Teacher Cara Borelli Boss is Homewood-Flossmoor High School’s second teacher to receive certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.
“I’ve wanted to be a national certified teacher since my first teaching job” in 2007, Boss said. Her mentors at Wilmette High School were all national certified teachers who led seminars, used new techniques, “and were always learning how to better themselves,” she recalled.
Teacher Cara Borelli Boss is Homewood-Flossmoor High School’s second teacher to receive certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.
“I’ve wanted to be a national certified teacher since my first teaching job” in 2007, Boss said. Her mentors at Wilmette Junior High School were all national certified teachers who led seminars, used new techniques, “and were always learning how to better themselves,” she recalled.
She calls the certification program “a very valuable experience. It really helps you look at who you are as an educator, how you’re impacting your students.”
The program also helped Boss recognize how she can move away from the standard practice and “look at how can we make things better for our students and how can we be more effective in the classroom. Let’s measure the things we are intending to measure and how to design classes around that.”
The certification process gives teachers an opportunity to have their teaching skills assessed for their strategies through a peer-reviewed process, as well as extensive self-analysis including lesson plans, student work, video interactions and documentation of achievements both in and out of the classroom setting.
Boss is one of two national certified teachers at H-F. Daniel McClain, chair of the Math Department, was certified in 2017.
Boss was honored by the District 233 school board in December for her accomplishment. She teaches health and physical education at H-F, and coaches the girls and boys junior varsity swim teams.
Becoming a national certified teacher is typically a long and arduous process that can take four years or longer. For Boss, it was even more difficult because she had to fit the workload between fall and winter swim seasons, yet she completed the certification process in two years.
Working with a cohort of other candidates, Boss worked through the four topics — a test on her teaching knowledge; a project with evidence and artifacts on how to differentiate instruction; videotaped lessons to allow for reflection on teaching practices; and 160 to 320 hours in professional development over multiple years. She worked on two topics a year.
For Boss, the cycle of teaching focuses on all students understanding the subject. Students who don’t get it aren’t left behind while the class moves forward, she said.
“You can’t build unless they have the basic building blocks,” the teacher explained. If concepts haven’t been mastered “you do something different. Maybe that’s more hands-on activities. Everything you do is about looking at where the students are, the goal you want for them, teach the content and then assess some way on (whether) they meet that goal.”
Boss earned a degree in health education at Illinois State University and a master’s degree from Concordia University. She joined the H-F faculty three years ago. She teaches four sections of health and one PE class at H-F.
Health is only a one-semester class, but covers a range of topics, including internal health, nutrition, mental health, alcohol/tobacco/other drugs related to substance abuse and human sexuality. Boss said the two big units for her students are mental health, focusing on issues such as stress, coping, depression and suicide prevention, and nutrition.