About Our School & Day Care
Good Shepherd School and Day Care is the place to get your child’s education off to a great start! Since 1992, we have provided Shenandoah Valley children a strong academic foundation to help them become successful, lifelong learners. We offer day care for infants through grade school age. For grade school, we offer a full Kindergarten and 1st through 12th grade academic programs. We also offer before and after care and summer camps for children in Kindergarten through 6th grade.
Curious About How We Teach?
Good Shepherd offers a quality alternative for K-12 students that need a different approach to learning. We continue to use the A Beka curriculum in our Kindergartens, and then we use the ACE School of Tomorrow curriculum in our Learning Centers. Each Learning Center houses grades 1-12, each student in their own office, working on their own work, getting helping individually according to their own needs.
At Good Shepherd, our 2 year old class is called the “Discovery Class” because of how much this applies to that age group. And at GSS3, Kim Cusimano has the privilege of guiding these little ones through this process. Kim has 20 years of experience working with children, half of that with us. She has developed her own personal approach that works wonders with an age that can be a handful of times. Her calm demeanor and laid back style are a perfect fit with 2 year olds.
At Good Shepherd School and Day Care, interaction is the key to helping students feel loved, and to helping them fall in love with learning. Everything we do at GSS has these two goals in mind! Her love for the students was so evident as she described her step-by-step interactions with the students during Bible time. Besides involving them in the lesson itself, she interacts with them through Scripture memory, the singing of songs, and prayer. Not only are these great ways to build principles at a young age, but they build confidence and offer opportunities to reward students as well. Students learn to become involved in the classroom setting and to retain information. Miss Dove recounts times that students recite verses with such pride in their effort and ability.
School History
Our mission at Good Shepherd School and Day Care is to instruct children in the Christian faith, provide them with a solid academic foundation, and thereby provide a needed service to our community.
Nick Kozel and his wife Caryn opened the first Good Shepherd School and Day Care on January 20, 1992, at the 991 Chicago Avenue campus. They opened with eleven students in preschool, and by the fall of 1992 had enough students for a kindergarten class.
By 1995 there were over 120 students enrolled from preschool through twelfth grade, and a second Harrisonburg, Virginia, campus was opened at 342 Neff Avenue in February of that year. At this new location, a nursery was added for infant and toddler care, for which there was a high demand in the area. In October of 1996, Good Shepherd School and Day Care expanded to Waynesboro, Virginia, with a preschool.
Together the three schools in the Shenandoah Valley care for hundreds of local children. Parents can see the Good Shepherd difference in their child’s academic and spiritual progress.
