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Craig King - Director of Teacher Leadership Palmetto State Teachers Association
32 Plays1 year ago
Craig King, NBCT, is the Director of Teacher Leadership at Palmetto State Teachers Association and is among the few Black male educators to achieve National Board Certification. He continues to recruit men of color into the teaching profession across the country with the Call Me Mister program and is passionate about his home state of South Carolina! Listen to his National Board Journey
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Transcript
Introduction to Craig King
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everyone, welcome back to National Board Conversations. On this episode I got to speak with Craig King. He is among the few black male educators to achieve national board certification and continues to recruit men of color into the teaching profession across the country with the Call Me Mr. Program. He's super passionate about his home state of South Carolina. I hope you have as much fun as I did during this conversation. Here's my chat with Craig King.
Roles and Passion
00:00:22
Speaker
Hey Craig, thank you for taking the time. I appreciate you coming on the show.
00:00:26
Speaker
Eddie, thank you so much for having me. Excited to have a conversation with you about everything going on in my world. Yeah, man, it's been a while. We got together like my first like two weeks here at National Board, and then it hasn't been ever since, but I'm glad we got to reconnect. So you could give a brief intro yourself with your current role. Sure. So everybody, I'm Craig King. I'm director of teacher leadership with Palmetto State Teachers Association. I'm also the site coordinator for the Call Me Mr. Program at Columbia College here in Columbia, South Carolina.
00:00:56
Speaker
Love what I do. Love working with teachers. I'm also a keynote speaker. I do that as well. I do a lot of work in my community around children with cancer. I'm a pediatric cancer survivor, so I do a lot of work in that area as well. I absolutely love teaching. Families full of teachers.
00:01:15
Speaker
Um, and so Eddie, you know, I can keep going. I'm a teacher by parts. So you, I don't know. I didn't know how much of an intro you wanted, but that's pretty much about work. My work, work balance right there.
Southern Favorites and Music
00:01:25
Speaker
All right. So we're going to get into the personal side of you. What are your three favorite foods? Oh man. So is this a no judgment zone? No judgment, man. No, no judgment. Okay. All right. So favorite foods off the top. If you're from the South, this is a delicacy, bold peanuts without a doubt. And it has to be new crop.
00:01:45
Speaker
That is very important. Okay. Boiled peanuts makes a difference. Second, my dad, my late father came up with this really good recipe for chicken wings that he passed down to my brothers. I can make them for you all day, but I just can't tell you what's in, what's in it. Don't ask, Eddie, don't even ask.
00:02:05
Speaker
All right. Hey, I got you. I got you. And third, one of our family, one of our close friends, Lita Lindsey, she has a cupcake shop here in Columbia. She has two locations called Lita Streets. And her cupcakes are divine. Absolutely. And a little
00:02:26
Speaker
point of personal pleasure. If you go to her Facebook page, the first video ever posted was me tasting her cupcakes at her store. Oh, so you stand. You legit. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I can tell you about all the flavors. I can recommend all that good stuff for you. Yeah. All right. So what are the last three songs on your musical playlist?
Family Influence and Mentoring
00:02:46
Speaker
Oh, man. Three. All right. So Come Home, which is on
00:02:55
Speaker
Anderson Pax, a Ventura album, I believe, with Andre 3000. Okay. Black superhero, Robert Glasper. And a lot of people probably never heard this song. It's a song called Turnaround by the artist Donny. It's not Donny McClurkin. It's not him. It's just an artist, an R&B artist called Donny. He has a song called Turnaround. Really, really dope record.
00:03:21
Speaker
All right, last one. The one sports team that has your heart. And then if you're not a sports person, the one movie you can recite line for line. The San Francisco 49ers. Oh, usually you. Yeah. We took the L last week or two weeks ago. Um, but yeah, I've been a 49er fan since fourth grade. And a lot of people ask me, how do you become a 49er fan? Right. You know, so.
00:03:47
Speaker
Um, you know, being in South Carolina, we don't have professional teams. We've got the Panthers in the late nineties or whatever, but all of my professional teams that I like are spread out all over the country, but yeah, I'm a 49ers fan diehard. Okay. Okay. I respect that. I respect it. All right. Now we're going back to the classroom. So can you share why you became a
National Board Certification Journey
00:04:04
Speaker
teacher? Yeah. So, um, my, my family is full of teachers, but I remember in high school.
00:04:12
Speaker
Um, always looking up to my oldest brother, uh, Carlton, and he was, um, a computer science major. And I figured I'd just do what he was doing. Cause I just wanted to be like him and everything that I did. And, but in the back of my mind, I knew that I loved working with kids. Like all, it always brought me joy. And so that solidified for my senior high school, uh, coach Michael Hanes, my ag teacher, he made me project lead for.
00:04:38
Speaker
a program called Project for Pals, and I mentored a third grade student by the name of Sterling. And at the completion of that, my senior year at the mentor in Sterling for a year, it was solidified that I wanted to be a teacher. So that's really the moment that really made me dedicate my life to education, even though I knew I should have been a teacher or even thinking about it before then. But yeah, that experience with Sterling and Project for Pals, my senior year in high school, definitely.
00:05:06
Speaker
That's cool. That's cool. So what puts you to pursue national board certification? So it's interesting, Eddie. I think a lot of national board teachers might have a similar story. Now with social media being prevalent, maybe not so much. But at the time, I knew nothing about national board. I had a colleague, a fellow teacher of mine,
00:05:30
Speaker
Miss Mary Robinson who came to me one day and she said, Craig, you need to be a national board certified teacher. You need to pursue this. And being a young teacher, I was a sponge. I was a sponge. And I said, okay, I'll do it. Still not knowing anything about it. I said, yeah, I'll do it. And so that's what guided me to pursue national board certification. And I still say this to this day,
00:05:56
Speaker
the best piece of, not even piece, the best professional development that I've ever taken part of without a doubt. So what was your journey like? Did you achieve on your first try? So interesting, Eddie, I don't know if you have heard the ancient tales of the take one process, have you? No, I haven't. Okay, all right. So early on, there was a part of national board where, called take one, where you could take one of the four components
00:06:26
Speaker
and work on that for a year. And so I went through the take one process. And at the time, if you scored a certain mark, you could bank that score towards the rest of the portfolio entry. And so I went through that process. So I made a score that was bankable. So I banked that score. And then the next year I went and completed the other three components along with the testing center. And so in essence, I got it on my first try. It just took me two years to get if that makes sense.
00:06:55
Speaker
It's better to take your time and get it right than rushing get it wrong. Yeah, so I and I did it early I did it when I was eligible I just completed three years of teaching I didn't take one process and
00:07:08
Speaker
The support was great. I remember Take One was really big at that time. My district was going through it with a lot of other districts. National Board sent like this big camera crew down to my school and interviewed me and some other people that were taking part in the Take One process in my district. It was a really cool experience. So what was the most helpful coaching conversation or resource or advice you received while you was going through it?
00:07:34
Speaker
Yeah, I'll go back to Mary Robinson, who was a National Board teacher, and she always shared with me, Craig, be yourself. One of the biggest parts of the process was the reflective part.
00:07:45
Speaker
and you want to be able to look at what you're currently doing and being able to reflect on that and seeing what you can do better. And so I went into the process not looking to create the perfect lesson. And another thing that put me at ease too is when she shared with me, these are other teachers that are going to be looking at your portfolio. And I think that's a unique part of the national board process where you understand that
00:08:14
Speaker
there are other teachers viewing your portfolio entry. And so the things that happen in the videos and the writing, they can relate to, and they know what to look for, and they know how to judge it fairly. So yeah, that was the best advice I think I've received.
Impact of Certification and Networking
00:08:30
Speaker
So how did achievement push you in your career, push you on in your career? How much time do you have? We can go all day. So much.
00:08:40
Speaker
Again, I think about the opportunities that National Board provided me with take one being so early and then the limited number of minorities that had achieved certification at that time. And even if we look at just minorities in the education field period, especially men. So there was a section of National Board that they created called the Dream Team and it stood for direct recruiting efforts
00:09:07
Speaker
to attract minorities. And so with the Dream Team, I was able to connect with so many different other minorities from across the country. Off the top of my head, I'm thinking about Penny Piper out in Texas. I don't know if you know Penny, but she's amazing. I connected with her over a decade ago, and we're still friends to this day, and some other minorities across the country. Hubert Willoughby, who I worked with, and some other projects that I'll share in a second. But so the Dream Team was great.
00:09:34
Speaker
It exposed me to different things. I remember going to the conference, the national conference in DC. And there is, there may or may not be a video on YouTube with me being interviewed with no hair, talking about the team in DC. I'm just saying, if anybody wants to search for that video, it may or may not be on YouTube.
00:09:54
Speaker
It hadn't been taken down yet. So that's the first thing. The second thing, Thurgood Marshall College Fund, I was able to be a consultant with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund because for a period of time, they were connecting their retention program with the national board process. And so myself, Dr. Will Parker, who is my mentor, Hubert Willoughby, who's a educator in the DMV area, national board teacher, and Ronald Jules, who's a music educator down in Florida,
00:10:24
Speaker
for about three or four summers at different HBCUs across the country, we would work with the TQRP program with Thurgood Marshall College Fund, preparing these young teachers to go through the national board process, providing intense professional development. And that's all because of the opportunities national board provided me. And so, and the last thing I'll share, because I know we don't have all day, even though you said we do, I know, I understand. The last thing I'll share with you,
00:10:52
Speaker
the component of filming myself revolutionize how I taught my students. So I always use drama and role-playing in my instructional work and my strategies with my students. My mom was a high school drama teacher. I tell people all the time, I think when I was born, I had a manuscript in my hand. I'm pretty sure I did. Cause she always had us in church plays, community plays, dinner theaters, all of these things.
00:11:21
Speaker
And so it was natural for me to incorporate that into the classroom. And so when I did National Board, recording myself and actually looking at myself in the classroom did something for me as a teacher. It gave me immediate feedback on things that I thought I was doing, but maybe not really that well. And then things that I was doing really well. And so in conjunction with, I remember my student teacher at the time, Mr. Andre Moss, we decided
00:11:49
Speaker
How about if we use that same model to have our students role play the standards, but we record them doing it. So they get that real feedback in showing them that they're learning a standard that I'm trying to teach them. And it was transformational. We even came up with a name for Eddie. It was called Filming Friday. So every Friday we would do Filming Friday where the kids would role play.
00:12:13
Speaker
and the standards that I taught them for the week. And it was totally transformational. So I give a lot of credit to National Board Certification for the work that I'm doing now and the teacher that I became. No, that's really cool.
Belief in National Board's Mission
00:12:27
Speaker
Like one thing I hear speaking to teachers is this is a process of not just for you, but your students as well. Like it's also incorporating them
00:12:36
Speaker
makes it easier on yourself to get it done. And that's really cool how it became a thing for y'all. Like every Friday, filming Friday, it's pretty dope. So why do you believe in the mission of the National Board? So when I look at the mission of National Board and to advance the teaching profession and teaching and learning specifically, it is crucial that teachers that want that extra push, that extra level of
00:13:07
Speaker
affirmation and validation of the work that they're doing, that there's a process in place for that. And National Board provides that opportunity. And so whenever we can have our students in front of someone that has gone through a process like National Board, our educational system is better because of it. And so because I believe in that, I think here in South Carolina, we are total believers in the National Board certification process.
00:13:35
Speaker
even to the fact of not just our South Carolina National Board Network, which I'm a part of, but also within our school districts. You see many school districts that offer tons of support for their national board teachers and recognition and additional district supplements as it relates to national board certification because they understand that process is not a box you check. It is a process. It's a reflective process.
00:14:02
Speaker
It's an investigative process for that teacher to go and be and dive deep into what they do every day as a teacher and as a learner. And so the mission of the National Board process is near and dear to my heart because I want to make sure that our students get the best of the best. And I know National Board provides our students with that.
National Board Stipend in South Carolina
00:14:23
Speaker
So you just touched on it. South Carolina recently reinstated the national board stipend across the state. Can you talk about the impact that we're going to have that's going to have on students and teachers across the state? Oh, it's transformational. If you look at our state data, you'll be able to see that our national board teachers have a higher retention rate in our classrooms. They decide to stay. They want to stay.
00:14:48
Speaker
and national board to support the supplement at the state level is a big part of that. But the most important thing about national board certification and any national board teacher will tell you this, the impact on student achievement is monumental. The success that our students have because they are in the classroom with a national board teacher is so crucial. So now to have that state support of it, we are so appreciative. And so we understand that
00:15:18
Speaker
you know, coming out of the pandemic, it's really important that we do our best to catch our students up on anything that they may have lost. And we know that national board teachers can assist with bridging that gap that may have occurred. And if you saw in South Carolina, we have there's webinars through the Sarah Center. If you want some information on it, be sure to check those out. We'll link to those in the show notes of this. Yeah, for sure. So Sarah dot org, make sure you connect with them.
00:15:48
Speaker
And the cool thing about South Carolina and the support system, so you have sarah.org, but it's- S-C-E-R-R-A. S-A-R-A-H-R-A is C-E-R-R-A, the Center for Educated Recruitment, Retention, and Advancement in South Carolina. And so with those partnerships, you have the South Carolina National Board Network, which we have members that we provide
00:16:18
Speaker
some support as well with Sarah in conjunction with Sarah. So the South Carolina National Board Network currently is still free for any National Board teachers to join. So you can email us at South Carolina SC National Board Network at gmail.com and we can provide that information for you.
Diversity in Teaching
00:16:35
Speaker
Okay. Okay. So you are in the 2% of black male educators. Why is it essential for more black men to consider becoming educators?
00:16:44
Speaker
So you probably can't, I'm gonna stand up, not stand up, let you see my shirt real quick. So I'm the site coordinator for Call Me Mr. Program, which is a program when it started in 2000, its intention was to recruit more black and brown men into our elementary, just got elementary classrooms and that since expanded to K-12. But being in that 2%, it's not a badge of honor.
00:17:13
Speaker
It really isn't because yes, I'm happy I'm in a number, right? I'm glad that I'm impacting change in education, but that number obviously should be a lot higher because our educational system, the beauty of our educational system only, it can be more successful when all students, not just black students, but black, white, Hispanic, Latino, whatever, receive
00:17:44
Speaker
an equitable amount of instruction from a diverse population of teachers. And so the increase on Black male teachers in the classroom is only to the benefit of our educational system. So yes, that 2% is totally essential for more young men to be in the classroom. And when we have state level support for National Board in the form of a state supplement,
00:18:11
Speaker
That helps dispel the myth that you can't have a long life teaching or long career in education and be compensated for it. So we are always pushing for that support on the state level. Yeah, we got to give some prestige to being an educator. There's real pride in being a teacher. Absolutely. I'm not just an educator. I am an educator. I'm a professional. And I should be treated as such. Exactly.
Elevator Pitch for Teaching
00:18:41
Speaker
All right, so if you had to sell the teaching profession to someone looking to get into it in one to two minutes, what would you use as your elevator pitch? I would start with this. Capture, inspire, then teach. Four words that I learned from Dr. Steven Peters, who became my mentor, even though he didn't realize it. And it coincided with everything that I believed in life, capturing people when I meet them, inspiring them with a story,
00:19:10
Speaker
and then teaching them something they didn't know. And as a teacher, you get to do that every single day. So come join me. That's my pitch. OK, OK. You want to be a teacher now? And you say you get more convincing each time. I'm like, I keep thinking, man, I might become a teacher soon. That's right. Yeah, that's my elevator pitch. And it wasn't even a minute long. All right, so who's your favorite fictional teacher, TV or movie?
00:19:38
Speaker
Man, this is so hard. There's still no judgment zone, right? No, no judgment. So I'm going to go with Mr. Clark from Lean on Me. OK. So a lot of people look at his approach and whatever. But if you look at the intentionality of everything that he did is because he wanted the best for those students.
00:20:01
Speaker
He truly loved those students. And so, yeah, I would say Mr. Clark. Yeah, he took the approach he needed to in the situation. It was certain to that situation. Yeah, for sure. And it's a culture classic movie, too. I mean, this is a classic movie. Very true.
Restaurant Recommendations
00:20:16
Speaker
So what are three restaurants that folks should try when visiting South Carolina? Yeah, I'm all about promoting the home, the home state, and especially people I know.
00:20:28
Speaker
Leader's Treats, I already talked about that in my opening, right? Leader's Treats, you need dessert wherever you go to eat. So if you come to Columbia, she has a location in Northeast Columbia and then Northwest Columbia. So Leader's Treats for the Cupcakes. My cousin Jeffrey has three restaurants. It's called Jeffrey Lampskin's Country Boy Kitchen.
00:20:51
Speaker
He has two restaurants or something and one in Bentonsville, in Bishopville, I'm sorry. And then Kiki's Chicken and Waffles. You can't go wrong with Chicken and Waffles. She has two locations here in Columbia. So those are the three restaurants I would say definitely check out. Okay, okay.
Shoulder Tap Nomination
00:21:05
Speaker
So we have a feature on the podcast called the shoulder tap. Just like you, we're shoulder tapped. We're going to have you shoulder tap someone else here on the podcast.
00:21:15
Speaker
You'll give them a, but on here, you'll give them a quick shout out and we will encourage them to go through the process through promotional tweets and stuff like that. So Craig, who are you shoulder tapping? I am going to show the tap. Mr. Xavier Spann. He's a special ed teacher in Richland school district two at molar road middle school, a phenomenal educator, graduate of coastal Carolina university.
00:21:40
Speaker
I was a mister there with the Call Me Mr. Program. He's on my advisory council for my Columbia College cohort, a good friend of mine, and I think he would be phenomenal. OK, Xavier, we should see you up. That's right. You're up, Xavier. All right, so where can everyone find you on social media?
Social Media and Website
00:21:59
Speaker
Yeah, so Instagram and Twitter is CQKing. Facebook is CraigQKing. You know, my website is
00:22:09
Speaker
CraigKittenGroup.com. And so would love to connect with you in any way I can. All right. Thanks, Craig. I appreciate you taking the time. All right, Eddie. Appreciate it. Thanks.
00:22:20
Speaker
That was fun to catch up with Craig. We'll link to some of the stuff he talked about in the show notes. I want to thank him again for taking the time to chat with me on the podcast and thank you for listening to National Board Conversations. Be sure to subscribe wherever you find the podcast and follow the National Board on social media to stay connected to all news National Board related. And we'll see you next time.