DO NOT SEND YOUR KIDS TO THE PRESCHOOL HERE! I can't speak for the rest of the grades & teachers, but I will say emphatically to stay away from the preschool (and the principal) here. This is their first year adding preschool, and I wish I had listened to all our neighbors about not being their "guinea pigs". We sent our son here and already after just 6 weeks have had to pull him out. The way they treat this age group is ridiculous.
Time and time again when I would go pick up my son from preschool, the teacher, Sandy Dunbar, would say IN FRONT OF MY SON "It was a bad, bad day" or "He made bad choices" or "He wouldn't listen", the list goes on and on. There is a way to be constructive with this time of feedback and it involves talking to the parents only, and not including the children. When a 4-year old hears this type of negative talk about themselves from their teacher--someone they love and trust--it has a drastically negative effect on their behavior and their perception of school. My son has been in preschool (5 days/week) for the last 2 years, he's currently in 2 other extra curricular classes, and he goes to his Sunday School class for 2 hours every week -- never in any of these other situations, have we had any problems with his behavior. This was just a problem at St. Dot's and it was directly related to how they treated him.
Preschoolers need to have the opportunity for mistakes to be pointed out to them in the moment, so they can understand what they did wrong (not sharing well, not listening to directions, not sitting still, etc.) and then they can help correct the situation. This seems like common sense, right? To most preschools, yes. But to the "teachers" at St Dots? Nope. What do they choose to do instead? They send the preschoolers to the PRINCIPAL'S OFFICE! When I got the call from the principal explaining how my son had been "disruptive and distracting" and that's why they pulled him out of class to go sit in her office FOR OVER AN HOUR, I was so confused. I thought there had to be some mistake. My son is 4 years old, not 14 years old. A preschooler doesn't learn by getting sent to the principal's office. I was shocked when I learned that the principal, Ms. Tomasetti, truly believes that she made the best choice. She told me she had "a meeting" (literally her words) with my 4-year old, and they discussed his behavior, and then she sent him back to class.... This to me is insanity. A 4-year old is not going to learn anything from this experience. You take a child out of the situation, and they completely disassociate from it. You would think an education professional would understand this, but no.
My husband and I tried several ways to get on the same page with the teachers and be a team. We believed the teachers when they said our son was being disruptive--it was never a question of that--but we wanted to come up with helpful solutions that would make our son's experience better and make the teacher's job easier. But did anyone listen to us? No. I bought a "bouncy band" for our son's chair at school and the teachers never bothered to put it on. I asked to come into the classroom to be a helper so I could observe his behavior but was denied. I asked for the videos that were taken in the class to be sent to me so I could show our son and help him see his behavior, but again denied. I suggested getting our son to school earlier so he could play with the toys in the classroom to better adjust to the school day, but was told he wouldn't be allowed to play with the toys. I explained about different approaches that work well at home for our son, and was met with the response, "We can't do that for one child when we have a room of 20 others". HONESTLY! They don't care about their students. They just want the money.
And the worst part? After we made the very difficult decision to transfer our son to a new school, his teachers sent him to the office AGAIN for OVER AN HOUR on his LAST DAY OF SCHOOL! For what? Because he got upset and was crying. Ridiculous!
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