DEVELOPMENT should start early.
Anchoring on this belief, Cambridge Child Development Center-Davao, the 24th branch of the Cambridge Children’s Learning and Development Inc. (CCLDI) is now open and advocating quality early childhood education for every Dabawenyo child.
The newest center is located at the second floor of Abreeza Mall Retail Expansion Wing, JP Laurel Avenue in Davao City. It offers pre-toddler, toddler, nursery and kindergarten education programs.
Cambridge Philippines’ president Gerardo Oliverio Laperal said in a recent interview with SunStar Davao that they believe that each child is a unique individual who has the potential to be the best that he can be.
“What we have is a progressive system, learning through doing project-based ecological model. So, we start with what the kid knows (which) the teacher (will nourish). The curriculum is a holistic approach,” he said.
He underscored that at Cambridge center “they strive to bring out the best in every child through a conducive and nurturing environment with teachers who care.”
In ensuring the child’s growth, one vital factor is the teacher, thus, the center strives to equip every caregiver with the necessary knowledge and skills to bring out the unique qualities in every child.
“All our teachers are trained prior the opening; they were trained more than a month in Makati and visited some centers in Metro Manila. All of them are from Davao City,” he said.
The Davao center has four teachers and a directress.
Also recognizing that conducive environment for learning is as important as having competent teachers, Laperal shared the center observes an open classroom set up that primarily aims to develop focus among children.
“We do not add anything for decorative purposes. Everything is all teacher-student made. Everything is meaningful,” Laperal said.
He also said that they encouraged parents, after dropping their children at the center, to leave and not hang around as it is part of the normalization process.
“They are in the new environment with new faces. We want to establish that at the center, certain behavior is acceptable and some are not. If they see familiar faces it’s okay to wave but not to go for them and cry. The normalization process usually takes about a month or two to happen. From our experience, it happens faster when the parents are not around every day,” he said.
Every school day, kinder and nursery programs have a three-hour session a day (8:30 to 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 to 3:30 p.m.). Also, an afternoon enrichment program is being offered where reading, science, mathematics, arts, etc. sessions are conducted.
Davao as expansion area
Asked about why they decided to put a center in Davao City, Laperal said that it is part of their thrust: to make a meaningful impact as to many communities as possible.
“We feel that we have presence in Luzon and Visayas. In order to make a bigger impact on Filipinos, we thought of Davao and we thank the city for being so accepting and helpful,” he said.
The Cambridge president added that the progressive city has more room for more centers as well as the entire Mindanao.
“We can add a few more in Davao, maybe 3-6 centers. We are actually actively looking for additional center here but it’s hard to find quality location that is close to the community,” Laperal said, adding that by 2017-2018, the company intends to reach a total of 30 centers nationwide.
The CCLDI, is a Singapore international preschool founded in 1993 by Yale Holdings Pte Inc. and began operation in the Philippines in 2001. CCLDI has since established itself as an international leader in providing quality child care. Each center provides state of the art child care and early learning programs for children from 10 months to 6 years of age.
“Here, everything is playtime but it’s meaningful play. They play, they learn. It’s a more fun way of learning,” Laperal said.