Pros
I worked as a fellow in the 2015-'16 school year and absolutely loved my job. I am returning for the 2016-'17 school year to work as a leadership fellow with my students again. I appreciate that SAGA puts tutors into a role they can handle and allows them to bring their own creativity and ideas. With a few weeks of training I would certainly not have been ready to become a classroom teacher. It would have been a disservice to myself and the students I worked with. However, I did feel capable of excelling as a tutor with only 2 students in front of me each period. I was able to develop very close relationships with my students and to target my instruction to meet their individual needs. For most of them I ended up serving as the adult they knew and trusted the most in the building. I worked as a City Year corps member the year before and I found that I often had too much asked of me and was thus not able to complete any of my tasks well. SAGA allowed me to really focus on what I thought was most important and would most benefit my students. I felt supported by the staff and my teammates. SAGA provided me with a full, rigorous curriculum, which served as a great starting point. I never had to spend too much time preparing content for a tutorial. But they also encouraged me to tweak it in any way that I wanted. I incorporated games, projects, activities, puzzles, music, poetry, stories and visual art, and this made my students look forward to class. My site Director checked in with my coworkers and I constantly to make sure we felt supported and worked tirelessly to find us outside resources to make our planning easier. My teammates were great and passionate as well, and I knew I could always count on them for help with lesson planning or difficult behavior problems. They also become close friends and one of my teammates is now my roommate. SAGA is proven to be effective. A Major Study is underway by UChicago and results have already been released by the Brookings Institute showing that the program is effective at meeting several goals for student growth.
Cons
The pay is low. Tutors absolutely deserve to be paid much better than they are. unfortunately, that is not possible if SAGA is going to offer their services to chronically underfunded public schools at a price they can afford. They are up front about the pay. I didn't eat lobster every night, but I had no problem paying rent in Chicago (I live with roommates) and feeding and clothing myself. The work is hard and sometimes thankless. Students will not always thank you for all you have done for them. They will sometimes fail a test even though you studied for days with them. There may not be many support systems for you (or your students) in the school outside of Math Lab.
