Pros
Pay is better than most early childhood places which is not saying much, and also changing with the “great resignation” forcing other places to pay more competitively Benefits are okay but still pricey considering the size of this organization I made a few great friends while working here, but they also left because of the poor work environment There’s an HR department You get a work email and access to the entire Microsoft Suite
Cons
I don’t even know where to begin, but working here was the beginning of the end of my teaching career. After 7 years of being passionate about Montessori education, I have decided to pursue something else because I am just so burned out after working for this organization. It didn’t have to be this hard. 1. The job interview process is full of empty promises. I was told that I would get a 15 min break during the morning work cycle, that I would have an hour and a half of planning time each day, and that 30 mins of that time my assistant would be in the classroom with me to meet or assist, that I could leave a bit early some days and not use PTO, and that Guidepost followed a smaller ratio of students to teachers. None of those things were ever followed through on and instead we were told that because it was a new campus, we wouldn’t have those things YET. Well, that doesn’t seem like a great way to start things off. And forget planning time… there isn’t even a physical space for planning, not even a desk or counter space to place a laptop. 2. The supports are entirely superficial. I had multiple children with disabilities that caused symptoms of severe behavior challenges and the solution was Guidepost’s so-called “Child Study”. This is essentially a peer mentor who gives you bandaid solutions like “have you tried using a visual schedule?” Or “he just needs to know you love him”. Yes- someone really told me that, verbatim. A child study or behavior plan or whatever you wanna call it, needs to have a multi-disciplinary team that is focused on achieving attainable goals. There was no follow-through on action items, there were no defined goals, just strategies to try here and there. If an institution doesn’t have the resources to support children with different needs, they should turn them away, but Guidepost didn’t even do that because that means lost tuition. As far as the other supports, we had “mentors” visit our campus who were there to “help us be the best we can be” and the result of that was a report they typed up for each teacher, but mine clearly contained items that were copy and pasted from other reports because it mentioned how I should “remove worksheets” which I’ve never had in any classroom. The response to this report was to then put me in a study group to “bridge” my training with the Prepared Montessorian Institute (aka PMI) training. Guidepost seems to have no respect for guides who enter the organization with outside training, and they work hard to make sure you do things their way. “We want you to be open to new ideas and rationales…” but we are not open to yours. 3. The executive team at Higher Ground Education is downright revolting. We began receiving these weekly emails from the executive team which spew a word vomit of philosophical nonsense that are so incoherent I can’t imagine anyone actually reads them. If people claim to read them, perhaps they are doing so to make themselves seem smart for understanding big words which don’t really make any sense in the context they are used. These essays of profound thought are even published publicly on the Montessorium website. If you dig deeper and visit the twitter page of these people, you’ll find that they are twisting Montessori’s philosophies to fit their conservative libertarian ideals. Montessori would be rolling in her grave knowing that there is a network of Montessori schools out there that is not actively anti-racist. Eventually, you’ll start to notice how all these values trickle down into the practices and policies of the company. For example, there was one tweet mentioning how there are models of early childhood classrooms with hundreds of classrooms, and they seemed bewildered that this was illegal almost everywhere! Meanwhile, we are being encouraged to fill our classrooms with more children than DCFS has allowed us to, therein ignoring the “Guidepost ratio” I mentioned before. Another example was the issue around mitigating risk of gun violence….. someone from Guidepost tweeted that doing anything would be worse THAN NOTHING. That was the final straw for me. Safety is not a big issue at Guidepost and that became quite apparent when a homeless dude was sleeping in the downtown school on several occasions, but the twitter comment was really the icing on the cake. 4. That brings me to the next issue which is the ignoring of DCFS policies. Guidepost being the libertarians that they are, don’t believe that DCFS has interpreted their policy correctly, and disagree with their oversight in certain matters. There are rumors that they are suing DCFS and I’ve personally seen documents on the shared OneDrive where Guidepost counsel demands DCFS to interpret the Illinois 407 the same way that they do. Even if you disagree, its just not a good look. I already mentioned how the classrooms have more children than DCFS allows, but the campuses also have Directors listed on paperwork who are not on-site; yet another DCFS violation. We know staffing is hard, but when you put the same name down as director on site for multiple campuses, that is just blatant disregard for the policies in place. 5. Since they lack people who are Director Qualified, I was at one point asked to be the director on paper but was not offered any increase in pay or say in any matters that a director should have say in. I didn’t want to be responsible for things I had no control over and this was one of the many reasons that I began looking at other jobs. Even though I had the educational requirements to be Director Qualified, Guidepost had no respect for people with further education, did not pay for any professional development (I was told that we were over budget and I couldn’t even go to a regional conference) and won’t even pay for required trainings like CPR, and won’t pay for your time completing trainings like SIDS or shaken baby, which again, is technically a legal requirement in Illinois. So much for that HR department…. 6. You get ample time off but using it is another story. You feel guilty and end up doing more work to plan for your absence than its worth. There are hardly any scheduled days off, and if a holiday lands on a weekend, the observed holiday is ignored at Guidepost. 7. If all of this isn’t enough to deter you, the staff turnover is insane. I worked at a new campus that has only been open for 1 year and most of the classrooms are on their 4th teacher. I was the only one who stuck it out and even I only lasted one year in. I worked in another campus and the turnover was the same there, and thats just staff… The student turnover is even worse and makes it impossible to have a normalized classroom. Sure there are arguments for year-round schools, but when you start it from scratch it needs to be quite a bit more intentional than what Guidepost is doing. Yowza!
