Pros
I have two children and I feel like I have a lot more flexibility than working for a "brick and mortar" school. My school allows us to utilize flex-time, so that I can take my kids to appointments without having to use PTO. Since I work from home, I'm always here when they get home from school and I'm able to drive them to school each morning. Another plus is that Stride pays my tuition to get an masters degree in online education. It has been my goal to get a masters degree, so I am glad to finally work toward this goal. The people make this job amazing as well. I work with some awesome co-workers and the students are really great too.
Cons
My first 6 months of transitioning to online education were very difficult for me because there is so much to learn and I had to change my whole way of teaching. I thought it was a lot of work, but it definitely got easier as my computer skills increased as did my confidence in leading a synchronous class session. Another challenge of this job is that it can be very frustrating when you see the the student is struggling and the family won't communicate with you. Finally, the curriculum for my subject area is not the best in my opinion. I supplement and adjust for my live sessions to make up for what the online asynchronous portion is lacking in. That is time consuming for me to find my own resources but I feel like we are given quite a bit of planning time and that helps.
