Discovery Center - Cipete

Preschool children are creative, resourceful and imaginative. We can easily see that they are fascinated with objects all around them. They squeeze, roll, scratch, pinch, taste, throw, pound and chew these objects during play to learn as much as they can about them.

Life is a fascinating world of activity to a young child - a place for doing and discovering and trying out ideas. Too often, however, school environments don't encourage children's natural sense of discovery. Instead of learning through this most appropriate method - play experience and discovery - school all too often turns out to be a place where children just sit and listen to the teacher talk most of the time; where children watch the teacher demonstrate things on the blackboard; where the teacher thinks that there is only one correct answer. In this type of school, for the first time in their lives, children may stop learning or find their natural learning processes thwarted.

At Discovery Center, children are actively involved in their learning experience; they learn in a natural and enjoyable way. Children learn concepts and ideas by handling familiar objects and manipulating them, not by just dealing abstractly with the concepts on paper. Children are free to make mistakes and to learn directly from these mistakes. In Discovery Center, children learn to trust their own judgment and thoughts. They are free to try to do things their own way as an expression of their creativity and individuality. Discover Center children learn to work independently and to take responsibility and initiative for learning.

Discovery Center is a place where children move about freely through a variety of learning activities. Sitting still in a chair isn't necessarily thought of as good, nor are movement and noise discouraged.
The principal is a native English speaker and a teaching professional who has a degree in early childhood education from the University of Michigan. She taught at Montessori schools in the states, for 5 years in Michigan and in California, and for 13 years in Indonesia.

The Indonesian teachers and assistant teachers all speak English well. Teachers either have a university degree in education or a related field, or many years teaching experience or both. The teachers must have taught in an English-speaking school, either at Discovery Center or elsewhere, for more than 2 years before leading a class. Most assistant teachers have attended/or are attending a foreign language academy where they have earned/will earn a 4-year undergraduate degree in English (beyond their high school diplomas).