Today I hate my job

[girlontheroad]

When I started reading the thread my first taught was that you were describing my college and grad students. I have the same concers. As I read to the end of the thread I commend you for the self control in junk food and wanted to say the focus on social skills. I work with schools with kids with autism and the thing most likely to trip individuals with autos. Up later in life is the social piece not the academics. I believe this must be true for many of the learned without disabilities as well. The fact that you are already formatting a plan indicates that you are clearly a great teacher and an excellent problem solver. Please hang in there. We need more teachers like you.

[Crankin]

I was already using Kagan's model when we implemented RC. So were most of the other teachers.
You can't really have one teacher doing RC. It's whole new way of thinking and looking at kids, so the whole school needs to be on board. Yes, it was forced, but by the time we had fully implemented it, we had had tons of training, preparation, observing, and coaching. And the biggest nay-sayers were gone, which was the long term plan, anyway. I was hired about 3 years before we implemented this, as part of a vision by our superintendent to focus more on social-emotional learning as a way to improve academics. It started with community service learning in the high school, and then the other stuff came along. Amazingly, we became a community where people wanted in to our district through school choice, instead of us losing a good deal of students to surrounding systems. Our test scores went up, too.
Of course, nothing is perfect, but I was very glad I went here for the last 8 years of my career. How many places will hire a teacher with 22 years of experience and "find" the money to make up the loss in salary I would have taken? The first 2 years were tough. I cried almost every day, either from the horrible kids or the teachers. My curriculum specialist, who then became the principal kept telling me to hang in there, and I did.
Now, when I talk to the one colleague I was actually friends with, it all seems so petty; not the kids, but the things that teachers "fight" over. You know, the things you've described about your colleagues, Veronica.