High School Teacher - Anonymous employee Uncommon Schools Employee Review

You are expected to give up essentially all of your life to work at this place. It will come at the expense of drastic reduction in time spent with family/friends, your mental health, and job performance. It is not that you will not want to do your job, it is that there are so many demands that you cannot humanly (sanely, at least) keep up with them. Uncommon will tell you to work more efficiently when you voice concerns over this, but when you do so you become a robot who quickly burns out. Admin above the school level critique school performance and have demands that are usually unfeasible or add additional stress to school level staff. I do not think it is a coincidence that said admin are almost predominantly white men. Rochester Prep does not believe in substitute teachers. You may have 2 hours free to "plan" but at any moment you can be told you no longer have that period off and instead have to teach a class that isn't yours, in a subject that isn't yours. This again leads to loss of time and teacher burn out. Rochester Prep needs to shift how we prepare our students to become functioning adults when they leave our schools. Students are often timed on how long they spend in the bathroom, told when they can throw out their tissues, and when they can sharpen their pencils. This is not just elementary school, this happens through graduation. This creates Uncommon graduates who do not have the experience of independence and self-regulation that is ESSENTIAL to excelling in college and beyond, yet that's what we say we are doing for kids and families.