teacher

special education teacher

high school teacher

administrative assistant

elementary school teacher

Connections Education

I was employed with this company as a contractor. At the beginning of my project, I was given a contract to sign. I did so, then began my training. After training, I was told there was an additional part to my project that was not included in my contract, but that I would be compensated anyway. I found that odd, but began work on the additional part of the project and worked 80+ hours on it, submitted work the dates it was due, went through several rounds of revisions. During our weekly/bi-weekly meetings, I felt very disconnected because the company seemed disorganized and seemed to be asking for different things every time we spoke, which made it hard to complete work. During this time I received tons of positive praise and was told they could see me working as a contractor for them for a long time. I was told to submit an invoice for the first half of the work that was completed, which I did. I finally began the actual project I was hired to do and the first work sample I sent in was sent back, and I was told it was horrible, and unacceptable and needed to be redone and given a list of things to change. I changed every item according to my instructions, and resubmitted the work before it was due. I received no contact about the second set of work for three days. At the end of the third day I received a phone call saying they didn't have time to do multiple revisions on my work and they were severing my contract, even though I had made every change they requested. I was told to submit a final invoice for the work I had completed in a certain amount, which I did. Four days later, I received an e-mail stating they were not going to pay me the amount I had submitted the invoices for and that I would receive a check for an amount much less than I'd been told to submit for. I was shocked.

I would never work for this company again and would never advise anyone else to, either. They require work of you that was not initially specified, and feel they can change their compensation of your work at will. The company is poorly manged and disorganized. I constantly had to ask questions about how to perform basic functions of my job because I didn't have the needed materials and they would say, "Oh, that's a good question. I guess we can get that to you."

If you work for this company, chances are you'll get screwed out of your pay. Stay away!

I taught for over 5 years at Connections and when I started, it was an incredible place to work!  I had excellent colleagues and a great manager, the students were awesome!  Then, as they grew, the people supposedly making the decisions and the merge with Pearson has now made it a corporate culture where students are "clients" and they are not valued, just numbers.  Teachers often have up to 300 students and are not compensated extra for this. You are expected to call each student 3 times a semester and keep track of it, as well as do 4-5 Professional Development sessions every month. Endless meetings and check-ins with managers who micro-manage you, some managers who never even taught as long as you, are telling you how to teach when they are just clueless.
You get sick and personal days but are not allowed to take more than 2 days off in a row and are told to work over holiday breaks.  There are barely 6 weeks off during the summer and you are expected to write goals and discuss with your manager every semester, which is useless.
Every year, the teaching structure changed. You are required to get multiple teaching licenses in many states and often the person in charge doesn't check into it and just says to get it and some states require you to take their teaching tests in their state only.  They spent all this time and effort dividing teachers into regions and getting licenses in certain states, only to abandon that again and make it confusing.  Teaching is on 2 platforms and you have to keep track of which students are where.
Teachers are monitored on an online messenger service to make sure they are online and working and are expected to hold live chat hours to which students never show.
When you figure out your pay, as a full-time employee, down to the hour, it comes out to like $15. You used to get a yearly bonus based on how you and the company performed (again, not caring about students) but they screwed us over on those last year.  Every year, I got a 1% raise, when factored in after taxes, was like $10 per pay period. Insulting!  
Staying home was great but, the hassles and slave driving mentality and not having teachers' or students' best interests at heart anymore do not make Connections a great place to work anymore. There are better online schools out there to teach for!

Great office culture with three days a week to work from home after you've been there for a certain amount of time. However, the pay is miserable. Everyone is eligible for a yearly merit raise (prorated if you're not there a full year), but the raise is never enough to cover the rise of inflation. Because of the fact that each employee is only in the office two days a week, there is no permanent seating. Make sure to arrive early to be able to find a place to sit so you can clock in on time.

There is not much in the way of advancement. Each team has one to two levels and then it's into team lead, supervisor, and manager. It is not explained to you what you need to do to be eligible to be promoted from level I to level II of your position. The only way to 'advance' at the company is primarily to switch to a different team.

The company greatly encourages learning new skill sets. They are happy to cross train employees or to allow you to switch teams. The con to this, however, is that once you become cross trained you are frequently asked to do the work of other teams in addition to your own team. You are not compensated equally for the work, even if the team you're doing the work for is paid more than your team.

Management is very friendly and willing to listen. They try their best to make changes to help their employees, but the higher ranks of the company frequently will not allow them. Benefit costs keep going up while at the same time coverage is reduced.

During the summer time if you are in certain departments (Enrollment being one of them) you will be required to work over time. Because your pay is hourly, you do get paid time and a half for the over time. This over time though is the only reason the job pays enough to live in the same county as the building's location. There are no bonus opportunities if you're hourly unless you do the overtime incentive. Each year there is a bonus offered for working a minimum number of overtime hours. For two years now that has been 115 overtime hours over a period of eight weeks. The bonus was 1000 before taxes. They also have a minimum and maximum number of required overtime hours each week.

Over all, I love the office and my co-workers, but the pay and workload make it unbearable.

I would work between 10-12 hours per day and still not get everything accomplished that would need to be done with the demands of the job.  I had 52 emotional support students on my caseload and it was a struggle to manage and provide adequate support to all students on a regular basis.  If a students didn't want help, then they wouldn't answer the phone or attend out LiveLesson sessions.  

I did realize that cyber school is beneficial for those students who are self-determined, self-motivated, and self-driven.  Those students who wanted help and to be successful did rather well within the cyber school setting.  I as able to help those students who wanted the help more than I would've ever been able to within the public school setting.  

Management was a struggle because the demands were too high for my particular area of emotional support.  Regular schools cap emotional support caseloads to about 18 students and I was triple that within the cyber school setting.  It felt as if there was no learning curve and you were expected to be able to be successful from the very beginning.  

Co-workers were a great group of people to work with at CCA.  I worked within the 9th & 10th grade teams at CCA and all teachers collaborated and worked together, even though we were not even in the same building.  

The hardest part of the job was the balance between life and work.  My family suffered for the 9 months that I worked as CCA.  There was never a moment that I wasn't working on something school related.  I would be one of the first people in the office each morning and one of the last to leave and still had to do work at home in the evening.  Whether it was writing IEP's, calling students, or completing other tasks.  There was no true separation of life and work.  

The most enjoyable part of this job was working with the team to help students.  Those students who wanted the help were able to receive it from someone on the team.  I would collaborate with each teacher and student.  If a student was struggling in Science, then I would collaborate with that specific teacher and the student over the phone to help provide support.

I currently work at South Carolina Connections Academy.  This is a for profit school owned Pearson Inc. and functions under the guise of a Public Charter School.  The sole purpose is to make money, therefore student achievement/retention rate/graduation rate are important only to the extent that it allows the school to remain open.  Student learning is not a priority.  Academic Dishonesty among students is rampant and very few student requirements are enforced in regards to meeting actual legal attendance regulations. Teachers and other educational professionals are expected to do as they are told even if practices are legally questionable..   Those who voice an opinion are targeted and bullied by administrators.  I have witnessed the Counseling Managers repeatedly belittle and harass knowledgeable and experienced staff members who will not support their unethical behaviors. I have seen teachers basically forced out of the school and/or terminated if they are not liked by an administrator.  The school wants young employees that they can totally manipulate.  The administrators or "Leadership Team" as they call themselves have little to no experience and they were moved into administrative positions with no credentials. They are hired because they will do whatever they are told to do. The managers that I have worked with are not trustworthy. They always play favorites and there are different rules for different employees.  The pay at this school is much lower than the state teacher salary scale and the work load is intense.  You are allowed to work from home except for when you  are attending on site meetings and state testing.  However, if you have children you will not be allowed to have them at home with you during the day - unless of course you are a favorite, then these rules change.  This school has a very toxic culture and your mental health will most likely be compromised if you work here.  Almost everyone that I work with is actively seeking other employment.  Most are in fear of losing their teaching licenses if they continue to be involved in this facade. The school is currently under the strict watch of the SC Dept of Education. Avoid this place at all costs.

It isn't about education, it's about business.  If they were selling a product - a real, actual and tangible product - or if they even offered a service that did not require serious expertise, this place would likely be much better from top to bottom.  However, in terms of providing a valuable education, Connections Education is nothing but an empty shell of a company.

Imagine a group of people who believe themselves to be educators, teachers, even educational experts making decisions about how to teach based solely on bottom-line, business metrics.  That's Connections.  They have zero understanding of even the most basic forms of course development so they contract most of the heavy lifting out to a sub-contractor and then expect miracles to happen so their courses come off as educational.

No miracles happen and their courses, the core component of their entire business purpose, are shallow, empty and mundane exercises which teach nothing substantive and serve only to fleece parents of their money while pretending to teach their students.  

Corporate people pass the buck a lot.  They cherry-pick those issues and projects which they think best suit their immediate needs and any positive review, anywhere, demonstrates that some of the marketing people at Connections Education are tasked with creating a pleasant and responsible mythology about a company which is not responsible, pleasant and barely even worth calling a company.

If you need a job and you are at a point where any job will do, maybe you can find a role at Connections Education but even if you do, don't quit looking for something else, somewhere else.  Management and Executive level staff are in the business of blaming everyone else all day long; they do not know anything substantive about any aspect of education; they enable these train-wreck situations and at that point watch out, because when the wheels come off due to their own incompetence it is every employee for themselves.

First the positives: 

I had some wonderful students, and I enjoyed teaching them and getting to know them, and I also enjoyed getting to know some parents. I had some great co-workers. It was nice being able to work from home.

Now for the negatives:

The work-life balance was horrible, with more expectations than anybody could possibly meet. There is no way to do all of the grading, make all of the expected phone calls, respond to messages from students and parents, and prepare for and conduct lessons without putting in many, many, extra hours. It was readily apparent that the company preferred to err on the side of the school being understaffed and overworked, rather than hiring more teachers.

The pay was not good, especially considering the workload. 

The curriculum was pretty bad, and full of mistakes, and the bureaucracy made it hard to get any of those mistakes ever corrected. Sometimes the curriculum people would say they had corrected a mistake on an assignment, when in fact they had only made it worse. It seemed the curriculum people had no understanding of the subject matter whatsoever.

It was obvious to me that a majority of my students were cheating and getting information for tests and other assignments from outside sources, but the administrators never wanted to hear about it or do anything about it. Instead they seemed frustrated that teachers would take the time to catch students who are cheating.

I got the sense that the administrators cared more about numbers than they cared about people. I'm hoping there are some online schools out there where administrators care more about their students actually learning, and about the well-being of their staff, than about having numbers that make them look good.

I think it is well worth giving connections Academy, a chance if you’re interested in doing remote counseling with students in an online public school. The staff were supportive, and they were very dedicated to their purpose as a school. The circumstances that led to my decision to leave after only being there for about Three months I believe was because I found the inner departmental platform that they used to be very not user-friendly and confusing for me.  Lots of cross documentation in between departments would’ve been much easier to do if we could’ve just done private emails without the additional platform they had. Payment was very fair and they paid for multiple things. You had to do your own billing, which also felt complicated due to various forms that I was unfamiliar with if you can go into it knowing that there is a pretty good learning curve with platform and billing issues. I do consider it a positive experience, but Was a challenge managing nontraditional forms of documentation. I also found it confusing about how to maintain confidentiality when there was so much inner departmental communication so you have to be mindful of that because it’s still some thing as a mental health clinician that we aren’t obligated to give as much information as they may 

The system is designed to attach itself to sponsoring districts in return for cash and then enrolls students from all over the State.  It aims to produce money based on volume and so enrolls large numbers of students with a small work force to support them.  The result is a call center - like environment where staff have a case load of students.  Teaching is extremely limited, with many staff teaching less than two hours a week.  The main work focus is grading, finding missing students, and a lot of messing about with internal metrics to please management.

This is a good position for someone that is tired of teaching and doesn't mind being on the phone.  How enjoyable the home part is will depend entirely on your manager.  Some staff have a lot of freedom to just get their assignments done on their own time, while others are micromanaged.

This is a poor position for a person that gets a lot of their joy out of 'changing lives' or the other aspects of being a teacher.  You will never see or hear most of the students assigned to you, and the majority of those that arrive to livelesson will be afk.  I think the position is best viewed as a sort of case manager position, not a teaching job.

One last note of concern: there isn't a lot of stability at many of the CA job sites.  Employees are added and removed frequently, and even the entire school size can jump up and down by thousands of students based on negotiations with authorizing counties.  It's probably a better option for someone that needs a job for a year than someone that is looking for a long-term career path.

As I stated above, NCA has great potential for a great place to work. There really isn't a typical day. On any given day, I could be called upon to reach out to individual students, parents and co-workers to develop plans for student success based on individual family needs. I have had to work remotely to explain technology, subject content and graduation goals and requirements. 

At this job, I've learned how to effectively manage my time to to accommodate these tasks as well as unexpected tasks that come up. Though it can be chaotic when unpredictable tasks are assigned at the last moment, this is the most enjoyable part of my job. 

The fact that on any given day I can be planning one set of tasks and end up doing completely different tasks keeps me motivated, exhilarated and constantly on my toes, so to speak. I learn something new every day at my job. I work with excellent educators who are my co-workers. We all are committed to the common goal to help our students achieve educational & social success. We work very well together to meet that goal. 

The hardest part of my job as of late has been inconsistent management. There are conflicting management styles that cause miscommunications. These conflicts also cause confusion among teachers as to what expectations are. All of this leads to frustration and feeds negativity within the work environment.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Teacher 2 salaries reported	$47,000 per year
Special education teacher 15 salaries reported	$59,310 per year
High school teacher 28 salaries reported	$46,489 per year
Administrative assistant 13 salaries reported	$18.70 per hour
Elementary school teacher 18 salaries reported	$49,342 per year

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