Preston Teacher Earns National Board Certification

By Kathy Plum, The Dominion Post, Morgantown, W.Va.

Dec. 24–KINGWOOD — It took Preston County’s first National Board Certified Teacher years to find her calling, but she never lacked a passion for education.

It’s hard to believe as she sits now in a classroom at Tunnelton-Denver Elementary that Valerie Carlsen ever considered another career, she looks so much at home among the egg carton paint palettes, stacks of colored paper and boxes of markers.

She asks the fourth-graders to trace around a hand and explains, "What I’m going to do is introduce you to the idea of shading."

Puzzlement shows on some faces, and Carlsen asks them why one person’s hair isn’t all the same color. Understanding dawns.

"I know," the girl said. "It’s because of the way the light hits it."

From there the lesson speeds up, as Carlsen shows them how to shade from dark to light, imagining the sun or a light bulb is shining on one side of the hand.

"When you get done, that hand is going to look like it’s coming off the page at you," Carlsen said.

The students scatter to tables to start their work. But despite her ease in the classroom, this wasn’t Carlsen’s first career.

Before entering education at the age of 40, she worked five years as a transcriptionist at Ruby Memorial Hospital, was graphic arts and printing supervisor for Rockwell International, taught ballroom dancing in Pennsylvania, freelanced as an artist, was a secretary and sold aluminum siding, "badly."

"I’ve always been in the arts, and I’ve always loved school," Carlsen said. "I had a tremendous number of [credit] hours, and I finally got my BFA."

She followed that with a master’s in education from WVU and began teaching art in Preston County Schools 18 years ago. Carlsen said she pursued national certification for the challenge.

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards is an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan and nongovernmental organization. Nearly 64,000 teachers nationwide have earned National Board certification, according to the group’s Web site.

West Virginia ranks 26th nationally in the number of teachers who achieved certification, with 359 certified. Wood County has the most, 59. Monongalia County has 16, according to the NBPT.

Carlsen is Preston County’s first teacher certified by the board. Terra Alta/East Preston Principal Jeanne Gren also holds the honor but earned it while working in Monongalia County.

Carlsen estimated she spent 300-400 hours last year on the process. Teachers must analyze their methods and write about them, then send the writing to be examined by another teacher — in this case to Florida — to be critiqued. She also had to videotape classes and analyze them.

"You actually look at every single thing you do as a teacher and why you do it and how you do it," Carlsen said. "It’s a different kind of writing when you analyze. It’s not about you and about how great you are. It’s about what you do in the classroom."

"You probably do as much work as if you were going to get a doctorate," said Preston Superintendent John Lofink, who worked with Carlsen when he was principal of Aurora School, where she also teaches. Lofink encouraged her to obtain the certification.

"She was a special person to a number of people," Lofink said, by connecting with middle school students at Aurora, "and helping them see where they were going with their lives."

He said Carlsen recognizes talent in students who might not have bloomed otherwise, and is good at integrating science and other classes with art.

"Art history and history are no different," Carlsen said. She told the story of a journalist who watched the fall of the Twin Towers in New York City and was completely demoralized until he entered a small art gallery "and it renewed his belief that there were good and beautiful things and people would recover from this tragedy. I just think it’s very powerful."

Her passion for education and art are a perfect merge, Carlsen said.

"As an educator, I think that art is a way to learn about anything else in the world," Carlsen said.

Through the years, for example, she has led her students in building a nearly life-sized hacienda of cardboard and wood, along with a one-dimensional Alamo, to build on Spanish and history lessons.

Carlsen believes in educators. When she was honored by the Preston County Board of Education, she told them you truly don’t understand anyone else’s job until you do it. Now that she has done it, she said, it is the perfect job for her.

"I love being in the classroom with children," Carlsen said. "I think that teachers are amazing people, and I’m proud to be one."

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