SAN MARCOS – A program aimed at helping preteens scholastically has been given a big boost.

Yesterday, California State University at San Marcos opened a center that will expand its middle-school teacher training program.

"It's a big step up," said Professor Janet McDaniel, who started the middle-school program 11 years ago to bolster what has been called "the weak link" in education reform.

Her program is one of three in California dedicated to training teachers specifically for educating students in sixth through ninth grade, and one of an estimated three dozen programs nationally.

The center, financed by local philanthropies, gives her program its first permanent home.

The Gateway Center is a portable trailer-classroom at Woodland Park Middle School in the 13,000-student San Marcos Unified School District.

McDaniel wants her students to learn about preteens not on an adult-filled college campus, but in a real-life laboratory of local middle schools to allow teacher-trainees to see students, counselors and teachers in action. But she always had to borrow space, which has long been at a premium in North County's overcrowded schools.

Her program has received an estimated $260,000 in grants and donations from Gateway Computers, the Hamilton-White Foundation, the Parker Foundation, Price Charities and the Girard Foundation.

States require teachers of the nation's 50 million public school students to be licensed, but few require special training for them to earn credentials for the middle-school level.

To better reach middle-schoolers, McDaniel trains her students not just to teach but to understand how adolescents are changing.

Her students receive the standard 18-month program at Cal State San Marcos, which includes the required student-teaching in local schools before they can earn their state-issued license. McDaniel had been training about 25 teachers per year but now hopes to expand the number. She also plans to offer continuing education training to middle-school teachers.