Pros
Working for Lindamood-Bell is incredibly emotionally-rewarding job. Over the course of the summer, you will help dozens of students make tangible, lasting gains. More importantly, the students frequently develop both a love of reading and learning. Simply put, the literacy and comprehension programs work, and work well. Tied to that, one receives training in these programs, as well as direct feedback and mentoring (more on this later). While you can pay to take the seminars, those do not provide in-field experience and refinement.
Cons
The company, in spite of their best efforts, have yet to achieve a consistent student load throughout the year. As such, services ramp up in the summer, with many employees being let go just as they achieve comfort with the programs. As a result, the busiest seasons are marked by a significant drop in the quality of services being provided. Additionally, due to the strain on the system to scale, mentoring drops off from corporate goals. Training is a whirlwind of information. Most practice is done via role-playing with other new hires: This is ineffective, as mistakes tend to be unrealistic. The company is working to train hundreds to thousands of new employees in a few short weeks with predictable results. Trainees feel overwhelmed, exhausted, and ill-prepared. While some co-teaching occurs, the number of sessions this occurs during is limited. Summer months are brutal on all staff members in centers. The centers are ultimately focused on financials. This may result in over-crowded facilities, as well as 40 hours of direct instruction. This can rapidly become exhausting. The alternative is not significantly better: The company seeks to limit office hours, meaning that scheduled low-intensity hours are rare, and usually the result of student cancellation. Some opportunities do exist for those who are trained for other tasks or have seniority, but remain rare for those providing the majority of instruction. The start of the school year frequently results in a massive decline in available hours: It is not unheard of to go from a 40 hour week to a 20 hour week to a 2-3 hour week, spread out over a few days*. Critically, pay and benefits are very low. One could work at a Starbucks or Costco with significantly less training and be given similar pay, significantly better benefits, and better job stability. The low investment in employees feeds a high rate of turn-over. Sadly, the company would rather spend money to train new employees en masse than retain an expert staff. I was told by more than one supervisor that no letters of recommendation may be provided by supervisors. Upper-level management ranges from the family of the founders to those who are very sweet-and-ambitious to those truly dedicated to serving students (the Director of Instruction, for example, is a wonderful person). Sadly, the corporate culture feels saccharine and a bit false. It tends towards the juvenile and frequently feels belittling, given that most employees have at least a BA/BS. The culture video, in particular, is nearly comically bad. I have had new hires walk out and never return after it more than once. Unfortunately, the focus on juvenile extrinsic reward systems undermines the serious work being performed. It wasn’t untill 3 years in that I understood that we were “clinicians” because we were performing medical interventions. They utilize medical language, but it is lost in Star Service Fanatic awards for $5 gift cards to Starbucks, Superhero-themed “appreciation” parties (complete with books written for 3 year olds and sunglasses sized for 8 year olds) and STAR Service Guidelines about creating good “show” while “on-stage”. It stands to note that much of the corporate culture is borrowed from Disney.
