More and more families move to the Tribeca area each year: Thus the need for educational centers has increased. KinderCare hopes to ease that issue with their new location in the Tribeca neighborhood, opening April 16th, with a focus on community and helping children gain confidence, according to KinderCare president Wei-Li Chong.
“When we started doing our research, we saw that there is such a growing amount of families in that community,” Chong says. “Between 2000 and 2010, the number of children under 4 grew almost 200 percent, so we knew there was a great need for a quality provider [with] some of the most premiere schools in that community. As parents, we know they are thinking about how to set their children up in the best way to get into the best schools in that community.”
With two locations already in the Manhattan area, Chong is certain that the Tribeca establishment will maintain the standards that all families expect from KinderCare, while also instilling a greater sense of community within the center.
“We set up each center in each community to service that community in the very best way,” Chong says. “I think what separates us amongst others is that the Tribeca center will be a community-based business. It’s going to be powered by resources and tools that we recognize no other provider in that area is able to provide for their parents. Our mission is to dedicate our resources to help, work with, and listen to families to help build a confident child.”
Having children attend the learning center is just as important as having supportive teachers to provide a valuable education to these children, which KinderCare understands and prioritizes when establishing a new location.
“We spent a lot of time researching what makes a teacher through our network of 27,000 teachers,” Chong says. “We have built a selection tool that helps Lisa [Bridge, the director of the Tribeca location] hire teachers that match the innate talent of the very best teachers we have around the country and what we found is that we’re setting up an environment that [is] clearly helping children accelerate.”
Offering a variety of learning opportunities to help children get the most out of their education, Chong’s former background as the head of human resources at KinderCare has come in handy when developing the curriculum for the Tribeca location. These new types of programs help the company determine whether it benefits the children or not, which in turn helps KinderCare develop the most efficient learning environment for their children.
“We have a curriculum that I’m extremely proud of. It’s built with luminaries in the early education industry, but it takes a great teacher to bring that curriculum to life in a way that meets that community and if they’re able to do that and connect with children in that way, we can actually then measure the development of that child, and share with parents how that child is developing,” Chong says. “From a research side from the company and how we apply that to each of our community centers is something that I think parents would be really interested in.”
As education becomes more competitive at an earlier age, Chong is aware of this, and strives to have KinderCare locations match that competitive atmosphere in order for the children to be well-prepared for anything that life may throw at them, especially growing up in an environment like Manhattan.
“The benefits in an early childhood education center is [recognizing that] the accelerated brain development of a child under the age of 6 is so critically important and parents today, as much as they are hard-working families looking for care for their child, they are starting to realize what happens with their child during the day is equally as important,” Chong says. “When parents think about that, the questions they begin asking their centers are much more sophisticated in how their child is going to not only be cared for, but how they’re going to learn and grow and flourish and become that confident child.”
The Tribeca location is just one of the multiple KinderCare locations in Manhattan, and Chong encourages any and all families interested to check it out and see the environment for themselves.
“Our center is a relatively large center,” Chong says. “We are serving about 173 children and parents that are touring are excited about the experience they’re seeing not only at the center itself, but also the experiences in the relationships with the teachers.”
For more information on the KinderCare learning center in Tribeca and to schedule a tour, visit kindercare.com.
