Pros
Lots of pros to working here: 1. Great Team - In my 12 years working in urban education I have never worked with a group people who are smarter, harder working, more mission driven, passionate, or engaged. I am seriously blown away by the people I work with at every level. It keeps me on my toes and working to always be better. 2. Professional Development - The organization has a really heavy focus on professional growth and feedback. I have grown more professionally in my 3 years here than in all of my other positions combined. I receive regular feedback, my manager helps me work toward my individual goals and pushes me to be better. We dedicate time to practice and prepare for presentations, etc. 3. Adult Culture/People Leadership - We focus on building a great team and it shows. We practice difficult conversations before they arise. We focus on giving direct feedback and being kind. It feels good to work here because there is an organizational expectation that we are professional and positive at work. 4. Diversity and Inclusiveness - We invest a lot of time and thought in talking about issues of race and class. We do deliberate anti-bias training and D&I is at the forefront of much of our daily work. I am more socially aware now than I was before I started and I have had to draw out and challenge my own biases. I also know this is an area in which we can and are still working to improve as an organization.
Cons
There are so many positives to working here. There are only two reasons I did not rate Achievement First a 5 all around: 1. Work Life Balance 2. Variablility While I know that there is truly no such thing as work-life balance and the ideal integration of work and life looks different for all people, the culture of Achievement First is to be very work focused. People are responsive on email late into the night. School-based employees start their day before 7 AM. We all work at the very least 50 hours a week. For some people this feels like the right balance, I know for some it feels unbalanced. Variability- I have had an overwhelmingly positive experience here but I know there is variability in level of satisfaction of teammates between schools and on different teams at the network. As an org we already focus on capturing best practices and disseminating them so we need to keep this up.
