Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes reviews

I have been a tutor, both privately and for another tutoring company, for 8 years and Lindamood Bell has completely taken away my love for the field. LB has proven techniques for teaching a very specific cognitive impairment (visualization). Unfortunately, they take in all kinds of students that do NOT benefit from this curriculum. My center especially has been low on students and therefore low on funds, so any student that comes in for an evaluative test gets the hard sell for our program. This directly harms both the students and the "clinicians" (tutors). We had many students who were frustrated by our program and felt it was monotonous, because they weren't personally experiencing the problems that our curriculum is set up to address. We aren't allowed to stray from curriculum (and aren't trained to anyhow), so teaching certain students who have no problem visualizing would feel like beating a dead horse. And, worse, we had many students who were brought into LB because they had behavioral issues, which continually boggled my mind because that is not what the center is advertised to take on, nor is it what the clinicians (none of whom have psychology or childcare experience) are trained by LB to do. Clinicians are therefore underprepared and overwhelmed by problem students who have - on many separate occasions at my center - become verbally abusive, disruptive, and clearly emotionally upset in-session. It is stressful as the clinician and downright harmful for these students and their poor families, who are told by consultants that LB is the right path for them even when we are making no progress. Furthermore, while clinicians are dealing with these very intense behavioral issues, they are grossly underpaid, receiving about 12% of what we charge the parents, per hour. Since I have been in the field of childcare and tutoring for many years, I know what it pays in my area, especially for taking on special-needs students, and I know the rate LB offers to clinicians is absurdly low. Even when I was officially promoted to "full-time," when I was trained as a scorer/tester, trained for our math program, and trained for academy (four rounds of training!) I never received a pay-increase or bonus to reflect my new titles/responsibilities. When I outright requested a raise following my last round of training, I was told that it would be given upon an employee review. I requested an employee review, since they are supposed to be given within three months of employment (which had long-passed), and my manager said she would get back to me. When she never did, I emailed her (since she is remote) and she never replied to the email. It is so frustrating to watch the visualization program, an admittedly very beneficial and well-studied form of teaching, be so misused due to the mismanagement, the money-hungry attitude, and the lack of behavioral training. Clinicians are over-worked, under-supported by management, and completely underpaid.

But as a caveat to the pro, the experience that you will be sold and the experience you will receive is exactly what it feels like to buy something online for a good price and have it show up completely different from what you ordered. Some of the kids have a lot of other stuff going on, whether the kids are SpEd or have behavioral issues, the training received at Lindamood-Bell is not comprehensive enough to fully prepare one who lacks teaching experience with how much they are going to be expected to do in those situations. It’s extremely, utterly, and completely mentally and emotionally taxing as there are never really any breaks at this establishment. In my role , I’ve consistently had to work through breaks and lunches to match the expectations meant of me. I’ve had multiple conflicts with the manager. When I was out sick, I was still expected to work through planned vacation time that I wanted to continue to use to heal from covid-19. Though I communicated this with my manager, I was questioned everyday as to whether or not I would be able to work, when I would be able to work, or to do something work related. Meanwhile when my other coworkers were sick, they were not treated the same way and were given the time they needed to recover. Our manager creates an environment where we cannot grow or develop without having to be put down first. When we make errors on evaluations, he copies the errors and makes us keep a file full of them when in reality none of us are as experienced/developed enough to administer a perfect and spotless eval as he wants. This does not refine us as employees as it’s not direct nor is it constructive. It’s a very passive slap on the wrist and doesn’t teach the tester the proper habits/guides they should follow in order to truly administer to the best of their abilities. The development process for promotional roles are outdated, rigid, and in all reality not really applicable to the real life application of these roles. The videos used in these trainings are who knows how old and only serve to show that “hey we at least have something to show you for 3 hours” meanwhile a big part of the culture is not wasting frames. Those inconclusive trainings are one of the biggest frame wasters. I was sped through my development and never got to refine my skills properly so now everytime I make an error, the manager will throw me under the bus and say “If I were a good employee I would be able to get x,y, and z done at the same time” When in reality my development was completely brushed off for the last 4 months in order to develop someone else into a full management role. Not to mention it’s impossible to get a time off request approved in a timely manner. I actually even had to cancel a request I made due to us having multiple evals scheduled on one day when we only have 2 testers total. The amount of stuff you will do, will definitely vary on your role. I wouldn’t recommend this job or my center to anyone ever as I would not want them to have to go through what I went through.