Horrible Management, Toxic Work Culture
Pros
1) A lot of corps member go into City Year with good intention, so you meet a lot of friendly people (although that does not make up for the toxic work environment created by some team leaders and program managers). 2) Although some kids are rambunctious, most are super sweet and willing to talk to you 3) Teachers who support city year are nice to corps members because they are so helpful in the class
Cons
Everyone who does this does it for the kids, but you also need to think of yourself too. City Year is tiring in every single way and not very rewarding. 1) High drop out rate: A lot of people end up quitting half-way through the year which goes to show how terrible this experience can be. 2) Terrible management: The people who will be your team leaders and program managers are hired by default because very few people apply for the position. Most of them are super incompetent. Not only that, the people in charge of them are disorganized and just care about the City Year brand. 3) Slave labor: The pay for each corps member is below a livable wage even though you work 50+ each week. You are on your feet walking around for 6-8 hours every day. They have a HUGE budget they don't spend on the people doing the most intensive work for their company: the corps members. My sight disclosed that they have almost 18 million in their budget, but they only use 1.5 million (at most) on corps member, team leaders, and renting their office. So where is the rest of the money going? 4) Late disclosure of information: they tell you their days are about 10 hours, but then you have to do leadership roles that bring some of those days up to 14 hour long days. You still have to go to work to do another 11-13 hour day the next day. If you live far away, you can say goodbye to sleep. 5) Toxic work environment: the team leaders and program managers are not professional and do not have clear boundaries between themselves and the people they are in charge of. They have very clear favorites and promote cliques in the work environment. They do not push themselves to talk to all their team members in conversations (outside of training). They often break the professionalism rules set by city year, yet expect you to follow the rules they set for you. 6) Corny rituals: this isn't really that bad, but honestly some of the chants and power greetings they have you do are to please the administrators and not the students. 7) Forget about your plans after city year: some think they have time to study for the GRE or apply to grad schools while doing City Year, but that is super difficult. You will work long hours and be ten times more exhausted than you think you will be. If you can afford it, it's better to work a part-time job that pays at least minimum wage and focus on what's best for you. If you want to serve your community, you can volunteer or work in after-school programs and have the same amount of impact. 8) No benefits: you get health care and food stamps through the government. City Year gives you nothing. If you (god forbid) happen to get sick, you are done because they only let you have 12 days off every year, and they don't give you good health insurance. 9) No one is trained: Basic training academy teaches very abstract ideas you will never use while in service and does not prepare you to tutor or mentor students at all. They wait until you are in the classroom with kids to start training you. At the end of the day, you won't know what you are doing. On top of that, everyone teaches Math, English, and an elective. Therefore, you will most likely teach a subject you have not studied in years without any prior training from city year.
