Pros
It's difficult to list pros because it varies due to your proximity to leadership and how much you are favored. Typically if you are a man and/or white, you are afforded the most privledges, otherwise you are deprived of many of them. These include: flexibility in arrival and dismissal, autonomy over your own grade book, autonomy in parent communication, freedom to engage in PD outside of school grounds, and compensation which is not distributed equitably or through any research-backed means.
Cons
- inexperienced leadership, constant changes each year and, in many cases, in the middle of the year - few resources to offer to teachers for lesson planning, everything is DIY, reinvented each year - very inequitable meeting structures with few voices given platform and dominant ones remaining unchecked by leadership - unsustainable expectations in managing more beyond your content area which includes an advisory you are not trained for, an elective that doesn't count for a grade, and setting up for monthly diversity events in which you are also not trained for - extremely chaotic and close spaces to work in that do not accommodate healthy planning time - a litany of meetings both as teams, departments, and with your supervisor that are not conducive towards completing your job - your supervisor is your coach and they are rarely, if ever, trained in your content area and there are an extremely limited amount of supervisors none of which you get to choose from - parents are routinely kept in the dark about changes in the school and are not equitably informed about staff changes, programming changes, and citywide policy changes as they all relate to protected classes, SPED, and ELL students - the SPED programming is very disorganized and lacks equity as its foundation with any teacher or staff member potentially responsible for delivering services - there is no integrated or structural ELL program or consistent coordinator at all grade levels - at-will employment means that you can get fired at any time for any reason not disclosed to you and this regularly happens at all levels of the organization except for leadership and usually involves people of color and women - systems have very little sense in their design and constructive criticism regarding their improvement is routinely discouraged and ignored - there is no tangible pathway for teacher development insofar as roles, compensation, or content specialization -- everything is voluntary, unstructured, and uncompensated - several individuals hold more than one role without equity or sustainability taken into consideration and thereby are elevated to a status above "peer" despite them not being your supervisor - there are no coded disciplinary procedures, policies, or culture or incident prevention ans reporting in terms of student to student or even student to teacher -- there is no student handbook - turnover is extremely high amongst assistants and rising among teachers each year - staff with many years of experience in the field or in the building have been dismissed with little to no thought as to the impact for the greater community - staff morale is extremely low and people exist in isolation from one another with as little to do with one another save for a few pockets here and there - there are no school wide community meetings, assemblies, or any sort of student body programming that is done in order to improve morale and school culture - emails and communications routinely pour into out of contract work hours