My Story Part 1

This story starts in August 2022. The exact date I can’t remember, but I distinctly remember opening my work email well in advance of the expected (and dreaded) “Welcome Back!” email from the principal. I saw an email that said something to the effect of, “There’s still time to apply for the National Board Certification candidate scholarship!”

So I opened up that email. I started reading it and learned that my school district provided a scholarship to all teachers that decided to pursue NBC. This scholarship covered the cost of each component ($475/per and $1,900 total). The only thing I had to pay for was the annual registration fee ($75). Had this not been offered, I can tell you with 100% certainty that I would not have done it. But I figured, it’s basically free AND if I pass, I could get a $10,000 annual stipend?

Sign me up.

I thought to myself, “It can’t be that hard, right? I mean, they wouldn’t offer this if they didn’t think people could do it.”

So I jumped through the necessary hoops, and officially added myself to the candidate pool. I had no idea what was expected of me or how it worked. I just saw dollar signs.

Listen…

I’m a teacher. Everyone knows we gotta work over 20 years before we even sniff at 6 figures, and that’s if you live in a high COL area. I get that not every teacher makes that. But all I know is I still have over 20 years left of this profession (that’s another story, but the short of it is, I have taught in 3 different states in the last 22 years, and that’s a bad idea if you want to retire early). So you do the math – $10,000 x 20 = $200,000. You can’t tell me that’s not worth it.

So yah, I wasn’t trying to prove anything. I was just trying to increase my income. And I’d venture to say that’s what 99.9% of teachers who pursue NBC are trying to do too. And there’s nothing wrong with that. If you look at the stats – the states with the highest number of NBC Teachers have the highest financial incentives. That’s not a coincidence.

Alright…moving on.

At some point in August/September I got on the NBCT website because I had to officially register and learned that I had to pick a certification area. You mean there’s more than one? Ok, cool. After fumbling around on the website for a bit, I found Exceptional Needs – Mild/Moderate which was what mostly closely aligned to what I do on the daily. I also learned that there are 4 components. Since you are given 5 years max to certify, and I want to start getting paid as soon as possible, I figured two years would be enough time to get it all done. There are definitely a few crazy people out there that get it all done in one year, but with what little I knew about NBC at the time, I knew I most definitely did not want to try it. Again, I knew nothing about the components so I decided to go in chronological order – Components 1 and 2 my first year, and Components 3 and 4 my second year. Made sense to me.