3 Teaching Families in Southland Receive National Certification

It’s the teaching profession’s highest distinction, so tough that only 16,000 of America’s 3 million teachers--less than 1%--have qualified. Half of those who apply for the honor fail.

That’s why it’s stunning that seven of the newest nationally certified teachers come from three Los Angeles-area families.

On the Eastside, it’s a mother, daughter and son-in-law. In the Valley, it’s a mother-son pair and a husband-wife team.

After 10 months of working weekends and pulling all-nighters to evaluate and refine their classroom practices, they were certified by panels of experts from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. An additional 228 Los Angeles Unified School District teachers also qualified.

“It was a miracle that we three passed together,” said Virginia Mullen of Sheridan Elementary in Boyle Heights, who earned the certification with her daughter and son-in-law. “We all had tears in our eyes.”

The rare honor also brings considerable financial benefits. Although dozens of states provide incentives for teachers to become certified, California offers some of the richest rewards.

Teachers here receive a $10,000 bonus and $20,000 over four years if they work in low-performing schools--all state money. In the Los Angeles district, certified teachers also get a 15% pay hike and are expected to serve as mentors in their schools.

Mullen, 57, expects to receive about $22,000 this year. She plans to apply her money toward retirement.

Her daughter, Kim Gero, and son-in-law, Greg, will get almost that much. The couple plan to save the funds so one of them can take a leave when they have children.

The three teachers are ecstatic about the money, but they’re equally thrilled with the insight gained from their yearlong self-evaluation.

“I feel like I’ve learned so many things that can make me a better teacher, and I’m excited by that,” said Greg Gero, 29, who teaches second and third grade at El Sereno Elementary in Northeast L.A. “I feel like I’m more of a professional now.”

The new knowledge has given the three new confidence in their abilities and their instincts. And that has put them at odds, at times, with some of L.A. Unified’s rigid reading and math reforms, which call for all elementary school teachers to cover the same skills in essentially the same way.

Gero and his relatives say they veer from the script at times to meet the needs of their students who are still learning English. They do it, they say, because they’ve seen other ways of teaching.

Gero and his wife say they devote more time to writing projects and to meeting individually with their students to talk about writing assignments--two aspects they say aren’t emphasized enough in the school district’s reading program.

“We have done the research to see what works best for kids,” said Kim Gero, 27, who teaches at Sheridan Elementary. “We don’t have to just trust what [the school district] is telling us.”

By all accounts, the road to certification is steep and stressful. Candidates have to read loads of research about effective practices for teaching reading and other subjects. They have to analyze their own classroom practices, writing detailed reports on how they cover literacy, science and other disciplines. At the same time, they are required to videotape themselves in the classroom.

They meet with fellow candidates regularly to evaluate one another’s work, which is ultimately reviewed by panels of expert teachers from the national standards board, which oversees the certification process. The national teaching board was created in 1987 by a group of lawmakers, business executives, teachers union leaders and others to improve the work of teachers.

To become certified, teachers have to earn 275 points out of 400. Statewide, 516 teachers reached the goal in the 2000-01 school year.

Experts in teacher education view the lengthy certification process as a way to institutionalize skills crucial to academic success. They widely agree that experienced teachers are the strongest factor in lifting the achievement of students from poor families.

“It’s the one measure we have of truly accomplished expert teachers,” said Harvey Hunt, co-director of the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning in Santa Cruz. “This is the way we identify those folks.”

But taking it on can wreak havoc on the personal lives of teachers, what one expert called a process of “high risk and high stress.”

Stacy Garrett, a first-grade teacher at Granada Elementary School in Granada Hills who with her husband gained certification this year, likened the process to “giving birth.” She had to juggle work and studying with her duties as a mother of three children.

“I did not realize at the time how time-consuming it was,” she said. “By the end of it, I was emotionally drained. My friends were worried about me.”

Garrett, 41, and her husband, Robert, 37, took shifts making dinner and overseeing homework. She worked on her portfolio from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. He hopped on the computer from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m.

Sometimes, they asked family members to look after the children when they studied or went to long weekly meetings with other teachers.

“We did the best we could,” said Robert Garrett, a fifth-grade teacher at Chandler Elementary in Van Nuys.

The couple will save their bonus money for retirement and to make up lost time with the kids. They’re heading to Disneyland.

The seven Southland educators were among a record number of California teachers who became certified this year. Gov. Gray Davis, a champion of the program, said the financial incentives will continue even as other statewide educational programs face cutbacks or elimination. A spokeswoman for L.A. Unified Supt. Roy Romer said the reward money also is secure, at least through next year.

Teachers say the commitments from Davis and Romer will prompt others to seek the difficult certification, which is as rewarding as it is exhausting.

For Pam McPhee, a special-education teacher at Dyer Street Elementary in Sylmar, the certification was a logical step in a 14-year teaching career. She had always taken her profession seriously.

Her son, Marc, a teacher at Sylmar High School, sent her an e-mail message last week, telling her that he had passed. McPhee then checked her own scores on the Internet.

“The most beautiful words in the world are: ‘Congratulations, you are a nationally certified teacher,’ ” she said.