National Board for Professional Teaching Standards
Lesley Johnson, a National Board instructional specialist for Montgomery County Public Schools, is among a few Maryland educators who have been selected to give a seminar at this year’s national teachers conference in Washington, D.C. Johnson, a Germantown resident who works out of the school system’s Rockville headquarters, is certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, an independent, nonprofit group that provides advanced standards, assessments and professional development resources to support educators.
This story was corrected on July 18, 2011. An explanation of the correction follows the story.
Two teachers from Prince George’s County and one teacher from Montgomery County will lead seminars for this year’s National Board for Professional Teaching Standards conference.
Felicia Messina-D’Haiti of Upper Marlboro and Pamela Shetley of Bowie, as well as Lesley Johnson of Germantown in Montgomery County, and their collaborators will discuss topics on closing the achievement gap and engaging students in learning during the conference, which is July 27-30 at the Washington Hilton Hotel.
Messina-D’Haiti is an art master educator for District of Columbia Public Schools. Shetley is the supervisor of the National Board office in Prince George’s County. Johnson is a National Board instructional specialist in Montgomery County Public Schools.
The conference, “Reboot! Teaching Transformed,” is open to the public.
The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards is an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that provides advanced standards, assessments and professional development resources to support educators.
Chief strategy officer Brian Lewis said about 500 people have signed up for this year’s conference.
“This is a rare opportunity [for the presenters] to have a broad impact on what it is they have created,” he said. “They come with great passion and great expertise to this conference to share that knowledge.”
According to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, there are 257 certified teachers in Prince George’s County and 634 certified teachers in Montgomery County, including Messina-D’Haiti and Johnson.
Shetley, who presented at a previous conference, said one benefit is allowing teachers to gain a national perspective of classrooms.
She will lead a seminar this year to expand teacher leadership outside the work environment and school community.
“We are so focused on the goals and needs of our own state that oftentimes we don’t get to hear from other practitioners without reading about them,” she said. “The conference provides first-hand information and opportunities to dialogue and work with folks across the entire country.”
Messina-D’Haiti said she was excited when she heard her former colleagues also were presenting at the conference. She knew Shetley from when she worked at the National Board office in Prince George’s County, and met Johnson through the Maryland network of National Board teachers.
“It’s kind of an honor that they’ve chosen so many local people to present,” she said.
Messina-D’Haiti and colleagues Adrienne Henderson-Cole and Beverly Donovan will lead a seminar that shows how math, science and art can be integrated into a lesson plan.
Messina-D’Haiti, who worked in Prince George’s County Public Schools for 11 years, said she often would incorporate math into her art lessons by teaching the students measurements and having them construct grids to enlarge or minimize pictures.
“As educators, we’re constantly looking for new ways to present our information and new ways to improve our instruction,” she said.
Johnson, who was a science teacher at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Bethesda and Northwest High School in Germantown before she became a National Board instructional specialist, said she and co-presenter Shalini Komal, a teacher at Sargent Shriver Elementary School in Aspen Hill, plan to engage the participants with interactive lessons.
The pair also will be sharing techniques on ways to promote equity and fairness in the classroom.
“One of them is to use eye contact with both high-achieving and low-achieving students,” she said. “A lot of times, teachers find themselves making eye contact much more often with high-achieving students, almost like they want to avoid looking at the low-achieving students so as not to make them feel bad.”
Johnson said she hopes participants will take some of the lessons that they have learned in the seminar and apply it to their students.
“I really hope that they realize that equitable classroom practices is an issue,” she said. “There is an achievement gap; there is a problem.”
mliu@gazette.net
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated Shetley’s teaching board-certification status. She is not certified.
Copyright © 2012 Post-Newsweek Media, Inc./Gazette.Net