Growing up in Monroeville, Drew Martin occasionally ventured into Pittsburgh to spend time socializing in the East End, Downtown or the South Side.

But as he prepares to immerse himself into the city's fabric as a physics teacher at Pittsburgh Milliones 6-12 in the Hill District this fall, Mr. Martin is confounded by how little he knows about the other city neighborhoods, particularly the North Side, where some of his future students live.

Mr. Martin, who after five years as a counselor for adjudicated youth decided to try a career in teaching, is one of the 80 new and novice teachers undergoing a three-week orientation to prepare them for life in the city schools.

That will change next year when the district opens its Teacher Academy, where new teachers will undergo 13 months of training before they are assigned classrooms.

The academy is part of its plan to change how teachers are hired, trained, evaluated and paid, and is a key component of the Empowering Effective Teachers Plan -- part of the $40 million grant the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded the district last year.

In the meantime, this year's incoming teachers are undergoing an intensive orientation, school officials said.

The orientation, which started on Monday, is not only designed to give the teachers an introduction to school policies and procedures, but also some background on the city neighborhoods and communities in which they will serve, said Kimberly Basinger, coordinator of the Teacher Academy.

"I am excited [to start teaching], but I am glad I have this opportunity to learn about what it's like in some parts of Pittsburgh that I didn't really know quite well," said Mr. Martin, 28, who has been assigned to teach 11th-graders at the Hill District preparatory school, which was created as a partnership of the district and the University of Pittsburgh.

On Tuesday, the teachers were divided into three groups and taken on neighborhood tours and meetings with community groups on the North Side, the city's South Hills and the East End.

Mr. Martin was part of a group of 18 teachers that spent the afternoon meeting with parents and students at the Pittsburgh Project, a community development organization in Perry Hilltop.

There, the teachers heard from people like Kahana Moorefield, an honor-roll student at Pittsburgh Oliver High School, and Jeressia Johnson, a mother of six children -- four of them graduates -- with two still left in the city schools.

Kahana, 16, a senior who's enrolled in the Center for Advanced Studies Program for gifted students, said she's bothered by teachers' tendency to sometimes assume that high achieving students can fend for themselves.

"Just because I'm smart and I put in effort, I can't teach myself. Even good students need help," she said.

Meanwhile, Ms. Johnson urged teachers to place a high premium on nurturing a relationship with parents, even those who may seem disinterested in their child's education.

"I want to know right away as soon as my daughter gives you a problem in class. I don't want to find out about it on the report card," Ms. Johnson said, cautioning teachers to specifically find ways to engage the students who are perceived as "problems" in the classroom.

Laura Winter, a teacher at Pittsburgh Montessori PreK-8 in Friendship, said it's often a daunting challenge for the teacher to try and counsel a student who is perceived as a "problem child" if the student's parents are unresponsive to the teacher.

"One of the challenges that I find is when you have unresponsive parents. What do you do?" said Ms. Winter, 43, who has been teaching in the city schools for three years.

Will Thompkins, a community activist and director of outreach at the Pittsburgh Project, said that's most likely because there's a problem in that household. That's when it's critical, he said, that a teacher have a list of community resources -- like a church or community group or friends and neighbors of the student in question -- they can turn to for some guidance.

He reiterated that sentiment as he gave the teachers a mile-long walking tour of the blighted neighborhood from Perry Hilltop to the intersection of Island Avenue and Brighton Road, where Oliver High is located.

"You never know how you can enrich a student's life until you get to know them, and to do that, you need to know the community in which they live," Mr. Thompkins said.

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