Rising up: Beechwood PreK-5
Building a school on trust:
Creating conditions for success at Beechwood

2019 | Written by Faith Schantz, Report Editor

The job of “teacher” seems to get harder every year. On the one hand, teachers are critically important to students’ success. Research shows that of all the aspects of schooling that affect students, the quality of the teacher is the most significant. On the other hand, most teachers have little to no say in what they teach, who their principal is, or how their students’ achievement is measured. And yet, when things go wrong, from disappointing test scores to the “failure” of a school, teachers are usually the first to be blamed.

Often, the principal makes the difference in how teachers feel when they check in each morning, and also in how well they perform. A principal’s actions establish the level of professionalism in a building, and his or her beliefs and attitudes set the tone. How does a principal create a supportive work environment where teachers can excel?

One school where teachers consistently post high levels of job satisfaction and high levels of job performance is Pittsburgh Beechwood PreK-5. In 2018-19, on the district’s annual “Teaching and Learning Conditions” survey, 97% of Beechwood’s teachers reported that their school was “a good place to work and learn,” 8 points higher than the district’s K-5 average. Over the past five years, the percentage of Beechwood teachers who performed at the “Distinguished” level was much higher than the district overall, with Beechwood ranging from 71-100% at the top level, compared to an average of 51-65% for Pittsburgh teachers overall.

Principal Sally Rushford describes Beechwood as “family-oriented.” Perched on a hill in Beechview, the school serves both the neighborhood, which includes a Latino community, and students who enroll in its regional English as a Second Language program.

When Rushford describes working with teachers, she talks about trust. “I’m a teacher, and I trust teachers,” she says, “and I try to build the school on that trust.” Trust can be just a word, of course. But Rushford’s actions—making decisions collaboratively, providing teachers with what they need, and approaching evaluation from a positive stance—demonstrate the trust she has in her staff. Speaking of teachers, she says, “I’m assuming you’re a professional first, and that you can make professional decisions about your students…We are here for the good of the students and I trust you’re going to do your very best for that to happen. And then,” she adds, “people do.”

As Rushford describes it, the work of teaching is supported by the conversations that take place in and around the classroom; the thinking, planning, and problem solving that fill up the interstices of the school day. For example, in weekly meetings of the instructional leadership team—made up of Rushford, a teacher from each grade level, the counselor, and the academic literacy coach—teachers’ learning needs emerge. The group “is looking at the overall needs, we’re designing the school improvement plan, and then we’re looking at what kind of professional development we’re going to need to make that a reality,” Rushford says. Rather than making solitary decisions from the principal’s office, she says that when new instructional challenges arise in the school, “we’re really facing them first of all as a team.”

As sensible as it may sound to match professional development to classroom needs and to leverage the skills of a team, it’s not the norm. Research from districts across the country shows that professional development offerings for teachers often miss the mark, and Pittsburgh is no exception. According to the district’s 2017-2022 Strategic Plan, teachers are unhappy with the content and delivery of the instructional support they receive. For their part, principals don’t always know what professional development their teachers have participated in, or how it connects to their work. Teachers reported wanting “job-embedded” opportunities that respond to the challenges they’re actually facing.

To address this, the superintendent has instituted “Professional Learning Communities” (PLCs), which allow teachers at the same grade level, or within the same content area, to collaborate. Rushford says, “It has been a real strength.” But even before PLCs were mandated, Beechwood teachers looked to one another as their first line of support. Rather than closing their doors, teachers are in and out of each other’s classrooms. “The teachers here provide each other with professional development,” Rushford says. Her teachers hold themselves to a high standard, and they hold one another accountable for results, she says, noting that accountability is built into the team approach. “When you work in a team and you have people who are pulling, you’re going to pull, too.”

Some of the conversations have been about students’ learning behavior, including how to get students to talk more during class discussions, and how students can have “deeper experiences” of problem solving in math. Others are about assessment data. Three times a year, the staff has “data meetings” that Rushford calls “probably the core of our organization.” Along with assessments the district requires, teachers study data from assessments Rushford and her staff have chosen because of the kinds of information they can provide. One-on-one assessments, computer-based tests, quarterly tests, and grades help determine, for example, what kinds of interventions students need and whether or not they’re working.

Rushford attends some PLC meetings to get a sense of the challenges teachers are facing, and then visits classrooms to see what’s going on. She prefers casual opportunities for coaching. “I find that the most effective kinds of movement are in the most informal kinds of conversations,” she says, such as hallway chats. “You keep a conversation going with the person by asking, ‘How’s it going?’ or ‘How can I help?’ Asking about a particular child with a challenge—that’s definitely a great opening to talk about the practice in general.” She also teaches students in a small intervention group each day, which helps her understand, for example, how much planning goes into a single lesson. She hopes teachers feel, “I can give you some support because I’m also a teacher.”

When it comes to evaluating teachers, the “we” must become “me.” Rushford acknowledges, “It’s hard to be both the evaluator and the coach.” Tenured teachers are evaluated once a year, untenured teachers twice a year, and the principal is solely responsible for conducting the required classroom observations. Rushford meets with the teacher to talk through the practice she will observe, and then visits the classroom and takes notes. To keep it relevant, she shares her feedback the same day. The final part of the process is developing next steps for the teacher, which might be recommended readings or viewing a model lesson.

In both formal and informal situations, she believes in operating from a person’s strengths. “People do not grow by being blamed,” she says, adding that Fred Rogers said that, too. “It has to be at least a 3:1 ratio of three things you’re saying that they’re doing well to the one thing that you want to drop in that needs improvement—or people won’t hear you.” She also tries to align her comments with the school’s focus, which can feel less like personal criticism. “If something really terrible is going on, it has to be an honest conversation. But mostly, people are doing pretty well, or even very well, but what are we trying to work on right now in the school to move practice.”

One form of validation for her overall approach is the stability of her teaching staff. Rushford hired some of her current teachers in her first year “and we’ve had this long road together,” she says. Her 13 years there are also important to the stability of the culture—so much so that she won’t compare what she has accomplished at Beechwood to schools with principals whose tenure has been shorter.

From within a profession that arguably has yet to figure out how to support and reward teachers adequately for their work, Rushford reflects on what motivates them to excel. “Teachers like to know they have a place to go where things are going to be predictable and that they’re going to be able to succeed—that the environment is such that it’s built for success. People love being part of a team that is successful. People want things to work. People want the spirit of ‘we’re doing something important and it’s hard but we’re getting success.’ And that’s what motivates them—the love of doing something that you feel like you really can do well.”

Click here to see Beechwood’s 2018-19 data.