Pros
Working at AF, you'll grow a ton as a teacher, for several reasons: first, you'll get lots of feedback on everything from lesson plans to management to the questions you ask in class to facilitate discussions. Second, there are lots of great teachers at your school already whom you can go observe, borrow/steal from, and get advice from. I feel like I'm held to a very high bar here, and it feels good. They're also really serious about developing your career, no matter what you're interested in doing. This isn't the average teach-for-20-minutes-and-open-a-school type of place. Lots of people here want to stay in the classroom as their forever career, so the turnover is less bad than other charter schools'. If you are interested in an administrative role, they give you lots of guidance and there are many pathways and platforms to work on. It's also a charter school you can feel good about working at. All AF materials are available for any other schools to use, the schools intentionally don't spend more per pupil than their host districts, and at least in my individual school's case, we have a higher percentage of students with IEPs than our host district does. Lastly, I think AF is a little more aware of the power dynamics (racial, class, gender, sexuality) that are at play in any school, particularly one that educates black and brown children. We could grow more, here, but having worked at Uncommon as well, I feel that we're ahead of them in terms of honest reflection and growth in addressing issues like culturally responsive teaching, equity in discipline, and recruiting and attracting diverse talent.
Cons
The hours are long. It's not an easy place to work, and there is an expectation that you'll do whatever it takes to get things done. The health insurance is pretty good, but there is no retirement pension; you'll have to save some of your higher-than-traditional-public-schools salary into a 403(b) instead.
