Pitt-Greensburg is getting more K-12 teachers into rural schools

Melissa Marks didn’t expect that her visit to Jeannette Junior-Senior High School to guest teach a lesson would make her feel like a grandparent, but it did — in the best way.

When the bell rang at the end of the day, Marks, who is the director of the education program at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, ventured to a classroom across the hall to chat with one of her former students, who has been teaching at Jeannette for 16 years. Then she headed to the school’s science wing, where two more of her former students preside over classrooms. One is serving as the supervisor for a current Pitt-Greensburg student completing student teaching.

“It’s kind of like being a grandmother — watching my students nurturing my students,” Marks said.

While other Pennsylvania education programs have experienced a steady decline in enrollment, Marks has overseen generations of unprecedented growth. In her 22 years at Pitt-Greensburg, the education program has ballooned from a few dozen students to more than 160 — significant on a campus of 1,500. She’s also created a steady college-to-classroom pipeline that helps to keep Pitt-Greensburg graduates in the area, teaching local kids.

That work is important in Pennsylvania, where the number of new teaching certificates issued has dropped by more than 16,000 in a decade, and downright crucial in Westmoreland County, where school districts like Jeannette have long struggled to recruit and retain teachers.

The key, Marks believes, is to make college students part of the community. At Pitt-Greensburg that mission takes two forms.

First, Marks believes in getting education students into classrooms as soon as their second semester of college. She’s watched too many students at other institutions enter classrooms for the first time during their senior years, realize they don’t want to teach after all and then walk across the stage at commencement with degrees they don’t intend to use.

Requiring her education students to volunteer in local classrooms throughout their college years not only provides them with career-defining experience, but it also helps them to build relationships with area teachers, administrators and families. By the time they graduate, they’re more apt to take a job in that school, where they feel welcomed and comfortable, rather than move away and begin again.

“Schools, especially more rural ones like Southmoreland, Derry and Mt. Pleasant, are getting really high-quality teachers from our program who may not have even looked in Westmoreland County if they hadn't had a placement there, and that's pretty spectacular,” Marks said.

But even those students who don’t take local jobs impact the community through their work with the Student Pennsylvania State Education Association (SPSEA). Pitt-Greensburg’s chapter — advised by Marks and colleagues Jessica McCormick and Jocelyn Hunt — has garnered six-straight state chapter of the year awards plus the National Education Association (NEA) chapter award, in large part for their extensive service throughout Westmoreland County.

Among the more than two dozen community events SPSEA students staffed or hosted this year:

• Partnered with the YWCA in Greensburg to host a children’s book fair.
• Invited more than 70 area elementary school children explore “Reading Under the Stars” story time and interactive literacy stations.
• Provided activities, gifts and a surprise visit from Santa for children at the Jeannette Head Start holiday party.
• Hosted students from Clellian Heights School for Exceptional Children for a superhero themed “College Day” full of educational activities.

Though Marks nabbed NEA 2024 advisor of the year for leading the charge, she says it’s truly her students who are driving community engagement. She points to the COVID-19 shutdowns of 2020 as the perfect example.

While schools and campuses were forced to halt operations, SPSEA refused. “The kids need us,” they told Marks. That year, they not only filled bags with summer enrichment activities for area students, but they also ensured that the children at Jeannette Head Start got a virtual visit from Santa when the holiday party was canceled. They recorded individual videos for each student and sent certificates of “goodness,” signed by the jolly old elf himself.

“They’re just amazing,” Marks said of her students. “And they inspire others to do the same work, so we’re having an impact.”