elementary school teacher

teacher

high school teacher

special education teacher

assistant principal

Mastery Schools

The initiative of the business is genuine, as it seeks to provide equitable education to the unnderserved. The students are honest and parents are great. If you teach here you will first be indoctrinated with a series of inspiring yet amature level Ted-Talk PDs in August. You will also receive great pay and benefits. All campuses in the business have high expectations and opportunities to serve. You can earn bonuses for reccomending teachers, deans, and administrators. There are multiple observations and drop-ins. There is feedback all the time. Metrics for teacher advancement are convoluted and confusing but if you're a good teacher and advocate for yourself you can climb the ladder. The business provides an array of lessons, curriculum, procedures, and scripted instructional standards. There are at minimum, 4 mandatory meetings to attend every week with some that go into prep time. Most campuses have 8 hours of pd every month of the school year. Teachers either teach multiple courses or teach one course and are part of a committee or both. You are not always compensated for being on a committee. Depending on the campus you may be required to substitute for either staff that call out or classes that do not have a teacher. You are compensated for substituting but need to stay on top of documenting hours subbed. Blackout scheduling is enforced. Depending on the campus, you may have to share a classroom with another teacher or move from room to room. Lesson plans, standards for each lesson, objectives, and exemplars must be posted and in the room daily. Weekly responsibilities include attending mandatory meetings, updating data, grades, week-at-a-glance schedule, and any other department requests (school duties. monitoring, proctoring. etc). There is a high concentration of students with I.E.P.s and 504s in every class. Most classes are filled to capacity. The school has a loose policy for cell phones and just about all students have them. You will be expected to contact parents and guardians weekly. The aftermath of the pandemic hit this particular campus hard with leadership transitions and pressure for the school to perform well. There were experienced teachers and staff fired this year for 1 or 2 strikes and a few that left on their own free will (close to 18). Just about all departments are understaffed. The school pushes for trauma-informed awareness and equity but seems to struggle with providing the students and community with stability and equity and it is apparent. In the transition of leadership, the campus is understaffed and the administration is pushing to do its best with the post-pandemic demands of the central office and state requirements. This particular campus makes the staff feel unsteady, exhausted, and unappreciated. 

I worked there for almost a year and in the beginning I was promised a budget and the ability to request items to get my specific job done. After a month I was told I couldn't obtain role specific items needed to complete tasks due to lack of funding. I was also told that I had limited time during the days to complete tasks unlike others who could stay and get their job done due to funding. I found that over the months I worked at MASTERY the people in charge of the building really didn't know what they were doing and maybe this is why funds were not being allocated to the correct departments. When you throw cheap parties constantly but can't provide paper and pens... that's a red flag! I also had to remove myself because  of the dangerous environment the school provided just to keep the door open, ie.. testing with expired covid  test to get negative result, promising to have the facility sanitized and decontaminated after an outbreak but not wanting to pay for the services so it never happened, allowing gas to leak from direct lines because  you don't want to spend the money on repairs but you continue to keep the school open, Constantly patching up old broken heater systems spending hundreds of thousands yearly instead of following directions to purchase a new heating system. This company is all over the place, and the people  at the top don't care. The children  suffer from over populated classes and not enough  teacher and staff guidance so they run the halls and do as they please all day....its like one big sloppy daycare it's!  Its just a sad place to work! 

During the interview process, administration sell the school as the best place to work, but it is clearly not. While students' needs aren’t overlooked, teachers’ needs are and we don't receive the help that we need. The staff is overworked and there is a culture of “family”, but   grade teams work in silos with little to no overlap between students in the school community. There are limited resources and no interest in supporting ways to find/engage them if they are needed. The students have a lot of behavioral issues and unfortunately, they don't get reprimanded or proper consequences to encourage improvement. But on the other hand, teachers are told in coded language about how we are at fault for those behaviors (despite employing a variety of classroom management techniques) and what we can do to improve it with  again little to no support from admin or the culture team. A typical workday will be you running around covering classes (or not, as many classes tend to have no teacher in them if someone is out), trying to deal with the behaviors of students and staff, trying to teach all the while students are apathetic and do whatever they want. I was very motivated to start working in the school, but got disappointed very quickly. My mental health has declined significantly since I began working here.


The students run the school here. They could do anything wrong and have no consequences. Kids get in fights and it's blamed solely on the teacher. The administration has no idea what they're doing. Students have half days on Wednesdays for professional development and we end up doing nothing all afternoon. It is such a waste of time. 

I asked for constructive feedback on my lessons and only got told to hang more posters in my room. Nothing about my teaching or classroom management, which is what I wanted help with. 

Teachers have cliques in the building and it is hard to develop relationships to help support you in this bizarro world where the teachers are at fault for students behavior, but students are not help accountable at all. 

I had credit cards stolen and charged by a 5th grader and I was told it was my fault!! He was only suspended 1 day!!! That was only because of my insistence that something be done!! 

Don't work here. I was sick to my stomach every time I had to go into that building.

Solid company to start out at if you are fresh out of school or starting in a new field. Company requires you to be a conformist. You must allow others to think for you. If you have years of experience and are set in your ways, Mastery is not the place for you as you will be supervised and told what to  do by someone who have less credential or experience or quiet frankly an idiot. The pay is excellent,  however; management is poor, inexperienced and make changes on the fly which can make work life stressful. Culture is not good and politics are live and well. Be careful of voicing your opinion to your colleague as your words and feelings will get back to administration. Kids pretty much run the school and the discipline policy is a joke. Some Mastery schools are better than others so its the luck of the draw as to what school you could end up at. A little difficult to balance personal and work life as you will work longer hours than expected and your start time could change within less than 24 hr notice. Very easy to get written up.

Day to day this job varies. Some days you come in and leave feeling acomplished, and like you're working for a bigger picture of pushing for quality education. Others, I can't even get through a lesson due to encountered behaviors and unpredictable scheduling. The accountability process is concerningly underwhelming for students. You will grow immensely as a teacher and learn a lot quickly, however, the responsibilities can and will change at the drop of a dime due to staffing shortages and budget constraints. Personally have not met a person that does not consider this job overwhelming in some way. They will ask you to do more than your pay/contract asks. Your work life balance will suffer and you will need to learn how to leave your work in the building or it can become excruciating. The people I work with are wonderful on all levels and have the same goals and values in mind, but Mastery will value money over quality every time, and that is a really difficult situation to be put in without a union.

No two days are the same when you work with children.  Being surrounded with great people who is in the profession for the love of education and the belief that every child, no matter his/her economic status, deserves a quality education was one of the best experiences of my life!  

The hardest part about being the Admin Assist at any school is that you're pulled in a million different directions constantly.  You must be able to wear MANY hats!  There were mornings when I was answering the phones, answering the doors, replying to emails, drying tears, applying band-aids, and logging late students all at the same time!  But it was worth it!  Knowing that helped improved the life of a child on any level makes the job rewarding.

•	Driving student achievement for students with disabilities
•	Responding to progress monitoring results and student assessment data
•	Establishing a positive, structured, achievement-focused classroom
•	Providing support to students, parents, and general education staff and supporting student learning
•	Mentoring and coaching students on self-regulation and organizational skills
•	Developing effective IEPs that translate into measurable results for students
•	Providing leadership as a member of the Special Education team
•	Modeling the Mastery Charter Schools Core Values of respect, integrity, community and excellence influence academic and educational life. 
•	Working with family and community settings, supporting children with behavioral health challenges, and their families
•	Demonstrating the ability to work cooperatively with families and other professionals on behalf of youths and their families.

A typical work day involves  a brief morning meeting with grade team leads followed by positive message for the day. A typical instructional day may include one or more administrators or support staff checking in during entry or exit looking for specific actions taking place and collecting data for classroom effective and other measurables.

At my current campus, staff are all very hands on helpful towards every staff member, new or seasoned. All  staff is very professional, has a one-team attitude and positive approach to challenges and new deliverables. 

The hardest part of the job is keeping up with all the non-instructional expectations and deliverables.

The most enjoyable part of the job is the feeling that we're all in this together and everyone is willing to give a helping hand to a fellow colleague.

Mastery is an amazing place to work great atmosphere great students great team rapport. The only con was as a paraprofessional you don't receive any benefits you only can work 29 hours per week if you get the entire 29. During breaks and in-services paraprofessionals are not paid and are not required to stay during n services so we had a lot of time off. I would recommend this job too young students looking for experience in a classroom setting but you cannot provide for your family off of the pay and the hours that they give to paraprofessional and there is New Hope to ever becoming a full-time employee as a paraprofessional because they don't allow paraprofessionals to become full-time and that's a guideline through human resources.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Elementary school teacher 35 salaries reported	$82,758 per year
Teacher 9 salaries reported	$67,313 per year
High school teacher 48 salaries reported	$84,763 per year
Special education teacher 7 salaries reported	$85,664 per year
Assistant principal 16 salaries reported	$117,995 per year

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