So. Many. Cons. I should note that your experience really depends on the school in which you are placed.
To start, network lied to me, told me the school I interviewed at was not my permanent placement but my training placement and that my permanent placement would be within 50 minutes from my home (the school I interviewed at was a 1.5-2 hour commute each way). A month in, my principal told me not to expect a closer placement. In the interview, I was told most people work 9 hour days with the occasional 10 hour day. What no one told me was that people in my position often work 11-12 hour days with the occasional 13 or 14 hour day. There are no breaks at Success, you take what's called a "working lunch." If you are in my position, you are not supposed to use your personal days on Mondays or Fridays.
I've worked in education for 6+ years now (through TFA and Fulbright among other institutions) and I have NEVER heard teachers speak so harshly to students as they do at Success. Teachers were regularly yelling at and embarrassing their students; this often started with the grade team lead and trickled down. The fact that most of these teachers were white with mostly black and brown students set up a racial dynamic that made me very uncomfortable. At one of our staff meetings, I brought up terms like "intersectionality," "white privilege," "racial biases," etc. and only a handful of teachers had ever heard these terms and a few expressed irritation at being told they have white privilege. I questioned if our school had ever had racial bias training (I came in mid-year) and was told our principal had cut it short in favor of other topics. This is a problem. As a TFA alum, I have been VERY critical of the organization; while TFA is nowhere near perfect, I promise there is not a person who leaves TFA's institute training without understanding basic race jargon. Success needs to follow that lead.
In addition, working at Success means dealing with egos and power trips. You have 24 year old principals and vice principals looking to exert their power on lower- and lateral-ranking staff. My school had massive communication issues. My senior and fellow junior leaders rarely communicated large changes to me (i.e. students being held-over, teachers switching grades). Anytime I brought up communication issues, it fell on deaf ears. You have a never ending list of deadlines and deliverables that are not possible to complete in a 40 hour work week. Anyone who quits or takes a sick day or refuses to take work home is said to "not care about what's best for kids."
I was at Success for 3.5 months and in that time, I was the 5th person to leave my school.
