Nurturing Teacher Leadership

Nurturing Teacher Leadership, established in 1997, is the Chicago Teachers Union/Chicago Public Schools 2-year program of professional development and candidate support that prepares Chicago Public School teachers for National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) certification, the highest credential a teacher can earn.

Nurturing Teacher Leadership has a success rate of more than 94%, twice the national average.

NTL Candidate Testimonials

Why I went through Board Certification as a secondary English Language Arts teacher:

I went through National Board Certification for the “ELA-Adolescent and Young Adulthood” certificate because I believe in the advice that we give our students: we grow through challenge. I want to be the best teacher I can be, and Nurturing Teacher Leadership and National Board Certification seemed like a challenge that I could use to propel my thinking about best practices. I was right: my mentors pushed my practice and methods to a level of detail that seemed superhuman until I was forced to do it.

How I am a better teacher:

I now have a refined sense for how rubrics and feedback in teaching the English Language Arts can create fairness in the classroom, and I understand better how viewing texts can cause all students, especially English learners, to achieve higher-order thinking on a daily basis. I grew in my understanding of how optimal solutions to instructional challenges depend on our knowledge of what one specific student needs most at one specific moment in time.

How what I learned has impacted my students:

Student learning has increased because I’m more conscious of how students with various interests, styles, and levels of readiness learn new information and skills and because I’m more concerned with how I can prove to myself (and to students) that learning has occurred.

– Matthew L