It took us 15 years here, but in the past year we have finally articulated our major concern in this work. It is our mental health, which in turn is influenced of course by how we teach and how we manage our classrooms.
Specifically, if the method we use allows for much greater levels of powering up student interest in our lessons, then our classroom management will be better. (There are lots of articles on classroom management in the categories on the right side of this page.)
So when our pedagogy involves kids in non-disingenuous ways, our classroom management problems diminish greatly, and we have better mental health. Many have said of teaching that it is a calling and not a way to enrich oneself financially but in terms of quality of life (I have found this to be true as a result of intense work over 40 years).
So all I really wanted to say in this post today is that if we are to retain our sanity at all in this most-difficult profession, we have to stop thinking about how we teach and manage our classrooms in terms of some specific clever idea/strategy/activity, that we can get from the “right” trainer, and start thinking in terms of just making ourselves understood to our kids in ways that reflect our own personality.
There is no right way to teach using CI. If someone tells you that they have figured it out, walk away fast.