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(Sept. 17, 2012) – Several partnerships between North Georgia College & State University and area K-12 school systems are producing mutually beneficial results, including professional development opportunities, in a time of budget cuts and increasing demands for achievement.

This fall, North Georgia's School of Education expanded its model for training student teachers to the Lumpkin County School System. The first priority of the program is to provide field experience for North Georgia students, however, Pennie Fowler, principal of Lumpkin County Elementary School, said the program is a win-win situation beyond training new teachers and lowering student-teacher ratios.

Jamie Veatch, a student in the School of Education, goes over a reading lesson with students at Lumpkin County Elementary School.

"The partnership with North Georgia College & State University, to have them assisting us with professional development for our faculty and staff, is a great benefit," Fowler said, explaining that budget cuts eliminated her staff development funds. "I think the program is great. I feel like our interns and the university professors are part of us. They're not here in addition to us; they are part of our school."

North Georgia's professional development communities put university students and their professors in public schools in Lumpkin, Dawson, Forsyth and Hall counties in a two-year, full-immersion model that translates into at least 50 percent more field experience than is required for teacher certification. Student teachers even take their college courses at the public school, providing a more integrated experience that includes pre-planning activities and parent-teacher conferences.

Additionally, other university departments are providing opportunities for professional development to area educators through workshops.

This summer, Dr. Sherry Hix, assistant professor of math, and Dr. Dianna Spence, associate professor of math, conducted a workshop for Hall County's advanced-placement (AP) statistics teachers.  The workshop on facilitating authentic projects in statistics courses also was attended by school system administrators and had participants conduct their own statistics project.

“The workshop was targeted for teachers of AP statistics, which is offered as an option for high school students who can get credit for a college-level statistics course by making a satisfactory score on the AP exam at the end of the course,” Spence said. “As part of a highly innovative new program in Hall County, some of their most advanced eighth-grade students will also have the opportunity to take AP statistics."

Hix and Spence provided teachers with curriculum materials  developed through a National Science Foundation grant, led by Spence as principal investigator and Dr. Brad Bailey, assistant professor of math, as co-principal investigator.

In January, 20 teachers attended an economic education workshop hosted by Dr. John Scott, director of the Center for Economic Education in North Georgia’s Mike Cottrell School of Business. The workshop featured a powerful new software package developed by the Georgia Council on Economic Education and was presented by Glen Blankenship, the council's vice president of programming.

“Peer-reviewed research shows that the Georgia Council on Economic Education's workshops have boosted students' grades on the state's tests by as much as 30 percent of a standard deviation,” Scott said. “This improvement is highly substantive, given that workshops are much less expensive than government initiatives to improve education.”

The North Georgia Center for Economic Education is planning to offer another workshop in 2013.

In addition to professional development, North Georgia also has several initiatives that directly benefit students in area communities:

• North Georgia is working with school systems in Hall, Lumpkin and White counties to create a regional charter school focusing on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Last year, the project received $50,000 in Race to the Top Innovation funds for planning and designing the academy, which will target 400-600 students a year and is scheduled to open in August 2014 at North Hall High School.
• The Children and Nutrition Grant Project, written by six nursing faculty, has provided students with resources for nutrition and obesity education in the communities served by the university. The project has assembled health-teaching kits that are used by North Georgia nursing students to teach nutrition concepts to children in Lumpkin, Forsyth, and Hall counties, and has established ongoing projects in the community for nutrition education in children.
• The Department of Visual Arts' ArtStream students are working with high school students to create classroom curriculum about heirloom gardening. The project also uses research gathered by students minoring in Appalachian studies through the School of Education and the university's Georgia Appalachian Studies Center.