Pros
Classical overall provides excellent benefits and great academic results. The students are lovely to work with, and if you are a part of the ClassiCorps program, the school will personally pay for your masters in full, which is very enticing for newer college graduates in search of a teaching position. Also, they have a fully scripted daily curriculum so lesson planning, at least at this network is not tedious.
Cons
Depending on which Classical school you work in, it will determine your overall experience. Although all schools are aligned in academic expectations and daily systematic routines, there is a lack of alignment in work culture across the network. Some of the schools have a respectable culture while others might not. If you are in the ClassiCorps program, it can be very tedious to manage a full classroom and graduate work. Accepted applicants want to do great in both. However, with strong expectations and demanding outcomes, newer teachers might start questioning why they took the position in the first place, and might lose their joy of teaching altogether. Although Classical really aims at administration supporting newer teachers during those times, the moment that you admit that you are struggling with managing daily tasks and grad work, they tend to condescendingly give you the “cold shoulder” and pretty much expect you to figure it out on your own and to push aside your emotions to get the job done, therefore fulfilling their “no-excuse” tenacious policy. And the children... they work so tirelessly. They perform well on state tests, but it is at the expense of their social and emotional health. Classical currently is attempting to compensate for that by implementing “social emotional learning” which is basically another Character Education class that teaches them about their feelings and how to interact with people instead of the school’s Character Pillars. This is negative because it takes away the natural experience that elementary students need to express and interact with their emotions which come up forth unstructured to begin with. Administration also does not take student’s physical development into consideration when it comes to the long school hours. Elementary students tend to fall asleep during lessons in the afternoons and with early start times and late dismissals, although their bodies adjust to the schedule, as the year progresses, they tend to lack the will to continue to work hard and combined with the teacher’s exhaustion, it makes getting to June feel like a drag. Furthermore, there is a strong bias when it comes to the South Bronx, with several administrators taking the perception that the South Bronx is a dangerous and violent place as well as most of its natives being incompetent or incoherent. When administrators have this perception, they are unintentionally already judging the students they serve and it makes this “non CMO” and what they have to offer to the community look misleading.