Pros
It's rewarding to implement programs that really do work and to see such improvement in students. It's great one-on-one teaching experience with all types and ages of students.
Cons
This company claims its main goal is helping students achieve "the magic of learning," but the longer I work here, the more clear it is becoming: the main goal is profit. Every company-wide meeting in the past year has consisted mostly with statistics about profit. What happened to statistics about students and their improvements? For a research-based educational program, you'd think we'd hear about student results rather than financial results. There is an extreme amount of pressure on the center management to generate profit - they celebrate number of students signed up rather than number of students that made instructional gains. When I think about how much the company pays employees vs. charges clients ($13.00 vs. $109.00) it makes me sick to my stomach. Employees are expected to put so much into this job for very little genuine recognition (financial or otherwise). The company culture is good in theory, but can come off as extremely robotic and phony. The "Disney model" is extremely corny given the fact that this is a research-based program that is extremely legitimate in terms of educational quality, and certain aspects of it are extremely condescending. Many of the company policies are a little absurd, namely the vacation policy. The fact that employees are not "allowed" to take vacation time between June and August, not to mention the fact that the centers are open on July 4th is quite unfair. I am also constantly working through my breaks to juggle the student-load and get everything done, because overtime is absolutely not allowed.
