks wondering why I didn't attempt Nat'l Boards this year.

Maybe it's just the facebook status updates from so many of my friends who are doing the process currently. It makes me feel a little remorseful that I didn't tackle it this year. It's also the last year that my state will pay for the process ... so I'm not sure when else I'll feasibly be able to afford it. Maybe the state budget will straighten itself out & they'll finally give us a raise ... not sure how likely that is, though.

At any rate, it's probably weird that I'm even considering this, given my last post about whether teaching is a long-term career for me anyway. However, I've always aimed high, and even if I don't teach forever, it makes sense to try to have the best credentials. Also, if I do go through this process, I should probably do it soon. The state is changing the standards and I'll probably be teaching new curriculum in a couple of years ... I'm not sure I want to be designing new lessons and plowing through the Boards at the same time. From what I hear, it's pretty time consuming.

One down side of being in a small charter school is that we don't always get the same info as a larger district - wish I'd have known a little earlier that this was the last year the state was footing the bill. I guess the bright side is that since so many of my friends are doing it this year, they'll have lots of good advice if/when I ever attempt the process!