New Mentorship Pilot Program Aims to Help Novice Teachers Attain National Board Certification
02/15/2025
By Jessica Zimmerman for the UNLV National Institute for the Advancement of Education (NIAE)
One CCSD high school teacher and one UNLV doctoral student are taking lessons learned and a passion for keeping teachers in the profession and turning it into a mentorship program to help novice teachers attain their National Board Certification.
Brooke Wheatley, a teacher at Valley High School, and Elizabeth Hofschulte Collins, who works in the UNLV Office of Research and Sponsored Projects and is a doctoral candidate in Educational Psychology, Leadership, and Higher Education, are using their research, knowledge and experiences with National Board Certification to develop a support program for teachers who would benefit by having mentors utilize their own experiences to guide others through the certification process.
National Board Certification is the mecca of education certifications. It is a voluntary, advanced teaching credential that goes beyond state licensure. There are four components of the certification: Content Knowledge, Differentiation in Instruction, Teaching Practice and Learning Environment, and Effective and Reflective Practitioner, or as Wheatley says, “the last component is a monster; it’s a beast!”
Collins had been conducting research for the National Institute for the Advancement of Education (NIAE) on Nevada novice educators and found that “29 and a half percent of Nevada novice teachers, meaning those in their first five years of their career, actually stay in the profession after five years,” Collins said. Data showed that there is a need to improve teacher retention.
“Out of that research, we were looking at various ways to improve teacher retention. That could be through things like salary increases, and when you get Nationally Board Certified, you get a salary increase,” Collins said.
According to the Clark County Education Association (CCEA), there are many incentives for achieving National Board Certification. In Nevada, teachers receive an annual 5% increase on their base salary that is applied to their pension. Teachers and counselors can also receive an additional one-time salary advancement of nearly $7,000 when they certify.
CCEA is a huge proponent of teachers becoming National Board Certified because of the skills that it fosters in educators.
“We learned that a teacher who is Nationally Board Certified is more apt to stay within the classroom and is more effective with students,” said Dr. Brenda Pearson, Director of Strategic Policy Initiatives for CCEA. “Because of the deep dive that teachers go through when they pursue the National Board, it really helps them to reflect on the practice as well as understand the iterations of what they need to do to have a cycle of improvement.”
CCEA was an integral part of the team that lobbied for the 5% incentive increase on base salaries in 2015 for National Board teachers who remain in the classroom. Dr. Pearson also collaborates with Monica Bryant, an elementary school counselor and NIAE Advisory Board member, on the National Board Cohorts (NBCT), a CCEA program that prepares teachers for National Board certification.
“From what we’ve seen, the component that is missing here is the mentorship and how to help new teachers understand the components of a National Board teacher. For example, how do you reflect upon your lesson? How do you ensure that you’re engaging all of your students? How do you make sure that you have the content knowledge that you need?” Dr. Pearson said.
Based on their observations from working with the NBCT Cohorts program, Dr. Pearson and Ms. Bryant suggested the need for a project where teachers who have successfully completed National Board Certification can mentor new teachers and guide them through the process so that they stay in the profession and in Nevada.
“We know that support and mentoring for pre-service and early-service teachers is essential,” said Bryant. “With this project, we will test specific support systems that are designed to increase the number of teachers that go through the National Board Certification process in our state.”
As of January 2022, 130,630 teachers were board-certified in the US. While North Carolina ranked number one with 23,418 board-certified teachers, Nevada ranked 22nd with 1,234 National Board Certified teachers, yet, in the same year, there were 23,076 teachers in the state. Why aren’t more Nevada teachers becoming certified?
One reason is most likely due to the demanding and time-consuming nature of the process. Hence the need and development of this mentorship program.
Mentors will be teachers who are already board certified and have gone through the process and came out successfully on the other side.
“The nice thing is we are training teachers how to mentor. You don’t have to train [the teachers] how to do the national boards because they already know that. A lot of us know what to do already and we know what to share with other teachers,” Wheatley said. “It’s more of the mentoring aspect of, hey, if you encounter this, how do you deal with these things? Mentors can take lessons learned from going through the process, and that can help inform a training manual and really help these novice teachers complete their national boards and then remain a teacher.”
Wheatley and Collins say another deterrent to completing the certification is the cost. Each component costs $475.00 for a total of $1,900 and there’s also a registration fee. However, this cost is significantly lower than paying for and achieving a master’s degree, which is another way to receive a salary increase.
“That’s why we wanted to create this mentorship program, to increase the number of National Board Certified teachers in a more cost-effective way,” Collins said. “One of our first steps to accomplishing this is our planned survey.”
Wheatley and Collins have been researching for and preparing a survey that will be distributed by CCEA to teachers and stakeholders, to gather insights on their needs and expectations for the program. With over 18,000 members in the union, Wheatley and Collins should receive a large sample, which can allow for a higher level of confidence in the conclusions drawn from the data.
“We’ve brainstormed questions for the survey, like how many teachers would be interested in either mentoring or receiving mentoring? How many teachers are considering pursuing National Board Certification? If a teacher is, let’s say, a history teacher, would they be interested in mentoring someone in science? What component of the certification was the most challenging to you? So, we’re getting all this information from the survey and once we get the data back, we can dive right into the pilot,” Wheatley said.
Collins and Wheatley’s next step is to solicit a grant or generous gift to launch the pilot mentorship program within the year. Their plan includes training mentors, recruiting teachers who want to get certified, and matching mentors with mentees.
“The plan is to choose one school to pilot at each level – elementary, middle, and high school,” Collins said. “We would host trainings either at UNLV or at the home schools, which will be easier for teachers to access.” The actual program would then start in either August or September 2026.
And if the pilot goes well, Wheatley and Collins plan to identify a grant or funding mechanism to support the program further. “Mentors shouldn’t do this for free, and so we would like to compensate mentors as it’s adding an extra layer of work for them. Also, National Boards aren’t free, so a funding mechanism would be a fantastic next step after the pilot,” Collins said.
Essentially, this mentorship program will not only help the teachers, but it can trickle down to the success of the students they teach.
“I feel like a lot of teachers are just not necessarily fully prepared for the classroom,” Collins said. “This program is a way that they can become more prepared, learning how to manage the classroom, and be more effective educators, which then has the cyclical effect of impacting students, who then take that experience onto their next classes and sets them up for success in the future.”
The content of this article is produced in collaboration with the faculty, research, practitioner, and community partners featured herein and the National Institute for the Advancement of Education (NIAE), an interdisciplinary institute housed at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) College of Education that engages in interdisciplinary research-practice-policy efforts that transform PK-20 education through innovation, excellence, evidence, and equity.
For more information about NIAE, visit niae.sites.unlv.edu.
