Pros
Work is typically easy, number one responsibility is maintaining supervision of students and being responsive to communications over the walkie-talkie. Independence to lead activities with students, I have the freedom to spend about 1/4 of my shift playing basketball with interested students. Schedule is really good/flexible enough for those working several part time jobs, gigging, or in school. Singular 15 minute break.
Cons
Misleading job posting. What I signed up for was instruction for a Lego engineering course. I haven't seen a single Lego brick since I started. Lesson planning and topic is on you, individually. Low base pay and near-zero chances for acceleration due to budget constraints. Extremely dependent on branch placement. At my branch, the regular Youth Specialist (supervisor) is on a year sabbatical and I've worked with three different fill-ins for the position since. High turnover, I've helped introduce new-hires to the position only for them to be gone the next day (several times now). It can be anxiety inducing not knowing how many staff members will show on a given day and thus how many ADDITIONAL students/entire classes will be expected of you to supervise. On the worst days it can be upwards of 4 classes of 20 students to 1 or 2 staff. Slow turnaround on supplies requests. At my location the walkie-talkies (the sole piece of technology holding the operation together) are old, busted, and inconsistent, leading to huge back-ups and slow downs. Being forced to leave my class unattended to run to other classes to share dismissal information is commonplace. We've requested new ones for months now. Cafeteria-bound. At my location, we're short several classrooms due to teacher's consent being revoked. What that means is 8 classes at a time (ranging from TK to 8th grade) are held in the cafeteria together at once, preventing lessons with any sort of nuanced instruction or discussion. Staying on the job longer despite high turnover means more and more is expected of you.