FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE N.R. #82, 1/11/00 REVISED

 Date: January 11, 2000
Contact: Irene Cromer
(703)791-8720

Five Prince William County Public Schools teachers have earned certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, an independent, non-profit organization governed by classroom teachers, school administrators, school board leaders, governors and state legislators, higher education officials, teacher union leaders and business and community leaders.   Cynthia Baird, mathematics teacher, Brentsville District Middle/High School; Blake Nicolai, alternative education teacher, New Dominion Middle School; Lyndy VanHoutan, gifted education teacher, Marshall Elementary School; Jennifer Rhawn, mathematics teacher, Brentsville District Middle/High School and Karen Mirkovich, first and second grade teacher, Marshall Elementary School, were recognized for meeting a set of standards established by the National Board that define the knowledge, skills and accomplishments that comprise teaching excellence.

The mission of the National Board is to establish high and rigorous standards for what accomplished teachers should know and be able to do; to develop a national voluntary system to assess and certify teachers who meet these standards; and to advance related education reforms to improve student learning in American schools.  The standards support a vision of teaching based on five core propositions, which are: 1) teachers are committed to students and their learning; 2) teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students; 3) teachers are responsible for managing and monitoring student learning; 4) teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience; and 5) teachers are members of learning communities.

According to VanHoutan, the five worked as a team and felt if one of them did not attain board certification, then their achievement would be diminished.  “There is no way possible that we could go through this rigorous process and not be a better teacher,” VanHoutan said.  Normally the certification requirements take two years to complete,  but this team completed them in a year.  Part of the assessment process involved the teachers videotaping and analyzing their students.  Since the students were a large part of the process, they share in their teachers’ joy in achieving board certification, VanHoutan said.  To express their gratitude, the National Board certified teachers plan to host a reception for former students.

Cynthia Baird
Cynthia Baird, a 1988 graduate of Woodbridge High School, earned a degree in mathematics from Virginia Tech in 1993.  She began her career at Brentsville District Middle/High School in 1993.  Baird was assistant coach of the girls' varsity soccer team in 1995-96 and head coach during the 1997-98 school year.  She has taught AP computer science, AP calculus and geometry and has been the school's math department chairman since 1996.  She conducts after-school inservices for teachers and is on the program for the Northern Virginia regional conference of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, slated for February 2000.  Baird earned her master's degree in teaching from George Mason University in August 1998.  She began the national certification process in October of 1998 and attained National Board Certification in the area of Adolescence and Young Adulthood/Mathematics on November 19, 1999.

Karen Mirkovich
Karen Mirkovich, a native of New Hampshire, received a Bachelor of Science degree in Education from the University of Portland, Oregon, and a master's in elementary curriculum design from the University of Southern California.  An educator for 22 years, she has been a teacher for Prince William County Public Schools since 1990.  Currently, she teaches first and second grades at Marshall Elementary School.

Earlier, Mirkovich taught in a variety of school districts across the county, as well as for the Department of Defense Education Activity Overseas Schools in Germany, England and Greece.  She has taught preschool through grade five.
As a member of the school division’s instructional support team from 1996-1998, Mirkovich provided staff development for teachers throughout the county.  She has been a member of the county curriculum writing teams in science, math and technology.  In 1998, Mirkovich represented Prince William on a team of educators from the United States selected to present at the Second Annual China/United States Educational Conference in Beijing.  With a colleague from Marshall Elementary, Mirkovich presented a session entitled "Education of Primary Students for a Changing Global Society."  As a result of the visit, a partnership was developed between Marshall and a primary grade Chinese school. Mirkovich has been a clinical faculty member for the Professional Development Schools model in association with George Mason University. Through this program, she has mentored interns who are entering the teaching profession.

Blake Nicolai
After attending Prince William County elementary, middle and high schools, Nicolai graduated from Mary Washington College in May of 1993 with a BA in political science and a license to teach secondary social studies in Virginia.  In May of 1998 she received a master's degree in New Professionalism from George Mason University.  Nicolai was Prince William County's 1999 Agnes Meyer Outstanding Teacher and the 1999 Prince William County Teacher of the Year.  She earned National Board certification in Early Adolescence/English Language Arts.

Nicolai began her career in education in 1993 in the Fairfax County Office for Children. In 1994, she began teaching in Prince William County at the Alternative Education Center West, which has since been reorganized and renamed New Dominion Middle School. At New Dominion, she has been deeply involved in building the school's library and strengthening its reading and writing programs.  For the past three years, her class has volunteered twice a month at the Birmingham Green Assisted Living Facility in Manassas.  She has led New Dominion's math and science competition teams at Kings Dominion's Math and Science Field Day since 1995.  The team has earned a number of ribbons and won an overall first place trophy in last spring's competition.  Nicolai is currently leading efforts to make New Dominion Middle School the county's first Character Counts school.  Nicolai is the daughter of  fellow National Board certified teacher Lyndy VanHoutan.

Jennifer Rhawn
Jennifer Rhawn was born in Toms River, New Jersey.  She attended the University of Virginia, where she earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics and a Master of Teaching in Secondary Mathematics in the spring of 1995.  Rhawn moved to Northern Virginia and began teaching at Brentsville District Middle/Senior High School in the fall of 1995.  She conducts after-school inservices for teachers and is junior class sponsor at Brentsville.  Rhawn served on the team that developed critical attributes for the mathematics curriculum.  Each year, she presents at two conferences of the Battlefield Virginia chapter of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.  She is also on the program for the Northern Virginia regional conference of NCTM in February 2000.  This year Rhawn served as a trainer for the Clemson Algebra Project, sponsored by CASIO and Clemson University.  She obtained her National Board certification in Adolescence and Young Adulthood/Mathematics

Lyndy VanHoutan
VanHoutan began her teaching career in 1972 in a tiny school in Harrodsberg, Kentucky.  Following her husband around the globe, she has taught in public, private and Department of Defense schools both in the United States and overseas.  She became a cooperating SIGNET teacher of the gifted in 1980, and has been a resource teacher in the Prince William County Gifted Program since 1993.  Prior to joining the gifted staff, she taught fourth and fifth grade at Pattie, Henderson and Montclair elementary schools.  She currently runs the Marshall Gifted Center at Thurgood Marshall Elementary.

VanHoutan received her AA degree from Stephens College, a BA in Education from the Baptist College at Charleston, and a master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction from George Mason University.  She also holds a state endorsement for Gifted Education and has completed the technology endorsement as well. A frequent presenter of workshops at both the county and state levels, VanHoutan currently serves as chairman of school and division level gifted identification/placement committees and has actively coordinated numerous curriculum writing projects for the gifted program.  In 1999, she was named an Outstanding Teacher of the Gifted by the Northern Virginia Counsel for Gifted Education.