My PAEMST Application Timeline

March 2011
My mentor, Steve Keith, nominates me for the 2011 Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science Teaching. This time, I acknowledge the nomination and register on the PAEMST application website. (When Steve Keith nominated me in 2009, I did not register. Luckily for me, Keith wasn't going to take "no" for an answer. In faux inductor terminology, his insistence was greater than my reluctance.)

March/April 2011
I complete the application with the assistance of Rio's Principal, Brian Ginter, my evaluating administrator, Vice Principal Vanessa Adolphson, my protégé (former student extraordinaire now physics teacher extraordinaire), Jesuit's Jessica Scheimer, my other mentor, Conceptual Physics author, Paul G. Hewitt, and my 2010-11 Physics students (especially videographer Amir Khazaieli and my 6th period class).

May 2011
I was sweating the finishing details of the application package as the news of Osama Bin Laden's demise was breaking. The bulky package was sent to Jim Miller at the California Department of Education for state review.

My participation in the process is now done. It is left to others to decide. This is also where I enter the realm of the unknown. When will the state decide who moves forward to national consideration? When will national winners be announced?

9 June 2011
I get a call from California's Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Torlakson, congratulating me on being one of three state finalists in science for the PAEMST. Total shocker! But I'm smooth and professional with the guy, acting as if I'm always ready to take a call from the State Sup and advise him as needed. But I was floating. The phone call occurred on the penultimate day of school, so seniors were done. And it happened as I was meeting Paul and Lillian Hewitt at the train station; they were in Sacramento for a brief visit.

Details in this Blog of Phyz post

Every Single Day From June 9, 2011 Through June 11, 2012
I wonder if I'll earn recognition as a national finalist. Yes: Every day. I'm not proud of that, but I'm not going to lie.

October 2011
The CSTA and CDE organize a nice awards breakfast as part of CSTA's conference in Pasadena. CDE's Jim Miller assures the awardees that this year's applications were unusually voluminous and unusually strong. Many otherwise excellent candidates had to be turned away.

February 2012
I am asked to grant permission to the Federal Bureau of Investigations National Name Check Program (FBI NNCP) so that they may verify my identity. No worries. I presumed (rightly or wrongly) that all state finalists had to submit to this level of scrutiny.

May 2012
I am asked to provide a head shot photo, a brief professional biography, a response to "What does the Presidential Award mean to you?," my cell phone number and whom PAEMST could share that number with. I begin work on this blog, but keep the blog under wraps.

5 June 2012
I am told to clear my calendar for the end of June to accommodate possible travel to Washington, DC.

11 June 2012
The announcement is made.

2013
I believe it.

Clever as I might think I am, I do not know where along the preceding timeline I should have presumed I was a national finalist. A long time passed between 9 June 2011 and late February 2012. I didn't really entertain the possibility until the May request for additional information. But my doubts remained alive and kicking. The 5 June notice killed many (though not all) those doubts.