Pros
There are many bright, well intentioned people that work at Play Connections. I always wondered why they would chose to work at a glorified daycare, particularly with low pay. I think it’s because a lot of employees are fresh out of college and have no direction in life.
Cons
This glorified daycare is very disorganized. During my time there, I found others throwing together things at the last second. Yes, given the dynamic nature of children, it makes sense some of this would occur. However, it happened nearly all the time. I think people would have worked harder if they weren’t so busy/exhausted and if they got paid more. Specialists disagreed/gave different instruction when it came to the same child/situation, and then I would be the one corrected. The dynamics of what was happening, how to do things, the environment we worked in, the roles we played, the coworkers we worked with, and the children we taught. And I wasn’t told if these changes until I did something wrong. Others did not have this problem to the same degree because they either worked in one room all day and/or got away half the day to work in schools/homes. When coworkers were away, specialists would replace them in the rooms, but they often had little understanding of the activities and dynamics of the practical application of things while in these contrived environments. And then they would correct me/be annoyed with me because I didn’t do what they thought things should be. The way people would express their disapproval was very passive and expressly “gentle”. In fact, most of the time no one would say anything, and only complain to the supervisor. The supervisor, in turn, wouldn’t address it, and only would after a long time had passed and would only state generalities. I found this to be true both when I was -forced- to complain about a couple people and when others complained about me. There was no due-process with these matters. People would make snap judgments about situations and assumed they understood what I was doing. And given the nature of the dynamics of the place, it was impossible to pause to correct their interpretations. Then they would give general complaints to the supervisors, and so on. I was hurt and frustrated with this. However, at the time I struggled to verbalize my observations. The way that Behavior Techs were trained was very disorganized and thrown together. Apparently, there was an express, written-out rubric that Technicians were supposed to achieve in their development as employees. However, we weren’t given copies of this, let alone an explanation of it. I had lots of experience teaching children, but because it was my first year at Play Connections, I was bottom of the heap and not allowed to take on a leader-role in the group classroom, etc. When I did have a chance, I was highly complimented for my “blossoming development,” even though it was the situation, and not me that had changed.