51±¬ÁÏ

To qualified teachers with your license who want to teach middle school: Do not work here!I worked in the middle school, and the school expects the students to be completely compliant and silent every minute of every day, and if you know MS, trying to fulfill those expectations is kind of a nightmare. MS teachers walk their class to the next class in straight, completely silent lines. So for MS you have no moment of rest except for the 30 minute lunch and the plan period. Administration communicated several times that they never want to see teachers at their desks during class. And the plan period is usually taken up by VPA's time intensive behavioral system of writing up students for any minor offense.Creativity and inventive approaches to pedagogy and curriculum are not encouraged here. They value control, not human flourishing. The administration literally sends out no fun emails at the end of each quarter to remind teachers not to let kids have any fun in class before breaks and instead have it be business as usual. I once saw a substitute teacher not hired back because she had put on a game of charades for students after they finished a test.The school is obsessed with test scores so that they can be recognized by the state officials and get money from grants, but then don''t put the money back into the school. Technology is underutilized at VPA and the school as a whole is many years behind current industry standards. Because of these things, the turn around for the middle school teachers is very high. There is usually one teacher or staff member every month who leaves or is fired. My high school teacher coworkers seemed content, especially since keeping high school students to the strict behavioral standards is far less work so they were able to focus on teaching the curriculum.The pay here is fine if you are not a qualified teacher, though you will work a crazy amount of hours. If you are qualified to teach and have license, please look elsewhere. You will regret working at VPA.Pros:-Don''t need license to teach here-Students are very well behaved-Very clean and professional work environment Cons:-Lack of positive feedback from administration-Toxic fear-based work environment -Coworkers regularly disappear without a word-additional Information: The school is currently being sued for restricting their students'' free speech because, in 2017, the student body peacefully handed the administration a letter saying they wanted more activities; the entire high school was suspended for that. Then VPA forced a student to leave the school because their parents reported on the situation in their family newspaper. And VPA also cancelled senior graduation this last May. There are several local news stories on these events if you want to read more.