Pros
The challenging environment and lack of support forces you to grow and become very self sufficient. I learned a lot about myself, people and what’s important in life. Made connections with families and the local community. With quality teachers you can provide young children with a safe and nurturing learning environment.
Cons
Center Directors (CD) have a heavy load of responsibility and are liable for everything that happens in the center. When there are licensing and issues with protective services, District managers (DM) may ignore your urgent emails and phone calls until it’s convenient for them. This could be days later or 11:00 at night. CDs must staff the school to ratio or less depending hours allotted for the week which leaves teachers out of ratio. If someone calls out, you’re are screwed. Trust me this will happen very often bc the teachers are unreliable & have endless personal problems /dr’s appts. If a child is sick, the teachers will say they have whatever it is. There’s no way to prove it & you are left with at risk classrooms. The teachers don’t have to follow most of the school policies because the CD has to cater to all their needs & requests. Engagement scores are more important than policy. DMs ignore serious issues with staff, undermine the CD position and authority and then ignore the effects. Aggressive teachers can keep their jobs if the DM likes them, meanwhile hardworking teachers are pushed out for superficial reasons. The assistant director role is undefined, underpaid & deserve a lot more appreciation and support. They are expected to do everyone’s job at a moment’s notice. Teachers are overworked and extremely underpaid!!!KLC has these “high standards of care and curriculum” but mainly hire people with poor skills and NO education. Wage increases are so minimal for top performers, they may not even notice the difference in their pay check . The rewards are juvenile, so much more can be done for the men and women who are truly exceptional!!! The lowest performers are treated just as good as top performers. Educated and/or dedicated teachers are on the same pay scale as the lazy, always shouting, arm grabbing trolls they keep on and call teachers. It’s no wonder turnover for teachers and managers is so high!!!!! Where’s the incentive?? Quality care is lacking! In and effort to keep the numbers rolling, KLC accepts all children regardless of their needs. This is a serious problem!!! They pride themselves on having an “inclusion services” department. They are good at taking notes but don’t offer any real support in the field. You’re lucky if you have a certified teacher with special ed. training, if not, it’s up to the you to find ways to meet the needs of these children. The teachers are not trained to work with special needs. All trainings focus on family engagement. I had children in my center who desperately needed services that KLC could not and will not provide. It’s abusive to the child, frustrating to the teacher and negligent to the other children. A cannot teacher effectively manage a class of 8-12 children when all of their attention is focused on 1, 2 or 3 children who exhibit severe behavioral issues, signs of autism, sensory sensitivity, schizophrenia, emotional trauma, constant screaming, eating their feces, running in circles, turning over chairs, throwing toys across the room or phySically harming the teacher or children every single day?? Then you have to tip toe around the truth with parents so they don’t leave because if they withdraw this will reflect negatively on you!! You will be told, you didn’t do everything you could or didn’t handle the situation properly. During my 4+ years working at KinderCare the worst part of my experience is the lack of diversity training and the many instances of discrimination and prejudice I witnessed between teaching staff, towards children and families, as well as unfair hiring practices. This includes CDs making racist/prejudice comments to teachers about families from Afr. Amer., Asian, middle Eastern or Hispanic backgrounds, teachers being allowed to make racially or culturally offensive comments about children/parents, or openly in the hallways in causal conversation in hallways/lobby. Even though the education team in corp. provided Valuable trainings for Prof. Dev. day, these were always the ones deliberately skipped or brushed over without emphasis. The worst for me was when my DM told me my staff was too “ethnic” and I should focus on hiring young, pretty, “white” girls to help drive the business and enroll families who have money. This was reaffirmed when we had a corporate visit and my DM made a point on two occasions to say that the two newest teachers (young and Caucasian) were the future of the school, even though I had other staff of “ethnic” backgrounds who had proved to be assets to our school and were known to be loved by parents. I was also encourage to weed out low income families to improve my numbers; even though they were the highest demographic of enrolled families.