Growing Light Montessori

Our daughter is in her second year at GLMS Oakland in the preschool class (3-4 yo). She loves her teachers and activities. She has grown a lot over the last year in social emotional skills and traditional school stuff (writing, letters, etc). Overall she is very happy there. The school fared very well during the pandemic with no shut downs and good communication. My biggest complaints have been non-Covid school parent communication and community. My understanding was that there was a strong parent community pre Covid but that has not been my experience bc the school has eliminated all parent activities (eg costume parade). It appears that might be changing with a few activities this year and parents doing more to reach out for outside of school activities. I have also had to proactively request more communication. If there is an issue, you’ll get what you need but I don’t feel I have a good sense of what is going on unless I ask. My chatty 4 yo shouldn’t be the only way I find out about what is happening at school. Again, this might be changing for the better as I am seeing more school communications in this new school year. 

Our middle child went to Growing Light for 2 years (ages 3-5 basically) before kindergarten. Prior to that he had been at a daycare in San Francisco. We loved Growing Light! Super loving teachers like teacher Awa and Rebecca. They taught him to write all his letters and numbers, and they basically taught him to read. He was well prepared for kindergarten (currently at Head Royce). I agree there is not a ton of communication on a day to day basis but if I had any concerns, teacher Awa and Rebecca were always helpful. Our son loved it. We are going to be putting our younger child there as well next year. I would not hesitate to put your child in Growing Light and they would be very well prepared for Head Royce.