preschool teacher

classroom aide

classroom assistant

child care center director

spanish teacher

Tierra Encantada

The bad: 
TURNOVER IS HIGH. That tells you everything about this company. During orientation, they will tell you employees are number 1. Then you see how many teachers quit after a few days or weeks, and realize something is wrong. The administration team is all very new as well, because people continue to quit. 

Bad habits are difficult to break. The senior management has 0 accountability for the environment they created. The CEO will rarely admit she is wrong about something. She is the lady who asks to speak to the manager. The company is suffering from high growth and having too much pressure on the administration. There is a terrible culture that has formed in the Headquarter office. Anyone who works there needs to be ready to deal with the heavy atmosphere, mistrust, and authoritative leaders. If you take a job here, mark where all the cameras are located, to find a blind spot, and calmly take a break. ***FYI the camera footage is being monitored, because they think employees don't work.*** Be careful who is listening to you, because someone might report you. Very toxic environment, for lack of a better term. Management will monitor everything they can. 

More bad (PTO Policy): 
At least half or more than half of the admin has been on a Performance Improvement Plan - You will see people working like crazy, and still get put on a PIP. Expectations are too high. As a member of the admin you will have a salaried position. They will try to take advantage of you, and make you work extra hours. Since you're salaried, you won't get paid overtime. Here's the catch, even though you're salaried, you will get PTO taken off for leaving early. If you leave an hour early, it's deducted from the PTO. Always make sure to document when you stay late. Otherwise, it won't be acknowledged. 

Benefits are decent. You get a high deductible medical plan and dental. PTO is average. It starts at 10 days for admin and 8 days for teachers, but be careful. With this company you can go negative (Unpaid time off) very easily. There are no sick days, everything is taken off your PTO.

Why should you work here?
To summarize the office environment is terrible, and everyone is under high stress. Try to negotiate as best as you can, because you don't want to be underpaid to work for this company. Everyone's experience is different. I think the upside to working in this fast growing company can be a good thing, if they fix all their problems. Who knows how long that will take. This is like a start up company. You will get chances to work on different projects, or lead them yourself. If you work well in a high stress environment, it will be worth a try. I stayed as long as I could handle. 

Other positives: 
The company accepts diversity, discounted childcare for employees.

Other negatives: 
You will see some people get away with things, like taking a long lunch. (Favoritism) Too much work is piled on employees, creating bottlenecks. CEO thought COVID wasn't an issue and did not take it seriously.

Typical day is in the office (they don’t do work from home). Office is a bit small because so many people have been hired in the past year. They are growing fast so it makes sense and are buying a new building for our office to move to that is a lot bigger so should have more space soon. Everyone is friendly and gets along well. You can tell they have some growing pains but the ceo has hired a lot of people to help. It is exciting to be a part of a company growing so fast and to see us on the news weekly.

This is a place where you need to take charge for your stuff. Everyone is so busy they do not have a lot of time to train on things more than once, but they are always fine with questions. It seems like most in the office really love their jobs and end up coming in early/staying late working 45-50+ hours a week (I have heard the ceo telling people to go home though when its late). This is not the place when people can do the bare minimum and it is okay. And if you are conservative it might not be a good fit, it is nothing obvious but more at the core (for example they post to support pride). I am a fan of it so for me it is great but I can see someone more conservative feeling uncomfortable.

There are positives and negatives. The hardest part of the job is time. Everyone is so busy it can be hard to get time with leaders. And some of those things you get used to having in a larger company. Like setting up a computer monitor or if you have an issue connecting your computer to the printer. They don’t have an IT team so if you get a second monitor you have to set it up yourself there isn’t really anyone else you can ask. I do really like how much they are growing. The ceo seems to listen to input from people and wants to improve things. They hired a few new positions just in the past few months based on feedback from some of us. I also like how they promote from within because I want to be able to advance in my career. I can see myself staying a long time and growing within the company.

I think the most enjoyable part of the job is what we are doing. I love working somewhere where I feel like what we are doing is actually making a difference.  

Tierra Encantada has the potential to be a really great workplace. I wanted it to be a really great workplace, but it wasn't and if things don't change, it never really will be. There is room to grow within your career and gain new skills, but that must fit into the company's plan for you. There is opportunity to quickly join management, likely before you are ready, but the turnover is so high that they have to change titles and responsibilities constantly. On average, two out of the 20 HQ staff leaves each month (8 in the last six weeks alone). Leadership is corrupt, extremely distrusting, and very superficial. They will always have the upper-hand and be right. If they say the sky is black, the sky is black. 

This place is good for college grads looking to gain experience, but for experienced professionals, run the other direction. You will not be compensated fairly, taken seriously, or respected in any way. There is no work-life balance, flexibility or trust. If you only work 40 hours, you did not work enough. But don't expect to be compensated in any way for working more than 40 hours (no flex time, OT, or comp time because you are salaried). You will work the schedule they assign you, at the office, with an unpaid lunch break.

I could probably write a comedy skit about my time here because it has been that comical. You are on camera all day. Your computer activity is monitored. You cannot work from home at all. You can rarely adjust your schedule. Benefits don't kick in for 60 days. 401K doesn't kick in for 1+ year (depending on when you start). Massive projects are assigned in the AM and expected to be completed by the PM. But there are trivia lunches and an espresso machine and a wellness room so the disrespect has to balance out somehow, right?  

I started off very much enjoying my work with Tierra. My department trusted me to do my work and my managers were helpful and positive. I was able to take on new tasks and master systems to become the trusted point-person for certain processes. But that all quickly changed as I experienced turnover in my department and was then guided by top leadership, rather than my managers. The issues I experienced lie with company leadership.
Company leaders are great entrepreneurs but poor managers. They micromanage projects that they don't understand. Typically this is seen through arbitrary deadlines and false assumptions. The majority of your working days they will dump a "finish by the end of the day" task on you without checking in to see if you can actually take it on. When you do speak up and say there is too much on your plate they offer "tips and tricks" for time management rather than taking away some of your responsibilities to help you.
Overall the company suffers from a culture where employees are overworked and praised for "being passionate about their jobs" (staying late) and actively discouraged from setting healthy boundaries (framed as: "We never say 'that's not in my job description'"). Meanwhile employees are underpaid and self-advocates are met with arbitrary company policies/procedures or have previous mistakes weaponized against them.
If you are a young professional looking to beef up your resume and can handle six months or a year here, then it's perfect for you. The annual turnover in HQ is greater than 100% so you will have to take on a lot of people's work and thus will acquire new skills and areas of expertise.
If the above does not appeal to you, then you are likely more appreciated elsewhere.

The company leaders say they are a start up, but TE has none of those pros. In a start up you will usually get flexible hours, a fun environment, amazing benefits, and great pay. At TE you will deal with the worst things of a start up company, such as a high workload that will lead to burnout.
 
The average turnover rate for the last 3 years must be close to 40% among all day care centers and the HQ office. This company only has about 170 employees. In the Headquarter office, admin members have been leaving in droves, the turnover at the office is sky high. It's due to the high growth the executives started with their franchise plan to get a daycare center in every state. The company is suffering because the executives did not lay a good foundation to take on all this work. They are all still trying to figure out best practices for all their departments, even though they have construction plans for centers in over 5 states. If a daycare from a countrywide location calls the HQ for help, they may not even know how to advise, because they are just figuring things out as they go. 

Huge projects are sent out for completion ASAP. They lack a good onboarding program, so this adds to the problem of figuring things out as you go. They all need to take a step back & work on the little things, before they try to take on something, like growing the company to 20 times its size. 

You will meet great people working here, but the daily grind will quickly make you want to leave. To reiterate, company leaders need to change their model, other wise, they may run out of people to hire. Turnover that high is not sustainable. 

I have enjoyed working here so far. The atmosphere is enjoyable and management seems to listen when you share your concerns. The dress code is laid back - you can wear jeans all week as long as there are no clients or important meetings. Also, on Fridays, it's "Express Yourself" day where you can wear graphic ts. Sometimes the workload can feel a little overwhelming, but if you have good time management skills, stay focused, and communicate when you need help you shouldn't have a problem. I think that they do a great job of showing that they truly care about their employees. Since I've started I have been asked what my interest was in various positions that are forecasted to be created in the future, which I think is really nice. They also just recently hired an Employee Support person to have one-on-ones with all employees to help develop and support them. I've been to the centers and interacted with Teachers, Cooks, and Directors. Everyone seems to be happy hear and there is a lot of longevity which is not typically seen in the industry. There is a lot of accountability, so I guess if you don't like to be held accountable or take ownership it may not be a good fit. 

Short and sweet review of my time at TE

Office environment is suffocating and stressful. Management has terrible leadership qualities. 
Coworkers make this place bearable!! However, turnover is very high, so your fave work friend might leave. :/ It doesn't help when you're being watched all day. There seems to be no trust here.

You will be burdened with too many projects. They are very unorganized, and you will see what I mean, when you read emails in your inbox that were written at 1am in the morning, telling you of a new project you need to do. The vacation benefits were very underwhelming. Especially when their PTO policy will take out any amount of time from your paycheck, even though we're salaried. If you think you can leave early on a Friday because you're all caught up, you're wrong! Their PTO policy will have you seeing some discounts. 

The company is growing a lot due to franchising all over the country, so there are career advancement opportunities. However, I'm not sure they are finding the right people for some of these roles. I've heard a lot of complaints from the teachers as well. Teachers leave the company so often due to bad leadership. The pandemic has made a lot of people realize which companies are right for them, and for me, TE is not it. 

Beware of claims that “this is a newly created position, because we are growing”.  More likely, they have just retooled the title of a vacant position to cover up the fact that they have a high turnover rate.  They then tell candidates “this is a newly created position”, which may be technically true, but in reality, it’s a vacant position where they just changed the job title and a few small details in the job description. 
When I started, I was told that my position was new.  One of my first assignments was to continue work on a large project.  It didn’t click right away that if I’m in a newly created position, it’s unlikely that there would be a project that was started and not completed.  Over the next few months, I realized that everytime someone quits, they come up with a new job title and job description.  This is most likely what happened in my case. 
I watched over the first six months or so as people quit in droves.  The workloads were then just dumped onto myself and anyone else who was still employed.  I worked in almost every department while I was there.  Eventually, it became too much and I quit.  The employment strategy seems to be keeping payroll as low as possible, burning out employees, and dumping the workload on remaining staff.  Then retool the job description and repeat.  
The company has had to hire a recruiter and a PR firm to deal with their damaged reputation since job openings stay open for months because no one will apply. 

The company is very toxic. They try to put on a façade of being a warm and friendly environment, but it’s all fake.  The break room has an arcade, but no one dares to play it due to the fear of retaliation.  
The turnover rate at this company is a huge red flag.  The workloads are unmanageable due to vacant positions across the company.  Employees are asked to help fill in in other departments, oftentimes in fields they’ve never worked.  If you ask for help, you’ll be denied and told “I’m too busy to show you how to do this, just figure it out on your own”.  
I have no finance background, but was asked to help out in the finance department.  I was asked to do some work on a spreadsheet.  The spreadsheet had no formulas.  I was told to use a calculator and fill in the spreadsheet.  I showed my co-worker that this work can be done much faster by using formulas and creating templates for future use.  The response I got was alarming: “Well, this is how the CEO does it, so this is how we do it here”.  I was dumbfounded. 
Over the next few months I began to realize that the company is only out to make a quick buck. They want nothing to do with creating templates, guides, or even spreadsheets with formulas. They keep every department understaffed to maximize profits for the owner / founder of the company. 

I started working for Tierra Encantada in November 2021. When I first started there was an unstable environment with a fast turnaround rate. I figured it was because we didn't have dependable/experienced management. I have had a front row seat in experiencing the work the company has made and is making, to establish strong management in each department.  Even though in the past we've had a fast turnaround, I definitely see a difference. My team has remain constant since I've started and have developed an amazing relationship where we've become reliable and encouraging to one another. 

If you're a person who doesn't mind wearing multiple hats or loves challenges and a change of environment once a while, you will do just fine. If you are someone who just wants the same tasks to do 9-5 and doesn't  want new experiences or the interest in expanding your skill sets, then maybe this wont be the right environment for you. 

Personally I have a great work & life balance. You do have to keep in mind that IT IS UP TO YOU at the end of the day to reinforce that balance and reinforce your boundaries while maintaining productivity. 

I have felt very supportive by my team and management through out my time here and I can see myself being here for years to come. 






Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Preschool teacher 21 salaries reported	$20.31 per hour
Classroom aide 8 salaries reported	$16.84 per hour
Classroom assistant 50 salaries reported	$17.66 per hour
Child care center director 9 salaries reported	$61,833 per year
Spanish teacher 4 salaries reported	$20.50 per hour

Working at Tierra Encantada: Company Overview and Reviews

Tierra Encantada

Tierra Encantada Ratings

Popular jobs at Tierra Encantada

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected