Read what our parents have to say about about our school!
6 responses to “Parent Testimonial”
I looked for a long time for the right school for my 3 year old, especially because I wanted so many things – language immersion, strong Covid safety measures, great facilities, caring and professional staff and teachers, sense of community, early/late hours, and reasonable tuition. SGA has all that and more. It has been wonderful for our family to experience such a high level of education and enrichment combined with the convenience and personalized care of a daycare that SGA provides. My child loves SGA and I do too!
We have been at SGA since spring 2021. Our little one started at SGA when she was 3. While she grew up hearing Cantonese, she did not have Cantonese language exposure for over a year before SGA. However, she’s slowly and steadily picking up Mandarin. As we don’t speak Mandarin at home (we speak English, another language and some Cantonese), we realize this is really the achievement of SGA. Her sister has online Mandarin classes and we can hear the little one answering the Mandarin teacher’s questions before my older child answers. She will also address her teachers in Mandarin. The caregivers especially Hannah, Shelly and Jennifer who I see the most are very kind and accommodating. My little one runs to say “hi” in the morning. The hours are great for working parents and pick up is organized. We are happy and would recommend SGA for parents who want to have Mandarin exposure as a primary element in their child’s early childhood education.
You know a school is doing something right when your child looks forward to going… and when she comes home daily and says “Mommy, can I tell you what I learned?”, and the conversation lasts through bedtime. At SGA, you won’t have to cross your fingers and hope to get a teacher who’ll help your child reach their potential. It’s what they do! SGA combines rigorous academics with exciting extracurricular programs to develop the whole child. I’d highly recommend SGA to anyone looking not only for academic excellence, but a true cultural immersion experience.
As a first time family at SGA, we have been impressed with the amount of detail the teachers have shown our daughter. We are not a mandarine speaking household, but wanted our kids to be immersed as early as possible. SGA has done a great job catering to families with different language backgrounds.
We enrolled our child in the full day bilingual pre-school program at Springfield Genius Academy, and we are extremely satisfied with the care and education our child has received.
The Chinese immersion program part is probably as rigorous as you can get – The textbook is exactly the same as what is used in China, and now our child is able to understand “Pinyin” (the romanization system for phonetic instruction and computer text input), write Chinese characters, and read Chinese children’s books, not to mention speaking Mandarin fluently and switching effortlessly between Chinese and English.
SGA’s math program for pre-schoolers is also fantastic. It puts less emphasis on rote learning and more on logical thinking and mathematical concepts. Children are having a lot of fun doing math at SGA, but they do get exposed to serious math concepts that are taught at much older age elsewhere. With a little bit of home help, our child is able to perform three digit additions and subtractions, which is supposed to be Grade 3 material by Common Core Standards.
The English language arts program is outstanding. Mrs. Patterson is a truly gifted and exceptionally passionate teacher, who has brought our child’s English to a whole new level. She also has great skills and manners to keep the classroom under control, herding a group of wandering cats so they can actually learn something serious. Our child started to love reading and becomes more comfortable writing sentences and paragraphs. The improvement in our child’s English is very noticeable.
The school also went to great length to bring a wide variety of extra-curricular enrichment classes on campus. Right now, the school offers classes in musical instruments, dance, painting, calligraphy, chess, martial arts, table tennis, crafts, Gauss math, and robotics, etc, to different age groups. The school is constantly talking to new instructors to expand its offerings. For example, the school spent nearly six months to find a good martial arts school who can offer classes on campus. Recently, a kid’s fencing class is also being offered, accepting children as young as five year old. Our child never runs out of fun things to do at SGA.
The staff at SGA are very caring and they understand the challenges of working parents. The school offers very affordable lunch programs to pre-schoolers, so parents have one less thing to worry about during the week. And there are after-school care until 6:30pm, so working parents do not have to struggle between work and mid-afternoon child pickup. When disaster strikes, SGA staff will go above and beyond to support the parents. During the November snowstorm in 2018, when New Jersey and New York metro areas were thrown into complete chaos, many commuting parents were stranded on snow-covered and icy roads and couldn’t get to school in time to pick up their children. SGA staff assured parents that they would keep the children in school until the last one was picked up. The school cooked meals to feed empty little tummies. The staff didn’t leave school until 9:30pm and they didn’t get home until mid-night. As parents, we are very appreciative of what the school did for us.
Recently, we let our child take an early learner assessment test commonly used for screening and admissions into gifted and talented programs. In test results, there are percentile scores that reflect where our child stands relative to children in the same age group. Our child was able to score 95% or higher in three categories: “English Early Literacy”, “Quantitative Reasoning”, and “Mathematics”. In particular, the 98% percentile score in “English Early Literacy” came as a big surprise to us, as we assumed that being in a Chinese-English bilingual program means we need to accept some compromises. The result speaks volumes about the overall quality of education we are getting for our child, and we wholeheartedly recommend SGA to any family who wants nothing but the very best Chinese-English pre-school day program for their children.
Every teacher we met here is nice and caring. Our kid started here shortly after 1 yo and it only took him a few days to enjoy going to school. Every day he’s happy to go see Ms. Allie, who’s super professional and responsive, always ready to answer our questions and concerns.
I looked for a long time for the right school for my 3 year old, especially because I wanted so many things – language immersion, strong Covid safety measures, great facilities, caring and professional staff and teachers, sense of community, early/late hours, and reasonable tuition. SGA has all that and more. It has been wonderful for our family to experience such a high level of education and enrichment combined with the convenience and personalized care of a daycare that SGA provides. My child loves SGA and I do too!
We have been at SGA since spring 2021. Our little one started at SGA when she was 3. While she grew up hearing Cantonese, she did not have Cantonese language exposure for over a year before SGA. However, she’s slowly and steadily picking up Mandarin. As we don’t speak Mandarin at home (we speak English, another language and some Cantonese), we realize this is really the achievement of SGA. Her sister has online Mandarin classes and we can hear the little one answering the Mandarin teacher’s questions before my older child answers. She will also address her teachers in Mandarin. The caregivers especially Hannah, Shelly and Jennifer who I see the most are very kind and accommodating. My little one runs to say “hi” in the morning. The hours are great for working parents and pick up is organized. We are happy and would recommend SGA for parents who want to have Mandarin exposure as a primary element in their child’s early childhood education.
You know a school is doing something right when your child looks forward to going… and when she comes home daily and says “Mommy, can I tell you what I learned?”, and the conversation lasts through bedtime. At SGA, you won’t have to cross your fingers and hope to get a teacher who’ll help your child reach their potential. It’s what they do! SGA combines rigorous academics with exciting extracurricular programs to develop the whole child. I’d highly recommend SGA to anyone looking not only for academic excellence, but a true cultural immersion experience.
As a first time family at SGA, we have been impressed with the amount of detail the teachers have shown our daughter. We are not a mandarine speaking household, but wanted our kids to be immersed as early as possible. SGA has done a great job catering to families with different language backgrounds.
We enrolled our child in the full day bilingual pre-school program at Springfield Genius Academy, and we are extremely satisfied with the care and education our child has received.
The Chinese immersion program part is probably as rigorous as you can get – The textbook is exactly the same as what is used in China, and now our child is able to understand “Pinyin” (the romanization system for phonetic instruction and computer text input), write Chinese characters, and read Chinese children’s books, not to mention speaking Mandarin fluently and switching effortlessly between Chinese and English.
SGA’s math program for pre-schoolers is also fantastic. It puts less emphasis on rote learning and more on logical thinking and mathematical concepts. Children are having a lot of fun doing math at SGA, but they do get exposed to serious math concepts that are taught at much older age elsewhere. With a little bit of home help, our child is able to perform three digit additions and subtractions, which is supposed to be Grade 3 material by Common Core Standards.
The English language arts program is outstanding. Mrs. Patterson is a truly gifted and exceptionally passionate teacher, who has brought our child’s English to a whole new level. She also has great skills and manners to keep the classroom under control, herding a group of wandering cats so they can actually learn something serious. Our child started to love reading and becomes more comfortable writing sentences and paragraphs. The improvement in our child’s English is very noticeable.
The school also went to great length to bring a wide variety of extra-curricular enrichment classes on campus. Right now, the school offers classes in musical instruments, dance, painting, calligraphy, chess, martial arts, table tennis, crafts, Gauss math, and robotics, etc, to different age groups. The school is constantly talking to new instructors to expand its offerings. For example, the school spent nearly six months to find a good martial arts school who can offer classes on campus. Recently, a kid’s fencing class is also being offered, accepting children as young as five year old. Our child never runs out of fun things to do at SGA.
The staff at SGA are very caring and they understand the challenges of working parents. The school offers very affordable lunch programs to pre-schoolers, so parents have one less thing to worry about during the week. And there are after-school care until 6:30pm, so working parents do not have to struggle between work and mid-afternoon child pickup. When disaster strikes, SGA staff will go above and beyond to support the parents. During the November snowstorm in 2018, when New Jersey and New York metro areas were thrown into complete chaos, many commuting parents were stranded on snow-covered and icy roads and couldn’t get to school in time to pick up their children. SGA staff assured parents that they would keep the children in school until the last one was picked up. The school cooked meals to feed empty little tummies. The staff didn’t leave school until 9:30pm and they didn’t get home until mid-night. As parents, we are very appreciative of what the school did for us.
Recently, we let our child take an early learner assessment test commonly used for screening and admissions into gifted and talented programs. In test results, there are percentile scores that reflect where our child stands relative to children in the same age group. Our child was able to score 95% or higher in three categories: “English Early Literacy”, “Quantitative Reasoning”, and “Mathematics”. In particular, the 98% percentile score in “English Early Literacy” came as a big surprise to us, as we assumed that being in a Chinese-English bilingual program means we need to accept some compromises. The result speaks volumes about the overall quality of education we are getting for our child, and we wholeheartedly recommend SGA to any family who wants nothing but the very best Chinese-English pre-school day program for their children.
Every teacher we met here is nice and caring. Our kid started here shortly after 1 yo and it only took him a few days to enjoy going to school. Every day he’s happy to go see Ms. Allie, who’s super professional and responsive, always ready to answer our questions and concerns.