I accepted a position at Fusion Global Academy (leaving a traditional classroom and steady pay) under lots of false promises about the number of hours that I would be assigned to work and the idea of "plug and play" curriculum.
The curriculum was horrible. I found it to be very detacched from any set of standards of learning and only looked at NGSS, which is not specific enough for all the different types of science classes. In an attempt to provide my students with better curriculum, I tried reworking what I was given. However, the amount of planning time that I accrued is nowhere near the amount of time that I needed to make up for the bad curriculum. This led to me using significant amounts of unpaid time to get the curriculum to a usable place. When I brought this up to management, the suggestion was always that I use AI to shorten the amount of time it takes me. As a teacher, I have a hard time solely relying on AI to know the ins and outs of my students and what makes up a strong curriculum.
I was very excited to join Fusion initially, The prospect of 1-1 teaching and getting to make a difference in student's lives who really need it. I never got my schedule to being full capacity and had to work other part-time jobs just to pay the bills. I think that on paper, and in theory, Fusion has a great idea going. In the end, I view my time at Fusion as a very large set-back in my teaching career, but also learned a lot about what I should be looking for in a school.
