*First off, clinicians are lauded in meetings as being the most important part of the company (the ones actually working with the kids 1:1) but are payed the lowest in the company and treated completely awfully by management. You will be expected to consistently control extreme behaviors of kids with no help and if you aren't able to get a full sessions work done (due to children behaviors) it will come down on you. Expectations are insane. We are expected to get in a full hours worth of work WHILE making it fun for the child and taking notes simultaneously. After each session you'll get 5 minutes to get to your next session, and management went as far as to tell our team this summer that these 5 minutes are not for us, and we are expected to hang out with the kids in the lobby during our break over using the bathroom or getting water. To add on to this, employees are consistently watched by older employees and given a list of things they're doing wrong, often in front of students. It's demeaning and just makes the clinicians feel constantly insecure.
*You will be expected to take on more responsibilities for no extra pay. They no longer offer pay incentives for testing, scoring, and mentoring but clinicians are forced to take on these extra responsibilities for nothing but maybe a "thanks", if they're lucky.
*Nepotism. This is a big one. If you aren't apart of Nanci Bell's huge family (how are there so many of them?) expect to stay at the bottom of the totem pole with no regard for qualifications. They promote uneducated members of the family over others who have been at the company longer and don't even try to hide it. It's frankly disgusting and you'll come to find that almost everyone in management is either a family member or related in some way to the family. Don't expect any fair promotions here.
*There are times that you might feel like you're helping kids effectively and some test scores do increase. But the bottom line is that a lot of the students being taken in by Lindamood Bell are ones with EXTREME diagnoses with desperate parents who are promised huge leaps in reading. They do not train clinicians on how to work with these extreme cases while promising the parents that their kids reading level will increase by grade levels when their student comes in as a non reader. Management knows this won't happen, but still takes their money and makes empty promises. As a tester, you'll see that management tries to skew test results if they don't show huge improvements. They are lying to families to make money, and it's placed on the clinicians to "work magic" with children who have such high behavioral issues that getting work done is impossible.
*Lindamood Bell Academy. This place is a scam. It makes me so sad that parents are paying extreme amounts of money for this "fully accredited school" when in actuality there is absolutely NO regulation with any of it. Clinicians are forced to be teachers for subjects they may know nothing about, and there is no monitoring of sessions here so no one would even know if work is being done. Clinicians are ENCOURAGED to help students with their online tests so they get the best grade possible. All this company cares about is showing that the kids got good grades, and they don't care about the student's success or independence at all. Your kid may come out of Academy with all As, but management encourages clinicians to cheat for the students to get those grades. Additionally, you'd think clinicians would be paid more for acting as a teacher for a private school, right? Nope. Same minimum wage pay.
*The cult like mentality. Employees are expected to work overtime and put in extra work off the clock, and some people just do it. There's a huge feeling in the center that you can't complain at all or say anything disparaging the Great Nanci Bell. You get sucked into feeling that you need to do these things because it's expected of you, but they offer absolutely no incentives for extra work. Also, raises aren't a thing. The most senior member of my center has been there over 20 years and makes barely a couple dollars more than new employees.
