Where values go hand in hand with academics
Not a lot of people can say their parents love them so much that they put up a school just for them. But it is certainly true for Golden Values School (GVS) director Vanessa Garon Vandevoort.
Bob and Emmy Garon founded GVS in 1979, more than a year before they were expecting their first child, but it was never really in their plans.
“My husband and I were planners, but setting up a school was something we never thought of,” said Emmy, who serves as school president.
A former priest who came to be known as the father of therapeutic community in Asia, Bob came to the Philippines from New Hampshire as a missionary and put up the Drug Abuse Research Foundation Inc. in Cavite in 1971 where Emmy, a young addiction therapist from Batangas, became the first woman to direct a drug rehabilitation program in the Philippines.
Their years working with troubled kids and drug addicts of varying social status, both in the Philippines and in the United States, gave them a unique perspective.
“It’s easy enough to be able to get children to learn academics, and, in fact, it’s getting easier and easier now because of technology. But it’s very important that we really look after our children’s development when it comes to their attitudinal and values development,” said Emmy.
Even with their extensive experience and expertise in dealing with teenagers, the couple still felt insecure and scared that “unless we are able to start our kids with the right values and attitudes, they might have a problem.”
“And so, my husband, being a visionary, said, ‘I’d like to start a school.’”
‘The experiment’
Concerned about early childhood development, the Garons initially planned on closing down the school once their children were done with preschool. Later on, Vanessa, who calls herself “the experiment” and “a proud product of a small school,” also became the reason the school added a Grade 7 (her sister, Alexandra, later persuaded Bob and Emmy to also add a high school level).
“I started younger than everyone else, so when I was about to go to high school, my parents felt I was not yet mature enough,” said Vanessa. So her father created another year level to better prepare her for the critical high school years.
“My parents really are those kind of people who did not want to compromise my learning of the importance of values and character,” she added.
Because of her parents’ work where they saw how children here and abroad who went to good schools somehow still ended up in drug rehab, they realized that something went wrong during the early years, that they didn’t have a strong enough foundation for them to be able to make better decisions.
“Now we know that the problem of young people who come to us actually started when they were small,” Emmy said. “The first five years is really where the problem could be, unless it is attended to.”
Since its inception, the Garons have always been very involved in the school, including the creation of the curriculum and the program, as well as the hiring of the teachers. Emmy would later on become a part of the pioneering group that put together the basic standards for early childhood curriculum and spearheaded Republic Act No. 8980, which requires all Filipino children to undergo at least one year of formal early childhood education before moving up to grade school, as the first Early Childhood Care and Development Council deputy executive director.
GVS has gone on to become one of the pioneers in early childhood education in the country with branches in Makati, Parañaque, Pasig, and Novaliches. “It just evolved to the way it is right now,” said Emmy.
Children of the owner
“Growing up,” Vanessa shared, “it was harder to be the children of the owner because my parents always said, ‘We don’t want parents to think that you are favored. If you mess up, expect that you will have the consequence five times worse than the regular kid.’”
Now, their eldest daughter sits as school director. Their other daughter, Alexandra Garon-Mañosa, heads The Nazareth Formation House, a live-in facility the Garons founded back in 1999 to help address various addictions and behavioral issues.
Despite being the daughter of the founders and having walked the halls of GVS since she was still in her andador (walker), Vanessa did not really plan on teaching and took up entrepreneurship in college instead. However, she had always wanted to be involved in the school and ended up taking education units as well.
At first, she joined the school as a member of the administrative staff doing finance work, but when the principal of GVS Makati at the time was about to resign, the management—not her parents—put her in office.
“I didn’t know anything,” said Vanessa, who was only 23 years old then. “But I’m a Garon. I have to sink or swim, and I’m not going to sink… I have to prove that I can do it.”
Starting from the bottom, she would sit beside the best preschool teacher to learn. Later on, Vanessa also ended up taking her master’s in educational leadership. In 2007, she became the school director.
Small class size
One of the hallmarks of a GVS education is the small class size, which is in stark contrast to the big institutions that were prevalent when the Garons were still scouting for schools for their future children.
“We want all our teachers to know all the students,” said Emmy, adding that it was Bob’s wish to keep the school small for as long as he lived.
“He would always say, when I die, if you want to build a big building, big classes, go ahead. But while I’m alive, keep it small,” added Vanessa.
Bob died in 2021, yet they have kept to that standard. “That has always been our belief. This is what we promised the parents. That’s why in some of our other branches, we even have a wait list.”
Because of that, they are able to create a good foundation for kids, offering students a whole lot more than the regular curriculum, including values development and life skills like washing clothes, doing meal preparations, learning to do things with their hands, or camping, which their students really enjoy as they learn through play. These programs give the students a sense of “I did it on my own.”
“And that’s why our goal in GVS is always building children with the right attitudes and values, as well as their academic knowledge, but with that sense that they are confident,” said Vanessa.
As the GVS curriculum evolves, there are things that remain constant: the person-to-person interaction and possibly GVS’ secret formula, which is addressing the emotions of each child.
“We spend almost 45 minutes just on working on the emotions of the children. That’s why we cannot have many. Fifteen children will say how they feel today. Every single one, every day. So we spend the time to do that because we know that’s a very, very important aspect of their life,” said Vanessa.
Vanessa also added that having a strong moral compass is important nowadays. “It’s easy to have intelligence, but at the end of the day, with our world now, that moral compass is so, so important. In GVS, when you do something wrong, we don’t say, ‘That’s bad.’ We don’t use the word ‘punishment.’ We say, ‘What’s the consequence?’ You have to take accountability for your actions.”
