Pros
The BCBAs are incredible mentors! You will learn so much. They treat you as a team member and make you feel included. They are always nearby in the classrooms or on the messaging app. And just through casual conversations, they are able to review a lot of the basics of ABA and what they are truly looking for when we carry out the lessons. They are supportive of your insights and ideas.
By far the absolute best part of working here is seeing such wonderful and deserving children get the absolute best care that they deserve! Especially if you are a person who has struggled with a learning disability, this is your chance to give these children a better chance in life, using all of the latest modern research and techniques.
Cons
The paperwork is daunting, especially for a part timer. There are 5 different time sheets to fill out; some are paper, some are on the Total ABA website, some are on a google drive.
All day long you will need to use your personal smart phone. You will need a newer smart phone to handle the kidslink apps and access to their drives. There is no financial contribution offered for using our own phones.
You are not supposed to disconnect from the kidslink communication app that is on your phone when you are away from work. It’s your responsibility to monitor the app constantly so that the next time you work you are informed.
Employees put in unpaid time being stuck in work mode while not at work, which is not good for work / life balance.
You only get paid 10 minutes in the morning to get yourself ready to teach up to 40 lessons, arrange all the materials, find all of the consult note files to read, review behavioral plans, and plan the timing of your clients day. This would take me about 45 minutes, not 10. If you stick to only the paid time you will miss things, like reading a new consult note. And you will get blamed for that. This is another area in which dedicated employees login and read emails and things from home, unpaid, just to keep from missing anything. I don’t think the admin realize just how lucky they are to have several rbts there who give that place their all to make it work so well for the kids.
After the clients session, you must graph all of the data results from their lessons.
This clinic does client data graphing by hand; they do not use an app. In a typical 3 hour day, with a motivated student, you will run up to 40 lesson programs, resulting in many data points. Those data points then need to be copied by hand from the data collection sheet into different graphing binders, in up to four different places on the pages. Some of the data will also go on a separate session note that you will send to the clients family.
You then have to apply all of the data rules in order to determine the future of that program- these must be looked up on a different page from where you are graphing. There is a lot of flipping from one page to the next, back to a different data sheet, and then back to the graph.
It’s so easy to accidentally write a number in the wrong box somewhere, and if you do, the whole thing is wrong.
You then need to hand write all of the lessons and teaching strategies for the next day. This is hundreds of individual data points and instructions, and there is no system for double checking or catching mistakes. The data are these clients medical records, and if you make one mistake out of those hundreds of hand copied and hand computed pieces of information, the admin can give you a punishment point, which leads to not only a lot of shame but also firing if you accumulate too many points. It’s a positive punishment system, which is so different from the mentality of ABA and how the BCBAs train us on learning and behaviors, and how we are expected to teach our students. Fortunately, positive punishment is not used on the students ever.
After graphing all of that data, you need to send out emails to the BCBAs with lesson program updates. And you will need to send emails to all of the other rbts if a BCBA or parent verbally told you something pertinent about the client or any of the lessons (for example, when the parent shares that a new food allergy has been discovered). There is no paid time to do this. But it has to be done. Otherwise, the other rbts will not have the info they need to run the programs correctly and deal with clients in the way the BCBA wants.
After that you will write out a detailed data sheet to be sent to the parents.
You only get 30 minutes of paid graphing time to get all of this paperwork done. If you have run only limited programs, and if you have been graphing while the client is still with you, it can be done. But if you dedicate 100% of your time and attention to your client, plus you run a decent amount of programs, you will go over - sometimes WAY over- your paid 30 minutes.
The hours are limited, and when a client cancels last minute you are out almost all those hours. And, because this is a clinic and not a school, there is no flexibility with your own family obligations. Only your own illness is an excused absence. When you are sick, though, the admin is very supportive.
