Miami’s Board-Certified Teachers Advance Agenda

Miami

Two fingertips wiped away the tear that had started to slide down the novice teacher’s cheek as she laid her frustrations at the feet of the workshop leader, classroom veteran and nationally certified teacher Mary Reed.

All the 1st grade teachers at the beginner’s school were new like herself, she explained, as was the teacher in the media center. Some of her pupils couldn’t yet write their names, and one parent had already barged into her classroom without a visitor’s pass, refusing to leave. The neophyte didn’t even know if the school was supposed to have a reading coach to help her.

But this painful exchange was as much why Mary Reed had volunteered on a Saturday at the National Board Certified Teachers of Miami-Dade’s new-teacher conference as was the framework for beginning reading...