"There are only 14 in the state of New Hampshire, and to have one of the 14 is a great honor," Superintendent Dr. James Weiss said. "It has great portability."

Kikosicki applied for the special certification through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in April 2002 while she was a first-grade teacher in Pasadena, Calif. She didn’t get word of her award in early-childhood education until November, three months after she started at the Bakie School.

She said she learned a lot about herself and her teaching techniques while going through the certification process.

"It’s a huge honor," she said. "I had to create a portfolio by videotaping myself doing a few units in class such as reading, math, science. I had to evaluate the video and determine what I could have done differently."

It took Kikosicki two years to get her certification but she feels it was well worth it. For the certification she created a portfolio of videotaped lessons and evaluated her teaching based on various standards, such as maintaining a positive classroom environment, fostering literacy, student engagement, and ability to convey an understanding of a subject to students.

"Students always benefit from teachers constantly evaluating themselves," she said. "It’s really about students learning and how are you going to bring your practices and learning experiences back to students learning."

After completing a portfolio, Kikosicki had to complete six 30-minute tests about teaching techniques. For example, teachers would be given a question, such as "How would you create a lesson on dinosaurs in your classroom?" They would have to state how they’d address standards of literacy, student engagement, fairness, and child development, for example, through the lesson.

Kikosicki said these tests quizzed teachers on how well they know their subject areas. She even had to track two of her students throughout the course of the school year and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses from beginning to end.

After the process was finished, Kikosicki was able to alter her teaching techniques based on what she learned about herself in the certification process. One thing she learned was that she needed to better involve parents and community members in the students’ learning.

While in California she was able to start a homework help night at her school in which parents came in to talk about ways to get homework done at home and how to keep kids engaged. To promote literacy more in the classroom, she invited parents in as guest readers, not to teach, but to lead a small reading group of first-graders.

"It was challenging but I did it," Kikosicki said. "My fifth-graders thought it was really cool that I was getting an award."

After receiving her bachelor’s degree in sociology and her master’s degree in elementary education from Quinnipiac College in Hamden, Conn., she received national certification and now at the University of New Hampshire in Durham is going for a second master’s or Ph.D. in school administration and leadership.

"It’s always good to advance your career," she said. "I always knew I wanted to be a teacher. It’s always good to advance your skills. I think of teachers as life-long learners. There are so many aspects to education, and there is always more to learn."

Although Kikosicki has been named a National Board Certified Teacher, and began implementing new ideas into the classroom, she won’t be presented with the award until a conference in February in Washington, D.C.

Kikosicki hopes to form a group with the other 13 National Board Certified Teachers in New Hampshire and meet once a month, for example, to participate in professional development and bounce ideas off one another.

Kikosicki and her husband, Ken, a fourth-grade teacher in the Rochester School District, live in Portsmouth with their two dogs, Labrador Maggie and a wire-haired terrier Rocky.