Getting it going

I have purposely put off working on my retry for National Board until now. I've gathered some samples and whatnot but I haven't really done anything  except read my directions again and then shove them into the folder I made for my retake and push it out of sight again.

I think when push comes to shove, that I'm ready to admit how disappointed I was to not certify last year. I busted my ass, neglected myself, my family and even my job sometimes in pursuit of this and I still didn't make it. It's frustrating to realize you can kill yourself and it doesn't matter because you're just a number in a big ole stack of entries that someone is assessing.

I don't like being a downer. It's draining emotionally and physically. So I've avoided my reality for awhile.

With 2013, I'm not avoiding anymore. My whole life tendency has been to push things under the rug and "deal with it later". Well, later is here as far as National Board is concerned. 

I am ready to bust out the instructions and go back over them again and again. I need to highlight and make note of areas that perhaps I didn't really quite answer last time. Then I am going to look at the samples I already have and decide on a student to focus upon. 

(Note I am only working on Entry 1 for my retake since I only need a half point higher on the entry to transfer to the 6 points I needed to certify.)

This is the entry that focuses upon Promoting Literacy Development through Writing. To begin with I gathered samples from about six or seven of my students, both grades from one of our weekly writing tests. The students have to construct an answer to a question and use evidence from the text to support their response. I thought this would be a great "baseline" paper to help me determine areas where the student(s) needed extra instruction or support.

The first actual sample will be the December writing prompt where my students had to write about a special person, place or event. I can use the baseline information from the weekly test to set my goals, then use the writing sample to show progress, growth and where the student still needs further instruction. 

For the final sample, I plan to use the February writing prompt that we use which is a compare/contrast essay. I think this will show a range of writing for meaning instances as well as allowing me to help  my students to make connections in their writing across writing genres (ie that you still can use the same strategies for a constructed response as for a narrative as for a compare/contrast piece). 

Who knows if this will make it this time but I'm gonna give it my all and be positive.

I have until April 15 (two weeks longer than first timers have) to turn in the entry. I am not going to wait that long. Depending upon when our final writing prompts are finished in February, I hope to send my entry off by  the middle of March at the latest. Then its back to the waiting game like last year--waiting eight months to find out if you've made it or not.