Guidepost Montessori Reviews

The pay is abysmal, and for someone with AMI Montessori training, I found there to be significant lack of quality in the Montessori aspect of Guidepost. I worked at two different locations and both emphasized the aesthetics over the actual philosophy. Guidepost's business strategy seems to be to take early childhood ed workers from traditional daycares, offer them slightly better pay (which isn't hard since early childhood pays crap as a general field), then slap a little bit of in-house Montessori training on them and shove them into a classroom. Most folks are really overwhelmed and don't have enough support to follow through on the philosophy. I saw so much stuff that undermined Montessori philosophy, like punishments/rewards, and mostly just a complete lack of knowledge, training, or experience of employees. Guidepost seems to be most interested in quantity, not quality. This is directly contradictory to Montessori philosophy. It seems like Guidepost is just a place for investors to park money in real estate, tbh. I don't think Higher Ground cares AT ALL about Montessori. They definitely don't care about COVID and they will not pay you if you're sick. There is no sick pay--you have to use your PTO. And if you're a new employee with no PTO, you have to take unpaid time off if you get sick. They will never close classrooms when there is COVID, and in my experience they don't even tell you if someone gets COVID. It felt incredibly unsafe and I did not feel cared for or considered as a professional or a human being. AND! If you say you have a limit or boundary around work, they tell you that you "lack the energy necessary for a startup company" and imply that you don't care or you're weak because you don't want to work yourself sick for their profit.

This is a very for-profit school, they have staff working ridiculous long hours for minimal salary. This is essentially an overpriced daycare that has adopted the Montessori Pedagogy to profit off of wealthy parents who believed they’re sending their kids to a school with trained Montessori educators. There’s only 3 trained AMI educators in the school, and the rest come from public daycare. They offer a “Montessori” training but this is only provided when there’s an immediate need for a Lead Guide, the training is 2 weeks (though accredited AMI training is 2 years) and gives a staff member credentials to teach a certain age group. I’d suggest parents to look into other reputable schools with skilled and trained teachers, to make their money worth. And any potential staff to stay away from this school because you won’t have the opportunity to grow in this field, or enjoy time with your family during holidays as this school is open on holidays, nor work decent hours for a reasonable salary. Guidepost is also not being COVID compliant whatsoever. Several staff have gotten COVID on campus, probably as a result of the failure of the school to comply with state laws regarding COVID. Teachers flying from out of state have not been required to quarantine, parents have been lied to about exposures at the school, we’ve run out of PPE, and the school has also stopped taking temperatures of children all together. Management has really dropped the ball on this but places the blame entirely on their staff when they never even trained us on how to be COVID compliant.