{"id":121639,"date":"2026-02-23T23:18:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T23:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/121639\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T23:18:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T23:18:10","slug":"pennsylvania-teachers-want-to-reimagine-how-everyday-teaching-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/121639\/","title":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania teachers want to reimagine how everyday teaching works"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia\u2019s free newsletter<\/a> to keep up with news on the city\u2019s public school system.<\/p>\n

Teaching in Pennsylvania is at a breaking point, according to a new report. <\/p>\n

The rate of educator attrition is rising, turnover is disproportionately impacting urban and rural districts, and on the ground teachers are reporting feeling burnt out, overworked, and underprepared. <\/p>\n

All of this creates an inhospitable environment for student learning, according to new research from PA Needs Teachers<\/a>, a statewide coalition led by the Teach Plus advocacy group and the National Center on Education and the Economy.<\/p>\n

Their solution is to radically reimagine what it means to teach in Pennsylvania schools. The report\u2019s authors, including Philly teacher Trey Smith, are proposing shifting from a traditional one-teacher-in-front-of-one-classroom approach to something that\u2019s more collaborative that would help students as well as educators. <\/p>\n

In the various models they propose, small groups of educators and support staff work together to schedule, plan lessons, give constructive feedback on their teaching, and help each other grow. <\/p>\n

New teachers would receive mentorship and guidance, experienced teachers would be compensated and recognized in their schools, and paraprofessionals and tutors would pay extra attention to struggling students. <\/p>\n

In practice, a group of 100 students may share a team of six educators who get guidance and support from a \u201clead teacher.\u201d That would replace a model, for example, of four teachers each responsible for their own separate classroom of 25 students with little feedback on their individual teaching styles.<\/p>\n

The report authors call it \u201cstrategic staffing.\u201d Smith thinks of it as a teaching team. And schools in Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia, are primed for this sort of innovation. <\/p>\n

We’re here to help.<\/p>\n

Every day, Chalkbeat Philadelphia reporters are answering your questions, following the money, and digging into what’s happening in the city’s public schools. Keep up with our free newsletter, delivered every Wednesday and Friday morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really want us to think about, how are we honestly accounting for what teachers know and how they can grow?\u201d said Smith, who teaches at Marian Anderson Neighborhood Academy in Southwest Center City. \u201cTeachers are not all the same, so whatever system we design, we can\u2019t treat teachers like widgets or cogs in a big machine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith said any new teaching model has to \u201cmaximize the talent we have,\u201d including teachers with varying levels of experience and classroom management skills.<\/p>\n

New teachers with the least classroom experience are often given the most challenging school assignments. Black or Hispanic students and those from low-income families are therefore the least likely to receive the most experienced, qualified teachers<\/a> in Pennsylvania. <\/p>\n

And Philly, which employs less than 20% of the state\u2019s teachers, accounts for 30% of statewide attrition, according to the report.<\/p>\n

As a digital literacy teacher, Smith is a specialist. That means when other teachers need coverage, either because they\u2019re absent or trying to find time to plan ahead, he\u2019s often the first to get the call to step in. But what he said he really wants is to be in constant conversation with other teachers to game-plan and get creative about ways lessons can interlock and students can engage with the same ideas across multiple subjects.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no collaborative planning time with my colleagues and my grades because I\u2019m their coverage,\u201d Smith said. <\/p>\n

Doylestown middle school teacher Jill Weller-Reilly, another co-author of the report, said if the state wants teachers to stay in the field, schools need to provide educators with opportunities to grow and advance in their careers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t lose new teachers because they can\u2019t do the job. We lose them because we don\u2019t help them learn how and set them up for success,\u201d Weller-Reilly said.<\/p>\n

According to Teach Plus polling from 2025, 70% of educators nationwide said they \u201cdefinitely\u201d or \u201cprobably\u201d would want their school to adopt such an approach. <\/p>\n

The report authors note there are no state-level limits on class size at the K-12 level, and the state does not mandate a specific student-to-teacher ratio. As a local control state, Pennsylvania school districts have a fair amount of autonomy for things like budgeting, teacher time, and compensation. Those factors could make \u201cstrategic staffing\u201d easier to implement. <\/p>\n

However, union negotiations and limited district resources do mean districts like Philly would have to get buy-in from multiple parties to launch a strategic staffing model.<\/p>\n

Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Arthur Steinberg signaled some interest in the idea, saying in an email to Chalkbeat that \u201cdistricts including ours must be more innovative with resource allocation to improve hiring, retention, and professional support.\u201d<\/p>\n

But change can be notoriously hard for educators, administrators, and school communities. And the report\u2019s proposal comes with a cost.<\/p>\n

While most strategic staffing models are intended to be budget-neutral after schools have gone through the design process, the Teach Plus advocates said, there are significant up-front costs to getting one of these models off the ground.<\/p>\n

Teach Plus wants state lawmakers to establish a grant program and a way to evaluate the effectiveness of Pennsylvania\u2019s programs alongside similar models like North Carolina\u2019s Advanced Teaching Roles program. State evaluations<\/a> of the North Carolina program are beginning to show promise, with some data demonstrating it helped improve students\u2019 math and science scores and teachers\u2019 perceptions of their jobs. North Carolina\u2019s program costs about $16.5 million<\/a> to run annually in 17 districts. <\/p>\n

Another major hurdle to establishing strategic staffing in classrooms is simple exhaustion with new initiatives. Philadelphia, like other major city school districts, has experimented with innovative teaching and learning models in the past, only to have them fade away<\/a> or lose funding and attention. <\/p>\n

But Smith said if the changes are born from the bottom up, and truly take educators\u2019 ideas into consideration, it could make Philly a prized destination for future teachers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI still am hopeful if the approach is such that it really honors what teachers know and think, that\u2019s how the model can work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia\u2019s free newsletter to keep up with news on the city\u2019s public school system.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121640,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[57248,57247,57249,5962,28,30,29,69,7625,1998,57246],"class_list":{"0":"post-121639","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-first-time-teacher","9":"tag-new-teacher","10":"tag-new-teacher-orientation-kickoff-event","11":"tag-penn","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","14":"tag-pennsylvania-news","15":"tag-philadelphia","16":"tag-philly","17":"tag-school-district-of-philadelphia","18":"tag-the-school-of-the-future"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}