Click photo to enlarge

(photo courtesy Sue Larson/January 16, 2013) Fremont High School math teacher Jessica Uy recently earned certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. The certification is regarded as a high-status benchmark for teaching knowledge, skills and practices.

Fremont High School math teacher Jessica Uy is now among the elite few teachers to achieve certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

Uy is one of just six recent alumni of the Knowles Science Teaching Foundation's fellowship to earn the elite certification. The five other early career educators teach science and math in high schools in California, Colorado, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Washington.

The certification is regarded as a high-status benchmark for teaching knowledge, skills and practices, earned through a series of complex, rigorous assessments and testing. The voluntary program can take the better part of a school year and involve hundreds of hours of work beyond the regular demands of teaching, according to board certification officials.

"In a lot of ways, it was on par with the work it takes to get a master's degree," Uy said. "It was definitely a challenge. Teachers like to push themselves and see what they are capable of."

Teachers complete a comprehensive portfolio with written and video entries on classroom practice and discourse, instruction and content knowledge, as well as work with parents and the wider community. More than 97,000 teachers were nationally board certified as of 2011, representing approximately 2.7 percent of the 3.7 million American teachers, according to board officials.

Uy is in her sixth year teaching mathematics at Fremont

"I love teaching at Fremont," she said. "The administration is very supportive, and everyone is focused on the kids and what they are learning."

Uy grew up in Southern California and attended a number of gifted, talented and academically accelerated programs throughout elementary and middle school. She attended UC-Davis, where she saw a stark contrast between her own and her peers' schooling experiences, she said. The gap in public school experience inspired her to teach.

See the original post:
Fremont High teacher among select few with national board certification