Teammate Spotlight for January - "Frau" Deanna Baird
Please join Superintendent Dr. Patrick O’Toole in recognizing Deanna Baird, World Language Curriculum Leader and German Teacher, for being selected for our Teammate Spotlight feature, January 2016.
Deanna’s entire educational career has been with Upper St. Clair. She began as a college student teacher at Upper St. Clair in 1972 (43 years ago) under the tutelage of German Teacher Herr Hartley. Upon graduation in 1973, she was hired as a German teacher at Boyce and Fort Couch Middle Schools. From 1978 to 1992, Deanna worked as a German teacher at Fort Couch and the High School, German Club Sponsor and Middle School Foreign Language Department Chair. Since August 1992, Deanna has served as the K-12 World Language Curriculum Leader.
Throughout her career, Deanna and her World Language Department have received numerous awards. Deanna was a finalist for the Teacher Excellence Award in 1997, she received the Pennsylvania State Modern Language Association Educator of the Year Award in 2004, and her World Language Department received the Pennsylvania State Modern Language Association Exemplary Program Award several times beginning in 2008. In 2015, Deanna was chosen for the Nominator’s Choice Award at a Champions of Learning event sponsored by the Consortium of Public Education.
Every other summer, Frau sponsors a student trip to Leverkusen, Germany, which she has done since the 1993-94 school year. During the years when she is not taking USC students on a summer trip, she leads a church partnership exchange to eastern Germany.
Frau attributes her driving force to be her German-American upbringing with her family, along with her studies in Germany which have been very influential to her. These have led to her more recent work with global education at the state level and the International Studies course she developed at the High School. Frau has a passion for travel and loves to share that passion with her students. She also enjoys both ballroom and freestyle dance and bicycling.
Frau has two lovely daughters. One is a massage therapist and roller derby player in Ithaca, New York; the other is a teacher and a singer in a country rock band in Columbus, Ohio.
“Frau Baird’s passion, attitude, and depth of knowledge represents the best of our great USC teaching culture. We can all learn from Deanna’s shining example of these attributes. Our students, staff, and community are fortunate she found her way to USC in 1972,” summarized Superintendent O’Toole. 
