Pros
Connecting with the kids. Seeings them improve and grow more confident in themselves.
Cons
This company will cut your wages one week and in the next nearly double your workload, all because corporate made poor financial decisions. In the center I work at, most of our children are severely special needs, meaning that I and the rest of the staff basically do the same work as special ed. teachers, yet we're not officially trained to do such work and are paid a mere fraction of what a special ed. teacher makes. I'm a hard worker. I know it's easy to say that, but I've really been giving my all to this company. I don't believe in giving less than 110%, and if I did give less I'd feel guilty (that's just a personal flaw). My point in bringing this up is that, no matter what I do, no matter how much I give, no matter how exhausted and empty I feel at the end of the day, it's NEVER enough for this company. They will ALWAYS demand more from you, even when you're running on empty. And it's not because they love the children so much. No. This is for-profit education. Their priority (no matter how well they mask it) is making money. They exploit desperate parents of special needs kids, promising these parents revolutionary change for absurd prices (over $120 an hour for multiple hours per day). And, honestly, sometimes our program does work, and it works well. But it's not meant for the severe children that I teach day in and day out. We're bending over backwards for these kids because we've grown to really care for them, trying to make the program work as best we can. I see it in all of my co-workers. Every single one of them. We CARE about these kids. This company, however, doesn't seem to care about us. When they do offer us rewards for our work, the rewards are, at best, meager. Oh, and here's the kicker: they won't let you put them as a reference or write you a recommendation letter.