No transferability - Recensione dipendente - 8th Grade ELA Teacher presso Achievement First

AF is a cult and it was super apparent after 2 weeks of working there. I have worked at other charter schools, so I am familiar with the special lingo and practices that many charter schools employ (they all use the same consultants). However AF was a really weird cult. I have never felt like the unpopular kid in high school, but I definitely did at AF. Co-workers are really cliquey and gossipy, I guess that comes with high turn over rates. They never really bother to be inclusive and friendly unless you've shown that you are willing to live through misery for a couple of years. My biggest problem with AF, however, was that there was zero transferability in the skills I was learning and practicing as a teacher. I often had to interrupt my instruction and feedback to tell children that their misbehavior was a level 1 or level 2 in point deduction. It goes something like: "What is so ironic about what our main character, level 1 eyes, is that he tries so hard to be the good guy, to help his family, level 1 pencil, but in turn he becomes the monster, level 1 silent, that he feared he would, level 1, become." That is ridiculous, and if I was a child I would not be able to concentrate or even really piece together what my teacher just said. Additionally, the way they want lessons structured and done, reading loops and spirals, is literally only for AF and not used by any other type of school. In my role previous to coming to AF, I definitely felt like I was learning so much about literacy and how children learn. At AF, I feel like I wasted a year on learning useless ways to assign level 1s and 2s, and lesson structures. They also have a really random way of tiering teachers, as a level 3, 4, our 5 teacher. What Ive noticed is that experienced teachers, ones that haven't ONLY worked at AF, are often quite different from level 4s and 5s. I thought level 5 teachers were ineffective and I don't think any other children at different schools, not brought up in the AF system since 1st grade, would learn anything from them.