The Results

I realized that I had not changed my email address in my NBTC portal from my last work email, and of course I couldn’t remember my username and password. :/

I was wondering why I hadn’t heard anything, but after a few attempts, I finally logged into my portal and realized that the results were THERE. How long they had been there I’m not quite sure.

I downloaded my results in the evening around 11:00 pm, but decided not to look at them because I wanted to actually sleep and having “what if” questions go through my head in the case that I hadn’t passed wasn’t my idea of counting sheep and falling asleep quickly.

My sisters and I went to the gym and worked out then I opened my results while my sister made pancakes for breakfast. The first thing I read was “Your Status: Not Yet Achieved.”

*sigh*

Of course I cried for about 10 seconds, but then I reviewed my scores again to actually figure out what they were saying!

**Also, because disclaimers are needed in this day and age, I am sharing my results not to flaunt or shame myself, but because I'm a visual person and sharing the screenshots are way easier than typing all of this out!

My results were as follows:

In a nutshell, you need a 110 to pass and I got a 104. The leveling goes from a 1 to 4 with 4 being the highest. I scored 3s across the board except for Component 3, which I scored a 0.75. Comfort came in the fact that I scored fairly well in all categories except for the one that I scored abysmally low in. That score is a bit of an outlier and if you look at the feedback, it says, “You may wish to review the instructions to ensure you followed the directions for developing and submitting the entry.”

That makes me think that I missed a big idea or submitted something incorrectly. I need to call the NBTC support line to ask a few questions, but I’m planning on “banking” all of my scores except for the one that I failed. I’m not ready to re-take that component this year, but I have three years to submit a re-take and see if I passed. Choosing not to get right back into it and finish it this year is risky (because if I don't pass it the next time, I'm out of time), but I can’t handle that load this year. #newschool #newdistrict #newstate #teacherburnout

Overall I’m really proud of myself. The fact that I scored so well despite the circumstances I was in makes me feel great! I also said that I would be okay failing one component in order to learn about the re-take process and get more NBTC practice. I really like mentoring and helping others and perhaps this is another learning opportunity for me and will allow me to help others in the future. I also feel like when you are prompted to do something and these are the results, it was meant to happen. I gave it my very best and did well on every component, yet somehow missed something SO BIG that I scored below a 1.0 on Component 3? That seems strange.

I will have to do a little more research in order to figure out where I went wrong on Component 3, but come the 2018-2019 school year, I will try again! That means I won’t receive results determining if I received National Board Certification until two years from now, but right now is not the right timing. Let's also talk about the fact that I failed the one component I didn’t want to fail (the video recording component) and there’s no way my current student population is ready to be recorded. Starting off strong next year and only working on ONE component throughout the school year seems like a dream compared to this first experience though, so I'm geared up and ready to tackle that NEXT YEAR.

Thank you, truly, for supporting, encouraging, and believing in me throughout this experience. I’ve always been blessed to have wonderful friends near and far and I'm so grateful for you. 104 and 110 aren’t that far apart. How many obstacles in our lives aren’t really that far apart, we just need to try again?

Here’s to crushing goals and taking chances in 2018. J