Pros
Heavily-resourced schools, state-of-the-art buildings, children have beautiful schools to come to each day which is important for their sense of worth, struggling students get additional individualized instruction w/o being classified
Cons
Prior to applying for a position with a PK-5 CREC school (DA), I had heard that the school was "phenomenal". After my time there, I am left with much disappointment. I was hired as a temporary Associate Instructor (AI). AI's work one-on-one and in small groups with students who are struggling academically, but not enough to be classified. At least that's what I thought. In reality, I've been little more than a glorified building substitute. In my building, AI's are constantly pulled to cover lunch breaks, sub for teacher absences, cover student lunch periods, or cover classes for teacher meetings held during the school day. This happens *several* times each week, and when it does, students who need the support miss out. I could go an entire week without seeing a group of students because of subbing. Most AI's are "auditioning" for FT teaching positions so they put up with it, and the school's admin knows this, hence they take advantage of them. There is definitely a hierarchy in my building and most of the staff is extremely cliquey, which is somewhat typical in schools. But in a small school it feels more profound. In my school, the team of AIs is great and our admins are super supportive, but even they often seem to have their hands tied. In my building, just about everyone is "polite", some people are minimally friendly, and just a few are welcoming. As a new staff member, in my building, there were only a few classroom teachers and staff members who were genuinely kind to me. Most rarely even acknowledged my presence, including admins. There are some teachers/admin who won't even glance in my direction to say "good morning", but will literally fall all over themselves to greet a child. In fact, some of the teachers could almost be described as mean, mainly in the upper grades. Support staff (paraprofessionals, aides, etc) are not well-respected by many of the teachers. With regard to behavior, the school "claims" to be a "PBIS school", which can mean many things to many people. PBIS became popular back in the 90s and, the way it's "implemented" in my school is through a focus on rewarding good behavior and "social-emotional" lessons, with the hope that kids will somehow become intrinsically motivated to behave appropriately. In actuality, it looks more like ignoring bad behavior and coddling students. Students are regularly permitted to be openly defiant, disrespectful, rude, and even abusive to peers and staff - without much consequence. There are behavior teams that get called when students are out of control, and when they come, students get to go for walks around the school with them to talk about their issues. Write-ups seem to be frowned upon and many teachers shy away from doing them for fear of appearing incompetent. On multiple occasions, I've even witnessed entire classes full of students be emptied, with the students having to leave the room to go elsewhere and miss out on instructional time, because of one disruptive student. I'm no novice to teaching; I've been in education for close to 20 years, and I've never seen anything like what I've seen at my school. Lastly, what has been most disturbing to me during my time with CREC is the almost complete lack of diversity among teachers and admins. My building has not a single POC as an admin and just one as a classroom teacher! A student could literally attend my school from pre-K to 5th grade and NEVER have a teacher of color! So, students come to associate authority with "whiteness". Ironically, the aides and paras are almost entirely people of color. CREC states that they are committed to racial equity, social justice, etc and the district has spent lots of time and money on "workshops" about it, but the proof is in the pudding! Overall, if you are a seasoned teacher, you will have a really hard time adjusting to the CREC culture; you probably wouldn't get hired anyway because they seem to prefer teachers with less than 5 years of experience. I would also never send my children to a school where they'd have no opportunity to experience teachers of color!