McKinley Elementary and the ‘Power of Four’: How one Colorado school is embracing a team-teaching model

When Jamie Davis stepped into her role as the Cañon City School District’s human resources director in 2020, she was no stranger to the Colorado district. She attended the district’s McKinley Elementary School as a student,  returned as a student teacher, and later accepted a full-time position as a 3rd-grade teacher more than two decades ago. 

When Davis was teaching at McKinley, she explored team teaching with Cortney Richardson, who is now the school’s principal. At the time, Richardson was the music teacher and would co-teach literacy lessons with Davis as they were both earning master’s degrees in reading.

Now, close to two decades later, the two are finding success launching and scaling a team teaching model in their school  — this time, in partnership with Arizona State University’s Next Education Workforce™ initiative. With funding from the Gates Family Foundation and the Colorado Department of Education, McKinley has officially launched two multi-grade teams.

Already, McKinley is seeing early, promising results for both students and educators. For students, the model is associated with a 35% reduction in high-level behavior incidents, a 15% reduction in chronic absenteeism and increases in both math and reading outcomes. Teachers working in the model are retained at higher rates. At the end of the 2024-25 school year, the school had 21 open positions. Now, a year later, Davis only anticipates filling three positions for the upcoming 2026-27 school year. 

“When people feel like they have a connection, they stay. You want to come to work when you like the people around you, and kids want to come to school when they feel like they have a sense of belonging. It’s not just one teacher they’re working with. They’re working with a group of people,” Davis says.

Finding the right dance partner

McKinley Elementary School sits in the middle of the quiet Lincoln Park neighborhood. In the spring, the trees are green and lush, with the Rocky Mountains visible above their swaying tops. The school serves about 250 pre-K through 5th-grade students. As Davis says, McKinley is the “heart” of the local community.

However, the district, and McKinley in particular, have faced challenges in recent years. Those challenges include a state-wide teacher shortage in 2021, felt particularly in more rural places like Cañon City, and declining enrollment. According to Davis, McKinley is projected to have a combined 41 4th- and 5th-grade students next year. With only one teacher per grade level, instruction often became siloed, contributing to teacher isolation and high turnover rates at the school. Davis was also looking for ways to support educators who’ve received alternative licensure rather than a traditional teaching license, and thus didn’t have any student teaching experience — all while working within a tight budget.

Davis came across Next Education Workforce’s team-based strategic staffing models during the 2022-23 school year. 

“[Teaming] solved two problems for us: How we were gonna support and retain new educators. And how we were going to create a community of educators so they weren’t just in siloed rooms being the only 5th-grade teacher and only 4th-grade teacher,” Davis says. 

First, Davis had several of her school leaders engage in professional learning with the Next Education Workforce. She then sent a handful of people who she thought could be early adopters of team-based staffing to a Site Visit of Arizona schools implementing this approach before finally convincing the district’s superintendent, Adam Hartman, to go to a visit with her in November 2024. 

Davis shares that seeing Stevenson Elementary School during the visit helped her and the superintendent better conceptualize what teaming could look like in Cañon City, and they began to search for the right school leader to pilot the model. 

They then applied for and received the Quality Teacher Recruitment Program grant from the Colorado Department of Education, which Davis says pays for the teaching residents and instructional assistants, a Lead Teacher stipend and the Next Education Workforce partnership. In addition, Cañon City has also received additional support for the implementation of teaming this year from the Gates Family Foundation. 

At the school, Davis praised Richardson’s leadership for the model’s success in its first year of implementation, calling her the right “dance partner” to get the model off the ground. 

“Cortney’s the champion. She’s got to be the coach who’s asking good questions. She’s got to be the evaluator who is giving direct feedback. And she’s gotta be the advocate for not only the community, but also in the school community, too,” Davis says. “She brings a passion to the work. She’s very thoughtful. She’s resilient.”

Krista Adams, the Next Education Workforce implementation coach who works with McKinley, agrees. As a former principal herself, Adams understands how important it can be to build relationships within the school community and lauds Richardson for her seamless transition into the role and strong leadership. 

“She’s been able to not only build relationships as a new principal and get to know her new role in her new school, but also establish this teaming mindset and foster this culture of collaboration that is so powerful,” Adams says. “It’s just remarkable that she’s been able to do so much in a year.”

As with any new model, Richardson says they’ve had to make adjustments and work through challenges. However, overall, the new teams have been a positive change for the school. 

“All I hear is how much the teachers love teaming. It’s silly to say this, but the number one thing that teachers are excited about is that they don’t have to worry about planning when they need to use the restroom. You always know that you have somebody there,” Richardson shares. “I also think it’s great for teachers to have a ‘think partner’ and be able to have the power of putting those heads together around instruction. And the innovative ways of creating opportunities for kids just naturally blossom out of that.”

The ‘Power of Four’

The walls and ceilings of McKinley tell the story of both the students and educators in the small town’s tight-knit community: There’s a mural of a wildcat crashing through a brick wall, painted in 2012 by a local artist and two middle school students, ceiling tiles painted with scenes from students’ favorite novels and a multi-colored woven tapestry of the mountains.

When you pop your head into one of the classrooms, you’ll encounter teams of educators instructing students. On both the 4/5 and 2/3 teams, you’ll see four adults: a Lead Teacher, another certified educator, a teaching resident and either a paraeducator or instructional assistant. 

“When we moved to 2nd and 3rd grade as a team and 4th and 5th grade as a team, it created the ‘Power of Four,’ and we had four educators servicing each group of students, which just created so many possibilities for innovative and more rigorous instruction, not only for students, but also for our new learning educators to really see what that can look like as they’re ready to move into the teaching profession,” Richardson says. “We have a tagline of ‘We’re all in this together,’ and you can feel that in our building. The staff has really embraced teaming this year.”

Historically, the teaching profession has provided very limited mobility for educators to advance in their careers. Team-based models enable schools to create differentiated educator roles, such as a Lead Teacher role, which gives experienced educators responsibility for aspects of team management, communication, planning and instruction. At McKinley, Lead Teachers guide collaborative team planning time, provide templates for lesson plans and ensure that subject standards have been identified and are met. They also receive an additional stipend. 

Breaunna Jaramillo is the 4/5 team Lead Teacher. Prior to this year, she worked in conventional teaching spaces and often felt very isolated. For her, team-based teaching has allowed her to share responsibility for both curriculum planning and behavior management, as well as better meet the needs of the students. 

“When I was the only teacher in the classroom, it felt very isolating. It felt like a lot of responsibility for 25 to 30 kids to meet the needs and demands of all the kiddos. It was very overwhelming,” Jaramillo says. “So having four teachers in the room, for the kids to have somebody to go to, who feels like their safe place; that’s been incredible, because I just can’t be that to everybody. 
So being able to kind of share the love with all of that helps a lot.”

At McKinley, experienced teachers are now stepping into roles as mentors, and are able to not only share their expertise but also learn from the new teacher residents every year — helping prevent stagnation or boredom that leads to burnout.

“I just think when you’re growing, you’re not dying. It’s like our community. If we’re growing and we’re creating new things, we’re gonna be thriving. And I would say the same for our teachers,” Davis says. 

Jaramillo agrees. The ability to keep learning is her favorite part of being on a team. 

“It’s been a joy to learn from younger teachers who are fresh out of college, and they can tell me what the new technology is, the new curriculum, the new engagement strategies; and we’re able to kind of take all of those different pieces and kind of work together on them. And then the other side of that is I love teaching other teachers what I have learned from the last however many years,” Jaramillo says. 

Miranda Bradshaw is a resident student teacher on the 4/5 team. As an elementary student, she says that, although she had a difficult time in class, it was the connections she developed with teachers that helped her succeed. Now, she’s getting her degree in inclusive elementary education and wants to work on a team as she has at McKinley after she graduates. 

“It’s showing me that teaming is a much more powerful way to teach. I’m able to assist kids in the way that I’ve always wanted, where I’m able to give that slightly specialized instruction and say, ‘Hey, I see you’re struggling with this. I’m going to try to rephrase it. Does it help you understand if I say it this way, or do you understand it if my co-teacher says it this way?,” Bradshaw says. “And so just bringing that different perspective from multiple educators is so beneficial to the students, and I want to keep doing this. It’s really powerful.”

In addition to the four members of the team, extended team members — such as special education, Title 1 and specials teachers — have also embraced the model, pouring into the classroom to help support students with additional learning needs instead of always needing to pull those kids out. 

In addition to a reduction in chronic absenteeism and high-level behavior incidents and increased academic outcomes, students are reporting other positive outcomes.  In a recent student satisfaction survey, Richardson shares that she saw a significant increase in the following three areas: students have access to a group of supportive teachers and know how to access them when they need support, students have more opportunities to connect with a trusted adult and students are able to connect with more students.

Samantha Cermak, a 4th-grade student, says, “Now we have multiple teachers in a room instead of just everybody asking questions and not understanding. Now we have more teachers to help those people understand more. I like learning like that because everybody gets what they need.”

Since launching the model at the beginning of the year, Richardson also reports a 27% decrease in staff absences and that, in a recent staff satisfaction survey, more staff answered that they worked in a more professional climate, had more opportunities for professional development and perceived overall improved student behaviors. 

“When you feel like you’re a part of something and growing and you can see yourself moving the needle, you’re more likely to stay in a position. When you feel like you’re part of a team, you want to stay with the team,” Davis says. 

The future of teaming in Cañon City

For Richardson, McKinley is a common thread across three generations in her family. Her two daughters went to McKinley, and her son and grandchild currently attend the school. While she says that her daughters had wonderful experiences at McKinley, she’s grateful for the instruction her son is now receiving. 

“Things that my son is now getting as a 5th grader that maybe they didn’t get the opportunity to are really access to those multiple educators. He really likes the fact that someone is there for clarification if he doesn’t understand. He says he really doesn’t feel as lost,” Richardson says. 

Richardson’s three-year vision is to bring the “Power of Four” to every classroom in the building. Changes to the master schedule will also give educators both an individual and a collaborative team planning period. 

“Teaming is so much about this mindset shift, and this belief that if we work together, we can do better things for students. What started with really a commitment from one team has grown and throughout the campus with that mindset,” Adams says. “I mean, it’s pretty remarkable by the end of year one that everybody on the campus is collaborating more than they were the year before.”

At a district level, team-based strategic school staffing models are also gaining recognition and traction. Davis shares that she recently had a call with a student who attends the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, who was interested in the model because one of her classmates is currently a teaching resident at McKinley. 

“What’s really great about the size of our school district is that there’s a lot of local control. We call ourselves the Goldilocks, because we’re not too big. We have around 600 staff, and I could tell you everybody’s name,” Davis says. “To me, teaming makes sense for us because we are such a relations-based school district. We care about people, we care about kids, and teaming just seems to fit with what we’re about in Cañon City Schools.”