Finding Evidence

Many teachers find the evidence portion of the Maintenance of Certification process to be highly stressful, either because they feel they don't have enough evidence or that the NBPTS is too restrictive in their four page limit. 

 As a former renewal assessor, I’m here to tell you not to worry about either side and to try to think about how you can build evidence into your written commentary.  Creating a written commentary full of examples, stories, or pointed evidence is an easy way to earn those brownie points on the rubric without major anxiety over cramming or collaging (which is not advised) onto the four samples of product (SOP) pages.  In addition, you don’t want to present samples of products that may reduce the value of your milestone worthy PGEs.

Checkout my YouTube Channel that has a video on Evidence: CLICK HERE

The MOC guide for the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards states - “Your samples of products should exemplify the direct and/or indirect positive impact you made on student learning. You may select direct evidence such as student work or indirect evidence stemming from collaborative work with school staff, families, or the community.” It goes on to say that you should “explain how this evidence is connected to one of your PGEs and demonstrates a positive impact on student learning.” 

 This evidence must be pulled from the time period between your initial certification and current renewal attempt or from your last renewal to your current renewal attempt.  This is where much of the “heartburn” comes in as teachers will say, “I haven’t saved anything! I wish I would have known what to save.” Let’s unpack some important things to remember as you search for strong evidence to exhibit as Sample of Products for your Maintenance of Certification portfolio.

10 important things to remember about evidence:

1. Frame and write your PGE before choosing the evidence that you will attach to it. 
2. As your frame and write your PGE, connect the student impact to the acquired/deepened content or pedagogical knowledge in your written commentary so you will be able to easily determine what piece of evidence will prove that statement.
3. Think about depth and breadth of your practice as you choose your Samples of Product - in addition to proving student impact, will your evidence sample showcase yourself as a learner, leader, collaborator, or advocate?
4. Less is more - collaging a lot of reduced-size images will not support you like a well thought out single or dual item on one page.  
5. Use Google Slides or Powerpoint to add 6 images and print it in the 6 slides per page view
6. Data can be written into your written commentary and picked up as evidence if you don’t have paper access to the data to share as a SOP document.
7. The most powerful pieces of evidence actually showcase a depth and breadth that proves the milestone you have achieved within the PGE.
8. The most popular pieces of evidence include: student work, photos of student work or students engaged in learning; data from activities discussed in the PGE, letters from admin/mentees/parents/colleagues about teacher’s impact on others, emails, surveys, transcripts of professional development (many hours of training), technology use, and/or screenshots of websites, blogs or articles that showcase your teaching and learning of students.
9. Cite your evidence within the written commentary (SOP 1) (SOP 2) (SOP 3) (SOP 4)
10. Don’t forget to add the evidence to the Evidence template/cover sheet into a single 5 page PDF where each page is titled SOP #1, SOP #2, SOP #3, SOP #4 for submission.

If you want support and a step-by-step approach to completing your MOC portfolio, be sure to join my Renew Like a Pro Program that will take all of the guess work and answer all of your question on the MOC process!