City Year has so much potential, but fails miserably to follow through.
Pros
1) Working with and mentoring kids is a special experience. 2) The Corps Members themselves are very cool and interesting (about 80% are cool and the other 20% are CRAZY and incompetent).
Cons
1) The City Year superiors (Team Leaders, Program Managers, Program Directors) have proven to be largely incompetent. They make decisions in a very dictatorial fashion, focusing on growth and numbers and ignoring the needs of Corps members. 2)You follow students in classes all day, but oftentimes teachers teach for the entire class period; this means that whole class periods are spent doing nothing. There is a severe lack of productivity during the day, even though work days are upwards of 10 hours each day. 3) It is extremely stressful and often it feels futile to work in such horrible schools. The teachers and administration are often inept, and Corps Members have little power at the end of the day. Corps Members are forced to prop up support for these horrible schools. Sometimes, the only work we can do is have kids do missing assignments for full credit. This promotes bad work habits, and this isn't tutoring. This emphasis on just getting kids to do their work does little to curb the poor education that students receive. 4) City Year as an organization does little to support Corps Members. Training days happen upwards of once a week, and are frustratingly useless. 5) The data-driven approach is faulty and borderline corrupt. There is no data to understand City Year's impact on students once these students no longer have City Year to help them. In other words, City Year is so focused on short term success, that longterm success is totally ignored. 6) The culture of City Year is tacky and childish. The organization pontificates about professionalism, but promotes a culture that discourages any sense of professionalism. Management sits on their phones during trainings and doesn't uphold the same uniform standards as Corps Members.
