As a new principal, I assigned a teacher to a different grade for the coming year. I did not expect to cause the anxiety it did. The teacher first came to me in tears and begged for her assignment to be changed. One class was larger than the others, so I needed an extra teacher at fourth grade. Every single week during the summer, and sometimes twice every week, I would receive either a call or an in person visit from that teacher pleading to move her back to her original grade level. She had been teaching that same grade for almost 20 years! I could not do that without putting another teacher in the changed position that year and there were no volunteers so I told her she would just have to manage. At the end of the year, she came to me and told me it was her best year ever and she was so happy with the change. It might not have worked out that way.

Would you have given in to the teacher and asked another teacher to move? Why or why not?