Christina L. Speiser, of New Century Middle School, recently attended a seminar held at the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching (NCCAT), a national leader in professional development programs.

The center educates teachers and provides them with new knowledge, skills, teaching methods, best practices and information to take back to their classrooms, a news release said. It conducts interdisciplinary, content-specific seminars for pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers in the environmental and biological sciences, technology, humanities, arts, communication and health.