The Goddard School

We came to this Goddard School from another one out of state. The expectations were very high in that where they came from, the school was extremely structured, very organized, neat, clean and the owners were heavily involved in the school and even taught portions of the curriculum.
Now fast forward to this school… upon first coming in for a visit we thought it looked like a good place but being on a Friday was a little rowdy which seemed somewhat okay since they were having pizza. Not so… the students are allowed to run around wild quite frequently. There was very little structure to the day. The children were rude, not well mannered and some were very outright mean without much in the way of guidance to better behavior. The teachers try to keep the children in line but it is very hard for them, as we mentioned it many times upon seeing these things firsthand. A couple of the rooms even smelled of urine on multiple occasions. The owner had no involvement with the children, was hardly ever on site and barely knew who you were… The minute you say you are not coming back for the next session (very politely not airing any problems as mentioned here), they sure let you know how they felt as you were treated as an outsider.
I will give credit to Miss Tammy and Miss Kody who were very good people and tried very hard to give our children a good experience. The sad thing is that upon graduation we were finally told by another teacher «it was really hard to challenge _​_​_​_​_​_​_​because she already knew everything and I didn’t know what else to give _____»…not something you want to hear after spending thousands of dollars to educate your child.
For a school of such high standards, we were so disappointed we took our children out at the end of the year even though we planned to keep them throughout the summer. My one child had regressed in learnings from before, behavior began to be combative and rude and we had to work with for about a month to get behaviors and education back on track due to how things were at this school. For what you pay… you should get a lot more, the Goddard they came from was quite a bit more $ than this one and I can see why…

My son has attended The Goddard school for just over a year and I am beyond pleased with his progress. Sign language, spanish, and yoga are just a few of the wonderful things he is taught on a daily basis. Also, there appears to be low turnover with teachers (Lake Orion location) which IMO says a lot about the owner, Kellie and director, Jean who are both fantastic. Security is top priority for Goddard and they do a great job with it. The teachers are all warm and friendly and always available to chat casually or discuss any issues/​questions I may have. The school is extremely clean and well maintained, has a beautiful outside, gym area and large classrooms stocked full of age appropriate montessori type toys/​activities. I will miss everything about this wonderful school when my son starts Kindergarten. The owner of the Kindergarten we will be sending him to commented that she loves when children come to her from Goddard!