NTL Reflections 2025 Lauren Dunning
Show Up and Show Out
I began my teaching career guided by one simple objective: to show up and show out. Show up prepared. Show out for my students. Do the work well, do it consistently, and let the results speak for themselves.
For twelve years, the results did speak. My students passed AP exams, enrolled in advanced science courses, and pursued STEM majors in college. But over time, I began to recognize that strong outcomes alone were not enough. I wanted to better understand why my instruction worked when it did, where it fell short, and how to make that success more consistent across all students. That realization is what ultimately led me to pursue National Board Certification through the Nurturing Teacher Leadership cohort. For me, National Board Certification was not a finish line. It was a way to sharpen, name, and strengthen my science teaching practice, and to do so in community with educators equally committed to professional growth.
I currently teach AP Chemistry and AP Biology at Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy on the far south side of Chicago. Gwendolyn Brooks is also my alma mater. I sat in the same classrooms, walked the same hallways, and encountered obstacles comparable to the ones my students face today. That continuity matters: it gives me credibility with my students and a deep sense of responsibility to ensure they leave my classroom prepared for what comes next.
After graduating from Brooks, I attended the University of Chicago, where I majored in biochemistry, and later earned my master’s degree in education from Columbia University. These were rigorous academic experiences that strengthened my content knowledge and discipline. However, the Nurturing Teacher Leadership program offered something fundamentally different. While my university training taught me what to teach, their National Board process taught me how to analyze how my students learn science, and how to adjust my instruction in response to evidence of their thinking, so as to increase their learning and growth.
As a result of what I learned through Nurturing Teacher Leadership, I shifted how I taught core scientific concepts. For example, in AP Biology, I moved from emphasizing correct answers in enzyme kinetics problems to prioritizing students’ ability to explain why changes in substrate concentration affected reaction rates. Through structured analysis of student work and video reflection, I learned to identify patterns in student misconceptions and design targeted interventions. As a result, students who previously relied on memorized steps began constructing mechanistic explanations using scientific language, something many struggled to do before.
When I returned to Gwendolyn Brooks as a teacher, I wanted my classroom to be a place where students left genuinely prepared for college-level science courses and STEM careers. Being knowledgeable about biology and chemistry content was not enough. I wanted students to move through advanced scientific spaces with fluency: able to analyze data, justify claims with evidence, and advocate for their own thinking rather than simply endure rigor. And NTL helped make this happen.
After twelve years in the classroom, I had clear evidence that my teaching was effective. I had launched our AP Chemistry program, increased AP Biology pass rates from 15 percent to more than 65 percent, and helped send hundreds of students to college with passing AP scores who went on to major in STEM disciplines. However, Nurturing Teacher Leadership pushed me to ask a deeper question: How could this success be replicated, sustained, and extended to even more students? As a result of instructional changes I implemented through the National Board process, particularly in formative assessment and feedback, my student pass rates continued to stabilize, and more students enrolled and persisted in advanced science courses.
National Board Certification helped me formalize my instructional decision-making by requiring me to slow down, document my choices, and justify them with student evidence. Through NTL, I learned how to make my practice visible, not just to evaluators, but to myself, and how to refine it intentionally and with evidence rather than relying on experience alone.
I pursued National Board Certification because strong teaching should never become static. I also pursued it because nearly every teacher in my 21-person science department had begun or completed the process. I observed tangible changes in their classrooms: richer student discourse, clearer learning targets, and assessments aligned more closely to scientific practices. I wanted those same improvements in my own teaching. When colleagues repeatedly asked why I was not pursuing National Board, it became clear that this was not about conformity, it was about joining a culture of collective growth that was already improving student learning across our school.
Teaching advanced science courses to predominantly students of color from under-resourced communities demands intentionality. Through Nurturing Teacher Leadership, I learned how to anticipate misconceptions in topics like thermodynamics and chemical equilibrium, design lessons that surfaced student reasoning, and respond to that reasoning in ways that moved learning forward. I also learned that advanced programs such as AP Biology and AP Chemistry do not exist simply because they are scheduled. They exist because accomplished teachers are willing to build them, to make early sacrifices, defend high expectations, and sustain rigor before success is guaranteed. As a result of my work through Nurturing Teacher Leadership, my classrooms have become more student-centered, with increased use of inquiry-based labs, data analysis, and structured scientific argumentation, all of which has led my students to deeper conceptual understanding.
Nurturing Teacher Leadership helped me refine how I built and sustained AP Biology and AP Chemistry programs. By analyzing lesson videos and student work within the cohort, I adjusted how I introduced complex concepts such as reaction mechanisms and cellular respiration, structured labs to emphasize evidence-based reasoning, and used formative assessments to guide pacing. These changes strengthened my programs and made them more sustainable, which is why there is now consistent interest from colleagues eager to take over and expand these courses.
Completing the National Board process as part of a Nurturing Teacher Leadership science cohort supported by the Chicago Teachers Union and Chicago Public Schools made the experience significantly more impactful. I worked alongside middle and high school science teachers from across the city, each bringing different content expertise and instructional challenges. From mentors who were already National Board Certified, I learned how to use student evidence to drive reflection and how to advocate for instructional equity with clarity and confidence. For example, I learned to redesign lab assessments, so students had to justify conclusions using data rather than simply report results, a shift that improved scientific reasoning across my classes. One specific instructional change involved how I responded to students’ partial understanding. Instead of reteaching entire units, I learned to provide targeted feedback based on patterns in student reasoning. In AP Biology, this meant my students could explain enzyme behavior using energy diagrams and molecular interactions rather than just memorized definitions. Student explanations became more precise, and classroom discussions more substantive.
As a Black man in my 30s teaching AP science courses, I know my presence matters, but presence alone does not produce outcomes. Reliability, consistency, and advocacy do. Through Nurturing Teacher Leadership, I became more deliberate in aligning my expectations, instructional moves, and feedback to support measurable student growth. During one AP Biology class, a student stayed after school to review enzyme kinetics. She had already earned a passing score but wanted to understand why her reasoning worked. Because of instructional shifts I made through the National Board process, emphasizing explanation over procedure, I was able to guide her in connecting substrate concentration, enzyme saturation, and reaction rate. When she said, “I feel like I actually know what I’m doing,” it reflected a move from procedural success to conceptual fluency, the very outcome Nurturing Teacher Leadership helped me cultivate.
For African American and Hispanic students from underprivileged backgrounds, access to National Board-certified teachers matters because it reflects a commitment to instructional excellence that directly impacts opportunity. Teaching on the South Side of Chicago requires educators to take intentional steps to ensure students are prepared for postsecondary pathways. For me, National Board Certification was one of those steps.
The two-year process was not without personal challenges. During this time, my life was unexpectedly disrupted by a profound family loss that made continuing the work feel uncertain. With the steady support of my NTL mentors and cohort, I was able to persist, a reminder that strong teaching communities support not just instruction, but educators themselves.
At the end of the process, I earned National Board Certification in Adolescence and Young Adulthood Science. I am proud of this achievement not because it marks an endpoint, but because it represents continued growth. Nurturing Teacher Leadership did not replace the foundation built through my education or years of teaching. It sharpened it. And when my students step into advanced science classrooms and question whether they belong, my teaching answers clearly:
You belong here. And I’m going to teach you like it.
