Educator Profile: Lynette Gibson, National Board Certified Teacher

Lynette Gibson has been an elementary school teacher for 14 years, the last nine of which have been at Central Elementary in Edgewater. She teaches second grade.

Gibson said that thought of doing the necessary work to earn her  National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification"for the past five or six years."

"I'd heard other teachers talking about it. I have my Masters—I try to be the best teacher I can be, so I decided to try for it," Gibson said.

She took it on during the last school year.

The grueling, year-long process of evaluation and introspection isn't one that most professional teachers take on lightly.

Nationwide, only about three percent of teachers hold the professional designation. 

The process requires teachers to videotape themselves in front of the class. From there, they have to watch the videos hundreds of times to evaluate not only their lesson plan, but also their interaction with students, instructional style and classroom management style. Those videos and written evaluations are sent off to a team of teachers who decide whether or not a teacher measures up to the high standard.

Gibson said that the process made her more reflective.

"It made me look at myself," she said.

"It was hard to analyze myself. One of the parts was, 'what would you do differently?' and you watch the video over and over. I had to watch that video a million times," Gibson said.

"But its good, you can look at what everyone is doing. You can see what every student is doing. Just for the exercise, I would recommend videotaping to other teachers. You catch little things. You find yourself doing things that may or may not be helpful," Gibson said.

She's taking what she learned from the experience and carrying it forward to her students this year, like having more group work and giving the students time to reflect on their work.

Gibson said she was nervous to get the results and found out just before Thanksgiving when she went online. Even if the results weren't what she was hoping for, Gibson said that going through the process was a great learning experience and that she learned a lot about herself and her teaching style.

Gibson, along with members of her family and the 61 other county teachers who earned the designation, will gather at Old Mill on Jan. 11 to accept her pin.