Editor's note: Part 2 of a 4-day series

At Northern Arizona University's teachers' college, good enough isn't good enough.

NAU trains aspiring teachers as well as experienced ones, traditionally and as their schedules allow.

For the latter, the Arizona K-12 Center can be a major resource. The Phoenix-based center, an arm of NAU's College of Education, offers short-form courses and workshops to more than 500 teachers per year statewide on topics ranging from technology in the classroom to teacher leadership.

This kind of training is key to the Obama administration's call for quality teachers, said Kathy Wiebke, the K-12 Center's director.

"The single most influencing factor in student achievement is the quality of the teacher. That's been proven over and over again," she said. "And the way teachers move their practice forward and the way they get better is through professional development, ongoing professional development."

TRAINERS SEEKS DEPTH, QUALITY

Wiebke said she always wanted to be a career teacher, and for years that's what she was, teaching fifth grade in the Phoenix area. She was Arizona's first teacher to achieve national board certification — a certification she maintains, even after joining the K-12 Center to focus on providing professional development for all Arizona teachers.

"I really have yet to meet a teacher that wants to be mediocre," she said. "I think teachers want to be the best they can be and what they lack oftentimes is access to quality professional development."

Wiebke said professional development is often at the expense of teachers themselves, and they don't get enough time to take advantage of it. The K-12 Center relies on grant and state funds, though more of the latter. It subsidizes training courses to make them more affordable. It reaches out to Arizona State University and University of Arizona as well.

In February, Stanford University and the National Staff Development Council, a nonprofit that promotes teacher development and school improvement, released a study saying that professional development in America needs to be sustained, intense, and placed in the context of a real, practical day — but currently, it's not. It's fragmented and isolated, with little follow-up after brief workshops.

Wiebke agreed that until the educational culture shifts toward a greater investment in more intense professional development — something she said the K-12 Center provides as a rule, not the exception — training will continue to be splintered.

VARIETY OF PROGRAMS

At NAU's Mountain Campus, teachers can sharpen their skills through traditional courses offered as part of a graduate program or for enrichment, summer workshop opportunities, and quick-hit activities that can last a day or less, either as part of an organized conference or brief training tailored for a nearby school district.

Online courses are also available, which NAU education dean Daniel Kain said can be as effective as in-person formats if the student is engaged.

Kain said there has been a push to make professional development more systemic in Arizona. He agreed that some teachers just don't have the time. Tradition and leadership that doesn't highly value development can also affect teacher access to further development.

That continued learning, however, is vital for educators.

"One of my mentors when I was beginning to teach put it well: It's OK to teach for 20 years; it's just not OK to teach one year 20 times," said Kain, who previously taught middle and high school. "We need to grow."

SOME THINGS OUT OF TEACHERS' CONTROL

NAU strives to produce good, adaptable beginning teachers, Kain said, with the idea that they will mature and become stronger as they build up professional experience.

Tied to that is a goal that children will be successful, thanks to their teachers.

He said NAU places a heavy emphasis on "pre-service" field experience, which not every teachers' college necessarily does. But even prepared new graduates can find significant challenges, depending on where they go after they collect their diplomas. So what looks like sub-par teacher quality, when seen in terms of student achievement, can be much more complicated and go beyond teachers.

"I'm not trying to skirt our responsibility… but we also recognize that this is a pretty complex venture we're after," Kain said.

Some schools are orderly, led by bright administrators and supported by parents who stress learning and high goals. Other schools have apathetic leaders and parents, are physically unsafe, and are generally disorderly- that gives students cues that little is expected of them.

"Take the same well-prepared teacher but put them into those different contexts and imagine the different results they're going to get," Kain said. "That's the reality that our graduates face. Some are going into schools that are powerful learning organisms that have worked hard and have great leaders and others are going into sites that have traditions that the community has not supported (education), or the school does not have strong leadership and as a result the whole ethic of learning is quite a different thing."

Teachers and students also face certain obstacles in getting a child even up to "grade level." English-language learners and disabled students in special education can rewrite the definition of "grade level," Kain said, although his students are given opportunities to further study techniques to use with those students.

NAU FEELING PREPARED

Kain said everybody loves the "teacher hero" movies, where one dedicated educator bucks the system and turns around lives. But as warm and fuzzy as they are, isolated instances of the saintly teacher don't change the bigger, culturally and traditionally steeped picture.

Not for lack of ideals, however.

"I don't think a single person graduates to be a teacher and says, 'I'm going out there because it's going to be easy.' They want to make a difference in kids' lives," Kain said. "But you put them in a position where they may or may not feel respected and valued, and over time when people feel kind of second-class for what they do that's a de-motivator. That's a powerful de-motivator."

But overall, Kain said, NAU offers innovative, field-intensive plans of study that well-prepare its teacher corps for the concept of lifelong learning and to answer the calls for reform.

"NAU works to prepare educators who are able to adapt and innovate — it's in our core beliefs," he said. "I think such educators could do well in the future the president has outlined."

Hillary Davis can be reached at hdavis@azdailysun.com or 556-2261.

On the Web: Arizona K-12 Center: www.azk12.org Professional Learning in the Learning Profession (National Staff Development Council/Stanford University): www.nsdc.org/news/NSDCstudytechnicalreport2009.pdf

NAU College of Ed at a glance

Enrollment: 5,000-5,500 (approximate; undergraduate and graduate combined)

Graduates: About 1,000 in spring 2009

Degrees offered: Bachelor's degrees in elementary education, early childhood education, career and technical education, dual degrees in special and elementary or secondary education; master's degrees in community counseling, school psychology, school counseling, student affairs, human relations, school leadership, community college, bilingual education, multicultural education, educational technology, special education, early childhood education, elementary education, secondary education, career and technical education; doctoral degrees in educational leadership, curriculum and instruction, educational psychology. See more at http://coe.nau.edu/academics

Grad success: The professional knowledge portion of the state licensing exam for pre-service teachers: 93 percent of elementary students passed first try, as did 97 percent of secondary education candidates. (Most recent test.)

On the Web: http://home.nau.edu/coe