BANGOR – Lynn Bonsey, a Surry educator who was one of the first classroom teachers in the nation to obtain National Board Certification in 1995, found the rigorous professional development experience so “exhilarating” that she has renewed her prestigious credential.

She now is the only teacher in the state, and one of only 98 in the country, to have twice proven herself to be an outstanding educator as defined by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

Bonsey, who teaches reading and writing to sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders at Surry Elementary School, called the certification process “exhilarating, rewarding and demanding.”

It was a valuable professional experience that helped her become a better teacher by requiring her to analyze how she taught and how well her pupils learned, she said recently.

Nationwide, only 1 percent of the approximately 3.2 million public and private school teachers have obtained certification since the nonprofit board created it in 1994 to advance the quality of teaching and learning.

Only 73 of about 16,000 teachers in Maine have obtained what is considered the highest credential in the profession. The 73 include Bonsey and 23 other teachers whose certifications were announced just last week.

The process, which takes one to three years to complete and costs $2,300, measures a candidate’s ability to teach against rigorous standards the board believes accomplished teachers should know and be able to do.

Certification lasts for a period of 10 years. While not as lengthy as the original process, the renewal effort still is demanding and requires teachers to show how they grew professionally during the past 10 years as well as how their growth affected student learning.

“It gave me a real strong opportunity to go back and look at my career from the point of initial certification and see that I’ve continued to grow in lots of areas – that I haven’t stopped learning and that I’ve continued to evolve as a teacher,” said Bonsey, an educator for 25 years.

Bonsey’s willingness to “voluntarily put her teaching on the line again and subject it to scrutiny is a wonderful testament to the dedicated educator she is,” said David Lussier of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, based in Arlington, Va.

“Although she’s been teaching for more than 25 years, she’s still learning and has never felt that she can rest on her laurels,” he said.

Gaining National Board Certification requires teachers to document every aspect of their work inside and outside the classroom.

They submit samples of lesson plans, assessments and students’ work and analyze the ways in which students are making progress and how interventions were designed for those who weren’t.

Along with making videotapes showing them interacting with students, teachers must assess the goals to be met each day, explain why they designed a particular lesson plan and offer a blow-by-blow description of what’s happening in the classroom during the taping.

In addition, teachers must document how they’ve grown professionally and explain why they chose to attend particular classes or seminars and how the information they learned was used in the classroom.

Evidence that they consistently work with parents, colleagues and community leaders also is required. Finally, candidates must take a rigorous content exam.

The work is judged by teachers across the country who teach the same subject at the same grade level as the candidate and have been trained as assessors.

Fewer than half the candidates achieve certification the first time, but have another two years to work on the areas in which they did not meet the standards.

Whether they succeed or not, candidates say the process “has been the most rigorous and most important professional development experience of their careers,” Lussier said. “It forces them to analyze their teaching at a level many have never been to before. They feel like they’re much better teachers as a result.”

The certification process was created on the premise that better teaching yields better learning.

That assertion has been strengthened by numerous studies – including two this year – showing that students of national board certified teachers do better academically than those of nonboard certified teachers.

The opportunity to improve her teaching “and the challenge of trying to meet the standards of the national board” were the prime motivators for seeking certification, Bonsey said.

Some school systems in Maine now offer a financial incentive for becoming national board certified. But Bonsey said there was no salary boost when she first sought certification 10 years ago. Her school district has since begun offering $500 a year to teachers who achieve the distinction.

Teachers also may have to pay the $2,300 cost out of their own pockets, although some school districts in Maine now offer to cover the expense. For the past seven years, the Maine Education Leadership Consortium has offered scholarships for teachers needing help with the certification fee.

Half the scholarship money comes from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, while the rest is appropriated from the state, the University of Maine System, and the Maine Education Association, which is the state teachers union.

Support from the consortium “has been a critical factor in helping to increase the numbers [of certified teachers],” said Patrick Phillips, deputy commissioner at the Maine Department of Education.

But it’s no accident that the majority of the Maine teachers on the newly released list are from school districts in Topsham, Falmouth and Waldoboro.

Those communities not only pay the National Board Certification fee, but also offer either a one-time stipend or a salary increase to teachers who achieve the distinction.

Christine Huckins, one of the new national board certified teachers, praised the Bangor school system for both subsidizing the cost of the process and awarding her a salary increase.

“It’s pretty forward thinking – it definitely shows the value Bangor puts on education. Professionally it makes you feel good to be part of a system that values that effort,” said Huckins, who teaches the deaf and hard of hearing at Downeast School.

Lori Taylor, literacy coordinator at the Union Elementary/D.R. Gaul Middle School, said her assessment fee was paid by an anonymous donor who provided a subsidy in each of the past few years for teachers in SAD 40 to seek certification.

Seven district teachers relied on the subsidy to help them achieve National Board Certification.

“It was a wonderful opportunity. I’m glad a few people had a chance to take advantage of it,” said Taylor.

The list of 23 new national board certified teachers in Maine represents progress, said Barbara Kelley, a former Bangor teacher who served on the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards from 1997 to 2003.

“Over the past couple of years, it’s been just a trickle,” she said during a phone interview from her home in North Carolina.

If statewide financial incentives were in place, more teachers likely would pursue National Board Certification, she said. “It would also be a recruitment tool for good teachers in Maine.”

Maine ranks eighth from the bottom in the number of teachers who have been certified, surpassing only Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming and New Hampshire, which has 13.

Elsewhere in New England, Maine falls behind Rhode Island, which has 164 such teachers; Massachusetts, 422; Connecticut, 107; and Vermont, 77.

Rob Walker, president of the MEA, pointed to several reasons why the number of national board certified teachers is low.

With demands placed on teachers to keep up with educational requirements from state and federal mandates, “some people are making the call that this doesn’t rise to the top of the list,” he said.

In addition, if teachers don’t receive scholarship money from the Maine Education Leadership Consortium, “do they want to spend $2,300 of their own money to achieve certification and not have any recognition by the local district?” he asked.

But there are nonfinancial benefits to becoming nationally certified, according to a couple of Bangor teachers.

Ellen Holmes, who teaches at Fairmount School and recently led MEA-sponsored support groups for teachers going through the process of becoming nationally certified, said her confidence soared after she achieved the distinction four years ago.

She began teaching courses at the University of Maine, working with NASA and serving on a committee that advised Congress on education and work force development.

Lynne Carter, who teaches at Fruit Street School, has made a number of changes in her classroom since becoming board certified in 2000. She collaborates more with colleagues, reflects more on her teaching on a daily basis, and pays more attention to the individual needs of pupils and adapts assignments accordingly.

The certification process is “a critical look at what you do on a daily basis, so now I’m more apt to say to myself, ‘Why am I doing this,”‘ she said.

For more information or to view the list of teachers who achieved National Board Certification this year visit the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards’ Web address at: www.nbpts.org.