Children's World Learning Center at NSA
Preschool in Fort George G Meade, MD 20755
In 1992 Fran Durekas founded CCLC to provide families in the Bay Area with high-quality early childhood education programs. Fran earned her degree in Human Development and was looking to begin a career in child care. She started working at an after-school program near Stanford University, but after six months became disenchanted with the quality and shoestring budget—often using her own money to buy materials for the center. While she was preparing to look for another position, the owner offered Fran an opportunity to purchase the program. Fran gladly accepted because she was thrilled to have the chance to develop a quality program and learning environment that met her high expectations. Once the business was hers, Fran made immediate, dramatic changes including focusing on people management and treating the teachers as professionals, improving the educational program and creating real partnerships with families. The reputation of the program improved, and within one year the center was fully enrolled and thriving.
Today, the same principles apply. Our small-company foundation has allowed us to design innovative programs that reflect the needs of each one of our clients and develop strong, personal relationships with each client and their families. Our management team is made up of experienced child care and business professionals whose collective experience and educational background make us a very professional and innovative organization. Furthermore, our Executive Management team has been with the organization for 15+ years.
In March 2007, CCLC merged with Portland-based Knowledge Learning Corporation (KLC) to bring our vision to more employers nationwide. CCLC operates as a separate organization and is managed autonomously as a division of KLC, a private Delaware company.
This combination of experience, strength in the child care industry and dedication to developing unique, family- focused child care programs ensures that we can effectively provide more children, families and clients with the highest quality education and child care services available.
We are very committed to providing enriched learning environments in high-quality settings. We design our programs and child care centers in accordance with National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) standards.
Our child care programs implement our proprietary Guided Discovery Curriculum, developed in-house using the latest research and best practices in the early childhood education industry. This curriculum includes the best emotional, social and cognitive experiences for all children in our programs.
We operate 108 on-site or near-site child care centers and provide child care services – such as backup care, priority access and corporate discounts – to approximately 150 organizations through the United States.
Our Mission
We exist to create high-quality, customized solutions for children, families, communities, and our employees in order to foster early learning, develop leaders and support our partners’ work-life vision believing that integrity, collaboration and having fun are essential so that our families and partners realize value, our employees grow professionally and children succeed!
- Child Ages:
- 6 weeks - 12 years
- Licenses & Accreditations:
- Maryland State Department of Education Division of Early Childhood Development - NAEYC accredited
- Preschool:
- Yes
- Hours of Operation:
- Monday to Friday 6:00 AM - 6:00 PM
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Our philosophy is to provide a stimulating environment designed to guide children to discover new information, skills and concepts. Our curriculum offers the best social, emotional, academic and cognitive experiences for children. We provide a variety of learning experiences that encourage a positive self-image and a joy in the learning process. We respect each child as an individual who possesses a unique personality, intelligence and creativity. Our highly-trained and educated staff members establish environments that are clean, fun, creative and child centered.
We use a proprietary Guided DiscoveryTM approach in our program. Guided DiscoveryTM is rooted in educational philosophy and theory as well as practice. It offers a play-based, thematic and multicultural curriculum for all age groups. It relies heavily on Erik Erikson’s stages of socio-emotional development, Jean Piaget’s theories of how children think and learn, and on principles of physical development.
Guided DiscoveryTM Curriculum was developed with the vision of guiding children of all ages through the learning process rather than showing them how to learn. The core of the program is to help direct children to learn cognitively, socially and physically. Curriculum guidelines have been created for teachers in all of the age groups. These guidelines are in place to ensure that children are learning by doing rather than by watching a teacher, and it encourages teachers to provide as many hands-on activities as possible for all children. The program also allows children to participate in a holistic learning approach with the teacher interacting at the child’s level. The focus is always on the process of learning and not the end product. A print-rich environment is provided in all classrooms to foster language development.
We have also incorporated the criterion developed by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), the country’s premier standard for quality in early childhood education. Almost 70% of our centers are already accredited by NAEYC and our goal is 100% accreditation.
