Pittsburgh Public Schools is training the next generation of teachers by tapping into its own student body

Technical.ly partnered with PublicSource to explore the landscape of work in Pittsburgh — famed for its industriousness and intense union-management conflict and collaboration — as it is pressure-tested by changes in governmental policy, technology and economics.

Every day, 19 students at Brashear High School gather in teacher Katie Salinetro’s room for two hours at the end of the school day. They don their uniforms — a black pantsuit with “Emerging Educators” printed on it — and prepare for the day’s theory class. 

The students are part of a new Career and Technical Education (CTE) class in Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) called Emerging Educators, where they study to become teachers after college. 

On a Friday afternoon in January, Salinetro was instructing her students on ways to overcome possible classroom conflicts and aspects of social-emotional learning. She asked her students to write down solutions for various scenarios like having a disengaged student contending with emotions, and addressing a disrupted classroom environment. 

“What they’ve learned — and that’s exactly what we want them to do — is troubleshoot ahead of time, before they even get in the classroom, and not feel overwhelmed when they’re in the classroom seeing it for the first time,” she said.

Launched in fall 2024, Emerging Educators is a three-year CTE program for grades 10, 11 and 12 that aims to boost and diversify the district’s teacher pipeline. It replaced the school’s Teaching Academy magnet program. 

Through Emerging Educators, the district hopes to inspire more students of color to pursue teaching and eventually return as full-time teachers. In the 13 years since the Teaching Academy came to Brashear, the district struggled to address its workforce shortcomings, but there’s hope that Emerging Educators will bring teachers back. 

PPS decided to convert the magnet program into a CTE class when state funding to support a CTE program in education became available last year. Under a CTE program, the district could add industry certifications and dual enrollment to the package. The program has also partnered with Point Park University to allow students to earn 15 college credits when they graduate from high school. 

PPS retains teachers but sees some shortages

The district has 36 vacancies in teaching positions and 35 for paraprofessionals.

Special education and arts and music positions have been hard to fill in the last few years, said Alexis Howard, director of talent management at PPS. While areas like math and science have seen consistent shortages over the years, there has been an increase in the shortage of substitute teachers since the pandemic, she added. 

“A lot of people can pretty much make what they make now as a substitute and [instead] more of a, ‘Hey, I can stay at home and work remotely,’” Howard said.

According to non-profit A+ Schools, a community partner working to reduce chronic absenteeism in the district, 9% of PPS teachers were chronically absent in the 2023-24 school year, meaning they missed more than 18 school days. James Fogarty, executive director at A+ Schools, said shortages are intensified in some PPS schools by teachers retiring immediately after extended medical leaves, preventing the school from beginning the hiring process. 

The district mirrors statewide and nationwide teacher shortage trends. Experts note that teacher shortages in Southwestern Pennsylvania are not as severe as in other parts of the state. 

Statewide, the number of teaching certifications issued to new teachers has drastically reduced over the years. Between the 2012-13 school year and the 2022-23 school year, there was a 66% decline in the number of teaching certificates issued to new teachers. 

Laura Boyce, Pennsylvania executive director of Teach Plus, said following this drop, there has been a slight uptick in teacher supply and enrollment in teacher certification programs in the last few years. 

Another goal of the program is to bring more teachers of color to PPS. According to a report by nonprofit A+ Schools, four PPS schools do not have any teachers of color and 24 schools have teaching staffs that are more than 90% white. By contrast, 51% of the district’s student population is Black. 

Teaching to become a teacher

At Brashear, Salinetro tailors her classes to the ever-evolving demands of a classroom environment. She said her goal is to get her students interested in teaching without sugar-coating the difficulties of the profession.

The program starts with researching careers in education, going through codes of conduct, mandates, lesson planning and classroom observation. From there, students start preparing their own lessons and go to three elementary schools — Banksville, Beechwood and Phillips — to teach. 

“There’s very much the reality of what we go through as educators,” she said. The program is “letting them know about the realities, but then also letting them know about the realities of how much students need us and kind of almost relating that to who were the important people in your lives. If you think back, I bet one of them was a teacher.”

Over the years, Salinetro said, many of the students who graduated from the magnet program went on to become teachers but did not come back to PPS. 

To ensure students can come back and teach in the district, the CTE department is putting together a pre-apprenticeship program. Students can continue to teach in PPS while getting a college degree and then get a full-time position in the district once they graduate. 

“It’s unfortunate that Pittsburgh Public hasn’t necessarily hired those wonderful [students]. We’ve lost them to other districts,” Salinetro said. 

Angela Mike, executive director of CTE in PPS, said the district is required to report every student’s career plan to the state Department of Education. The CTE department also has to do a mandated one-year follow-up study to ensure the students have continued in their program of study. 

Policy changes needed

Instilling an interest in teaching, either to participate in the CTE program or get teacher certifications in college, can prove challenging. 

“The teaching profession as a whole is at a pretty low point in terms of its prestige and desirability,” said Boyce.

Other factors like low wages, job security, safety and conflicts around issues like book bans also discourage many students and families from pursuing teaching. 

According to national surveys, teachers are more demoralized and experiencing more burnout than they had previously. A 2024 PPS staff engagement survey by a third party revealed low employee morale, negativity and fear of innovation. Many teachers cited a lack of mental health support contributing to burnout. 

Experts say policy changes could improve teaching’s appeal. Michelle Sobolak, director of teacher and professional education at the University of Pittsburgh, said districts like PPS can make personnel policy changes to have more support staff in school to relieve the demands on teachers. 

Nonetheless, PPS has higher teacher retention rates than some other school districts in the region. Local education experts attribute this to the relatively shorter timeline for acquiring seniority and salary raises. 

However, in areas like STEM, there is a widening gap between what teachers can earn after getting their bachelor’s degree and what similarly educated students can earn in other fields like engineering. 

“Teacher wages, after adjusting for inflation, were flat … in between the Great Recession and the pandemic,” said Josh Bleiberg, assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Education. “They started to come up recently, but they’re still not on course with comparable wage increases you would see for similarly educated jobs.”

Organizations like the Pennsylvania State Education Association [PSEA] are advocating for legislation to set a minimum teacher salary of $60,000 in the state.

“We need to close that pay gap, and the best way to do that is by lifting up starting salaries so that when new graduates come out of college and they go into a career in teaching, they’re making good middle-class salaries that they can use to pay down their student loan debts, save for the future and provide for their families,” said Chris Lilienthal, chief spokesperson for the PSEA.

Harsh realities don’t deter students

Like many students in her class, Jane Grosskinsky wanted to become a teacher when she was growing up. The choice was logical — multiple members of her family were in the profession, she had a natural affinity for kids and many said she would become a good teacher. 

She enrolled in the teaching magnet program in ninth grade and is now a senior. Transitioning into the CTE program was difficult at first, but she feels the change has been good. 

“There’s a lot more, like, structure and regulation to what we do,” she said. “We have somebody over us monitoring us and what we do. But it’s also nice because the CTE gives us more resources, so we have more funding to be able to go on more trips and get better supplies and stuff that we need.”

The CTE class focuses on getting more students interested in subjects like special education. Starting in spring, students will have a job shadowing opportunity with teachers from the special education department. 

Education advocates and experts believe programs like Emerging Educators can be promising, but caution that grow-your-own initiatives might not draw enough students to fill the large number of vacancies.

“If you look at the drop-off in demand for education degrees, these programs are fighting — they’re like a little boat trying to fight against a huge tidal wave,” said Fogarty, 

Even if students go through the CTE program, it remains a challenge to get those students to finish college, said Fogarty. He added that CTE programs have the opportunity to provide some experience so students are better prepared for college. 

For most students in the class, the harsh realities of teaching do not deter them from pursuing the profession. The class opened doors for them to have new experiences and visit various schools including Banksville K-5, Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children and early childhood centers.

Senior Dante Peterson is motivated to help the younger generation.

“I understand there’s a lot of bad things about the environment teachers go through but even expanding a child’s just point of view on anything, either if it’s sports, education or whatever … it’d be best for them,” he said.