Great Hearts Academies reviews

Low Pay. My first semester as a Prep teacher, I worked 75 hours a week. They seek out principled teachers with little teaching experience. This is great, except that the promise to develop you is often abandoned. I was only observed 1x each year at one of my academies, and 3x from the headmaster the whole year at another. If you are not able to immediately swim, they are not interested in you. Headmasters are usually poorly trained in administration, and make mistakes that basic leadership training would allow them to avoid. Many headmasters have advanced degrees in humanities and have no formal training in organizational leadership except for what they have acquired at Great Hearts. In both of my academies, there was an unintended "inner circle" that left many employees feeling unheard and uncared for. At one academy, the headmaster allowed parents and students to go directly to him, without asking them to come to teachers first. This created an adversarial relationship between teachers and students, and often put the teacher on the defensive, rather than on the side of administration with the goal of figuring out how best to resolve these conflicts. Student narratives were trusted over teachers in some unwarranted cases. Teachers were expected to respond by taking responsibility for facts that did not occur, and in many cases were not allowed to offer an alternative account of the incident in question. This distrust of teachers was explicit with new teachers in this academy, the stated goal being to preserve the "culture" of that academy. The unstated praxis was that new teachers were on the outside of that culture from the beginning. All of this leads to prioritization of parental perspectives to the detriment of teachers; and they stated directly that it is due to fear of losing students at the higher grades. This is odd given that they claim to have a student waiting list over 10,000 strong and their commitment to Mortimer Adler's vision of equal scholarship for all students. A teacher should be able to develop and retain a new 10th grade student, regardless of how "difficult" our curriculum is.

They require 100% commitment to every aspect of their vision and mission. People that have different viewpoints or lifestyles are often very quiet about them for fear of being ostracized or fired. For example, I knew of a lesbian teacher at a Great Hearts academy who told only two or three employees of her lifestyle out of fear. The pay is low. Starting pay for a lead teacher is capped at $33,000 per year with no regard for experience or qualifications that would demand a higher salary. Raises are typically only %3 cost of living raise each year. Despite the low pay, they demand teachers to work upwards of 70 hours a week. I was working 10-12 hours a day on week days and 4-10 hours per weekend. The administration at my school retaliated against employees on a regular basis despite the "no retaliation" company policy. Any employee who spoke up against the unreasonable work demands and lack of administrative support was quietly phased out, given less an less responsibility , and not offered a contract renewal for the following year. Because they hire new college graduates the faculty and staff tend to be young and very naive. They allow themselves to Often times, I felt like I was in a college dorm again based on the way the faculty related and spoke to each other. I guess that whether this is a plus or minus depends on your point of view. It was huge minus for me because this was my fourth job our of college and I really wanted to be interacting with professional adults. The culture is extremely authoritarian. My advice: Don't teach here if you have better options.