Teach for America – “Teach For America is an amazing place to work.”

Pros

The people you work with - very hard working, dedicating, innovative folks. I am continually learning from my colleagues, many of whom have become very close friends. I feel extremely comfortable sharing my opinion and I know that I am heard. I feel valued. I have many opportunities for professional development and am often given praise and feedback to ensure that I am continually growing. I work with my manager to pick out several things that I want to professionally develop (she will agree that they are beneficial to me, my job, and the direction that I want to go in the future) and we work on those 2 or 3 things for 6 months. After that, we look at progress and establish a new professional development plan at that point. In my experience, there has been many opportunities for me to explore my interests across teams: I worked on the recruitment team for 2 years and then wanted a change of pace and now work on the teacher preparation team.

Cons

Sometimes Teach For America can be too focused on work and not enough on personal goals. We're working very hard to ensure personal and professional alignment, but I think it's the area where we lag the most. Often, deadlines and work loads are determined by the individual because if that individual spoke with his/her manager about being overwhelmed, his/her manager would help to prioritize the work load.

Advice to Senior Management

You do a phenomenal job making sure that we are focused on the right priorities. You help me to see a connection between my work, those priorities, and student achievement. In part because of your work, I do not feel isolated in my operations work - I very much feel that what I do contributes to our teams ultimate aims and the organization's mission. I appreciate that you share why big decisions have been made and give non-senior management folks the opportunity to voice their opinions, when appropriate.