Creating a Culture of Teacher Support at Pueblo County School District 70

It’s difficult to get a teaching job at Pueblo County School District 70 in the picturesque city of Pueblo, CO, where the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains meet the Great Plains. Interested candidates often have to wait for one of the district’s veteran teachers, many with 20 to 30 years experience, to retire if they want to land a teaching role at one of the district’s 24 schools.

What’s Pueblo’s secret? The district has created a culture where teacher support is of the utmost importance and all staff, including teachers, administrators, coaches, counselors, and support staff have a voice in how to provide their students with what is needed to achieve success. This has made teachers feel respected and heard, and in turn has led to a lower turnover rate.

“We are valued as professionals, as educators,” said AnnMarie Cunningham, lead math teacher at Pueblo West High School.

Despite having a strong teaching culture, Pueblo 70 was not immune to the negative impacts that the COVID-19 pandemic had on its students. At the end of 2020, educators observed that their students were still struggling to get back up to grade level, while teachers also saw an increase in student behavioral challenges, as well as excessive absenteeism.

District leaders like Dr. Anthony Martinez, the district’s director of Curriculum and Instruction, understood that the best way to overcome these challenges was through a robust plan for professional learning. So he and his team came up with a plan that included partnering with Savvas Learning Company to provide its teachers with meaningful professional learning that would lead to positive impacts on students.

District leaders also felt strongly that, in order to provide teachers with the most meaningful and impactful professional learning, the teachers themselves need to have a say in what that learning looks like for them.

“We should be doing the things that serve our students most importantly, but that also serve our teachers and principals,” said Drew Hirshon, who until recently, served as the district’s assistant director of curriculum and instruction. “We're in positions where we should be supporting them in the goals that they have, not the other way around.”

Addressing District Needs by Establishing a Professional Learning Community System

After conducting a needs assessment through classroom walkthroughs and collecting observational data, district educators discovered an overall need for more differentiated instruction and classroom discourse. If they could address those needs, they had a good chance of closing those learning gaps that resulted from the pandemic.

Working side by side, district administrators, teachers, coaches, school counselors, and support staff brainstormed on how they could collectively make the greatest impact. They agreed on a solution: professional learning. But one-and-done professional development (PD) was not going to be enough. They needed ongoing PD, among other things. That led them to establish what they refer to as their Professional Learning Community System. It is built on a foundation of collaboration and includes the following main pillars: professional learning communities (PLCs), on-going professional development, and learning walks.

The Importance of PLCs

Pueblo’s district leaders recognized that the best professional learning that you can offer teachers is when you give them the opportunity to collaborate. A Professional Learning Community, or PLC, is often a district-wide group of educators who meet regularly to share ideas, look at data, resolve challenges, and generally work together as a group toward a shared goal.

“That professional learning community is where our teachers can truly focus on what are the goals of our learning and how are we achieving them,” said Anthony. “And then how are we supporting each other to grow those learning experiences and to grow each other as professionals.”

At Pueblo 70, educators meet every two weeks in their PLCs — and Lead Math Teacher AnnMarie Cunningham is feeling the benefits.

“In our PLCs, for a long time the discussion was, ‘What are we teaching? And when are we teaching it?’” she said. “So, now our discussions and our goals have switched to, ‘Okay, now how are we teaching it?’ Which itself lends to great discussions within our PLC.”

Maintaining On-going Professional Learning

In 2022, the district adopted Savvas Learning Company’s myPerspectives English Language Arts for grades 6-8, and, in 2023, it upgraded to the newest version of enVision Mathematics for grades 6-8 from the previous version it adopted in 2018.

In order to ensure the success of its new ELA and math programs, while also making sure teachers felt supported throughout their implementation, district leaders needed to reimagine what they had been doing for their professional development.

“In the past, we developed [PD] based on what we thought teachers needed, and we shifted that this year (2023) to where it was inquiry-based,” said Drew, the district’s former assistant director of curriculum and instruction. “So, at the beginning of the year, we started with, ‘What do you want to know? What do you feel like you need to know as a new teacher?’ And we leveraged that as a way to plan out our PD moving throughout the year.”

They worked with Savvas to create a plan that included both full-day training and also job-embedded coaching, working directly with Makayla Hines, a Savvas educational consultant — these are members of a team of Savvas employees who are former educators and experts in professional development. They work with teachers on a monthly basis throughout the year to navigate the implementation of the programs in their classrooms.

Former teacher, now Instructional Coach Dylon Ortiz, recalled that while working with Makayala when rolling out enVision into his classrooms, she would often tell him areas in which he was on track — or “glows” — and what areas he needed to work on — or “grows.” “She just jumped in right away. She would give me a heads up on my glows — what went great in my lesson — and what I need to grow on, which is awesome because I need that. I think every teacher needs that, no matter what age or how many years you have been teaching. There's always room for a little bit of growth.”

Incorporating Learning Walks

In keeping with the theme of teachers learning from teachers, the district implemented learning walks. In these learning walks, teachers visit their colleagues' classrooms and observe lessons. They are encouraged to provide feedback on what they think could be done differently, and to gain new knowledge that they can bring back to their own classrooms.

“Learning walks are about teacher learning, professional development,” said Anthony. “That's for us as a learning organization. That's for everybody involved …learning how to do their job well, but also how to interact with the people that are around them because they're a community. And so everybody is learning.”

Teacher Empowerment Leads to Student Empowerment

As a result of the work being done to create a culture where all educators feel valued and supported, students are becoming more engaged and invested in their own learning.

“You'll see in the classrooms, in our district, a lot less teachers leading, and you'll see more of the students leading their own education,” said Lead Math Teacher, AnneMarie Cunningham. “It’s really nice to see how empowering us then empowers the students.”

Anthony believes that when teachers feel more supported and valued, they feel more confident to try something new with their instruction. And when they try something new, they learn and grow from that experience.

“If you continue to do the same thing, you're going to get the same results,” said Anthony, who said his team often suggests to try doing something new. “Do something, right? Try something. It might not work, but that's okay.”

Instructional Coach, Dylon Ortiz said that if he ever has a challenge he needs help with that he can always rely on his principal or administrators to support and provide him with a solution.

“They're working with us, which is huge,” he said.