The Goddard School

I should have listened to Payal P. Please take heed. The owner of this school is not an educator. He is unprofessional and clearly in this business as a cash cow, and not to work with or nurture children. They have zero communications of substance with parents and any child who is anything less that completely easy and 100% well behaved is treated like trash they can discard with no advance notice. Please do not send your child to this school.

We pulled our son from his preschool and put him in Goddard since they got rave reviews. Biggest mistake we made, made our son suffer. My son, 3.5 years old at the time, started in December 2016 and we were out by April 2017. He was in the preschool room with Ms. Jen and Ms. Sharon, teachers who shouldn’t be allowed to be “teachers”. In the beginning things were “okay”, he was adjusting to being in a new school. Few weeks later his teachers told me he’s doing well and better than before. Few weeks after that the director, Noel, told us the teachers were at their boiling point with our son and didn’t know what to do with him. Up until then, we never heard about then not being able to handle him. Had a talk with the teachers and they said he doesn’t listen to them and often isn’t nice to his friends. I started observing the teachers and realized they would call out to him from across the room and expect him to listen to them. Anyone who is qualified to teach 3 year olds should know that you must get near them and catch their attention. Also noticed that he was lashing out on his friends because he was being teased. The teachers ,conveniently, never noticed him being teased. They only ever noticed what my kid was doing wrong. Meanwhile, the director is telling me that my son may need a behavior therapist or a psychologist. I went and spoke to several professionals, all of them told me it’s normal 3-year-old behavior. The director assured me that we can work together and figure out how to make him better at school. I was a damn fool for believing that man. The minute I told him my son doesn’t need therapy, he threw his hands up and said there’s nothing more they could do for him. At that point, I had already enrolled him elsewhere. We called a meeting with a director to give them a month notice but in that meaning he asked us to remove our child from the school, they couldn’t handle him. I tried to explain to him that my child is being teased and labeled and his smug face had no response to it, he didn’t give a damn.
In addition to the above, let me tell you how they treated my child. The assistant teacher, Ms. Sharon, never even smiled except for 2 occasions when I gave her a gift. She was constantly complaining about my child. They even took things away from my child. It was another child’s birthday party and the parents brought in goody bags, my son was refused a goody bag by the teacher because he didn’t listen earlier that day. On another occasion, the teachers brought in pudding packs for the class and they gave a pudding to every single child except mine. You think a 3 year old is going to listen to you when you embarrass him like that? There was another child hitting mine in front of me and the afternoon teacher, Ms. Lauren, laughed at it. I wonder if they laughed when my son, supposedly, hit another child. I saw that same child lie to the teachers, IN FRONT OF ME, that my son hit him when my son did not touch him. When I brought it to their attention, they did nothing. My husband and I seriously wonder if he even hit other kids like the teachers say he did.
My child is far from innocent but he IS NOT A MONSTER like they painted him out to be. He came from a school prior to Goddard where he was a favorite amongst the teachers, kids and parents. How does a kid go from favorite to most hated? The minute I put him back in his old school, I haven’t gotten a complaint. The teachers at his school know how to deal with children.
If you want to do right for your child, DO NOT SEND THEM TO GODDARD ISELIN. The owner is useless and the director, well she doesn’t even talk to parents.