Uncommon Schools reviews

- You get hazed into being an employee at all Uncommon Schools. Within my first month at Uncommon, I received hundreds - yes, hundreds - of emails from leadership members with feedback under the guise of being "solutions oriented" and "positive." In reality, they are invitations for 6AM "practice clinics" in which you do rote memorization of the script that Uncommon Schools uses to teach people how they want you to engage with students. This place goes beyond the expectations that most people have when they enter teaching: of course everyone is aware of the staff shortages, tight budgets, and needing to be conscious of your work-life balance. Uncommon Schools does not care about your work life balance, about your salary, and about being culturally responsive. That's just their tactic for having good advertising material. - You will not build relationships with your students if you follow the Uncommon Schools script through and through. It is punitive, mean, and actively disregards students' IEPs, 504s, and cultural backgrounds. You will send students out of the classroom more times than you invite them in. And your will-power or dedication to "do the right thing" will not matter here: I regularly tried to reason with my coach and principal that it wasn't necessary to always send students out of the classroom, especially students whose IEPs required that they receive multiple redirections for being off task or confused. These conversations regularly ended in them concluding that I "just wasn't sending students out enough." To follow up on this, multiple members of leadership would randomly walk into my classroom and send students out on their own volition if they thought I wasn't doing it enough or as rigorously. No matter how hard I tried to be in charge of my own classroom and build trust with students, it never felt like enough because at any moment in the day, someone from leadership would walk in and just make students and myself feel unsafe. - Leadership members have gossiped about me in the past and I have walked in on them doing so. Fellow teachers have listened in on my personal conversations in the past and reported them to leadership to get me into trouble. There is a horrible work culture here and if you are not "aligned" with backstabbing your colleagues, you will be singled out and ostracized. - To add onto the other comments about long work hours: I know that for many teachers, this is expected and doesn't come as much of a surprise. The reason it is worse at Uncommon is because the school days are longer already (I worked from 7AM - 4 PM), but they will also invite you to Practice Clinics at 6AM, schedule IEP meetings for 5PM, and send you on overnight school trips with no added stipend or compensation. - In my first year, I did not make my salary. Every first year teacher is given a contract with a stated salary, but in fine writing, they prohibit you from making your stated salary and cut you short thousands of dollars. If you choose this employer, read your contract carefully, and then follow up to confirm the actual amount of money that you will be making, not the number they put on your contract. - Do your research about Black at Uncommon, the history behind Uncommon Schools' militaristic teaching style, and their low teacher retention rates. There is a huge disconnect between the positive reviews that current Uncommon employees are posting here on Glassdoor and the actual data about how many people can withstand working even a year at this organization without becoming brainwashed.