Pros
Work - Life Balance. You leave work and it stays at work. If you're full time you get paid even when there's no school in session like over summer! Respectful of work-life balance because they understand it is mentally and emotional draining work. Days go by quickly. It is a fast paced environment and will go by so fast. Most colleagues are great people who are passionate about helping the children. YOU WILL GET ATTACHED TO THE KIDS. Most of the kids are super sweet (on their good days which is like 95% of the time), they just process life differently and communicate in a manner different than we do.
Cons
Mid level and upper level have zero clue how to run anything related even distantly related to running the academics side. They seem to get more in the way of teachers than actually supporting them. The BI (behavioral intervention) plans are sometimes very backwards. Will assign students activities that actively reward bad behavior. When student's misbehave in the TAY unit (transitional adult youth; high functioning autism 18-21 years of age) they are usually put to "work" (domestic tasks as part of their academic and transitional goals as determined by the school districts and state). Some of this work is stuff that revolves around antecedent behaviors and actively rewards bad behavior unintentionally. The company did not enforce mask usage properly. Part of the big reason I left was the small amount of mask usage when 8 staff members are stuck in a small classroom together. The virus is airborne and its a school ventilation system, that doesn't work well. It is emotionally and mentally draining work, but that comes with the territory. Children who are emotionally disturbed or on the autism spectrum are not easy to work with on their really bad days. Some kids are also better than others as all children are. I'm just putting this here because they make it seem like the severity of the children is mild to moderate when its a lot closer to moderate to severe. I had one of the more severe behavior ones but even in my short time at Haynes, they were never unbearable...but I heard the stories. This point is even more of a con because you will get attached to your student and start seeing lapses in judgement or issues with what the administration does that can hinder your student's improvement.