JP/12/K16

JP/12/K16
provider in Florida

Ingrid's little boy was growing fast. Soon he would have to go
to preschool. She started looking around for a good one. Ingrid
found many schools in Jakarta but none that really satisfied her
expectations.

Reluctantly she put her son in one but without feeling good
about doing so.

While on a holiday in the U.S., Ingrid made a chance visit to
Tutor Time, the child-care provider for NASA at the Kennedy Space
Center in Florida.

This was it! She wanted her son to have his first learning
experience in a place like Tutor Time.

What really impressed Ingrid was the cheerful atmosphere of
the place.

She found the facilities painted in bright colors.

She was even more happy to see how concerned the school was
with the safety and security of its toddlers.

Parents could enter the center only by using a special code
that opened the entrance door, and it was impossible for them to
exit with their child without entering the same code.

Television monitors were installed in every classroom to
enable parents to watch their children from the reception area
without disturbing classroom activities.

Inside the center she found an area called the Village, a
large two-storeyed structure resembling a little town used by the
school to develop the creativity, imagination and socialization
skills of the children.

She found the two playgrounds, one for preschoolers and the
other for toddlers, spacious and safe.

Ingrid was so inspired that she returned to Jakarta determined
to establish a similar kind of preschool.

That was five years ago.

By the time she found the means and facilities to open the
first franchised Tutor Time center in Kemang in 1996, her son had
already graduated from preschool.

However, hundreds of others, both Indonesian and expatriate
tiny tots between the ages of one year and five years, are using
the center in Kemang and the Kelapa Gading areas.

It includes all the above facilities along with self-contained
classrooms with attached toilets and diaper-changing counters,
not to mention a computer lab, music and movement room, art, math
and language corners.

Award

From Corporate Headquarters in the U.S., they usually evaluate
all Tutor Time centers every year, and Tutor Time of Kemang Utara
received the Award of Excellence for two consecutive years, in
1999 and 2000.

The evaluation is based on the management, marketing, safety,
security, cleanliness, classroom display and the teachers'
performance.

The excellence award is given to all the centers that have
scored above 90 percent, and Tutor Time Kemang scored 99 percent
for the past two years.

Five-year-old Justine is one of the senior students at
Kemang's Tutor Time. His favorite place at the school has always
been the Tumble Room where he can travel in and out of gigantic
plastic tubes that are painted in the different colors of the
rainbow.

Blue-eyed Justine loves to come to school every day because
the teachers tell him tales about sharks.

It was discovered that the theme of the week when The Jakarta
Post visited the school was all about life below the ocean.

Morgan, four, loves the Village and likes to stand on duty at
the fire station.

He uses the post office to send off letters and visits the
grocery store whenever he feels like buying himself his favorite
snack.

Doe-eyed Ayesha, four, returned to Jakarta recently from
Thailand.

Although she is an Indonesian child she insists that she is
Thai.

"I like to come to school because I have friends here," she
said while Australian Hannah, also four years old, shows up every
day simply because she can play so much.

Rohan who is in his last year at the preschool looked forward
to going to a big children's school soon.

In the meantime he was busy fastening a helmet securely on his
head as he still had a lot of unfinished business to do before
the school day ended.

Curriculum

"Monthly curriculums for each age group are prepared by Tutor
Times in Florida and mailed to all of its 200 centers around the
world, including Jakarta.

The curriculum is a combination of traditional, progressive
and Montessori teaching methods taught by teachers trained by
visiting staff from the headquarters in Florida," explained
Melania Hamdan, center director of Tutor Time, Kemang.

The result is a center full of happy, smiling faces -- both
children and teachers -- which is no mean achievement if little
ones are to cherish for the rest of their lives positive memories
of their earliest years of learning.