Four Snoqualmie Valley teachers have earned their National Board Certifications, more than doubling the number of teachers in the district who have reached certification status. 

The teachers — Mount Si High School’s Christine Kjenner and Tracy Petroske, Snoqualmie Middle School’s Ruth Huschle and Chief Kanim Middle School’s Meghan James — join Gayle Smith, Gerald Bopp and John Pinsker at the national certification table.

Certified teachers submit a stack of material, including a four-part portfolio and six exercises, relating to subject content and teaching. A national panel of peers assesses each application. 

Ruth Huschle began her teaching career during a Peace Corps journey to Botswana in the late 1980s. After teaching art at Snoqualmie Middle School for four years, Huschle pursued the certification because she felt like she “needed some professional development.” 

The certification, which costs $2,500 to apply, awards teachers an annual $5,000 bonus from Washington state and a chance to analyze their teaching stratagem. Teachers need to renew their certification every decade. 

It took Huschle a year and a half to gather video footage of her teaching, track the improvements of two students, showcase her work connecting her class with the community and chart her accomplishments, leadership and professional development.

“I’m just so glad it’s done,” Huschle said. “It’s a very rigorous process. I easily put over 250 hours into it.”

Huschle monitored two students’ progressions from a basic drawing of a still life to a personality-infused painted self-portrait. In addition to helping students, Huschle helped herself. 

“I learned to be more reflective about the lessons I planned and tried to become more engaged with the students as individuals,” Huschle said. “With our numbers as they are, there is so much opportunity to sit while the kids work and get to know them.”

English teacher Meghan James said she was thrilled to receive her board certification.

“I took tests in teaching reading, writing and analyzing literature,” James said. 

Surprisingly, James said the process transitioned her back into the role of a student. Exams were normally a breeze for her, James said. But the certification tests put James in the shoes of students who balk at the thought of extended response. 

“The tests we had to take were so incredibly stressful,” James said. “Getting so scared and stressed out taught me a lot about what some kids go through.”

The process even helped her examine her work with aligning the K-12 language arts curriculum at the district writing summit. 

Mount Si math teacher Christine Kjenner added the certification to her accomplishment of earning a master’s in math education and teaching for 24 years.

“I didn’t need this for any kind of certification,” Kjenner said. “I did it for my own challenge and my own professional growth.”

Kjenner thanked her mother-in-law for babysitting her 4-year-old son while she worked for hours on end analyzing her teaching style and her students’ progress.

“Everything that you do is to improve student learning,” Kjenner said. 

As a progressive math teacher, Kjenner tutors her students on a walk-in basis after school four days a week, connects math to the real world — she had an investment banker talk to her pre-calculus students — and contacts parents when her students score well on exams. 

“Usually, we call parents with bad news, but it’s important to send good news home,” Kjenner said.

Math teacher Tracy Petroske could not be reached for comment.

John Pinsker and Gayle Smith co-facilitated a workshop for the four teachers, reviewing the applicants’ portfolios and suggesting areas to strengthen. Once completed, the certification process counts toward ProCert clock hours, a yearly requirement for all teachers.

On a state level, 919 teachers across Washington earned their certification this year. Now, with 2,726 certified teachers, Washington ranks eighth in the nation for teachers with a national board certification to their name.

Studies have shown teachers with certification get positive results in the classroom. Students learning from certificated teachers tend to perform better on standardized tests compared to their peers learning from non-certificated teachers. Certified teachers are more likely to create engaging lesson plans, as well. 

“One thing I learned is it reinforced that I love teaching art,” Huschle said. “That it is definitely the place for me to be. I learned that I really enjoy middle school students.”