TEK Center

My kids have been coming here for 2 years+. This is their favorite summer camp and favorite after school activity. Although my daughter is one of the few girls in this environment, she has a great experience. She doesn't get bothered by others and has good experiences with the other boys, and few older girls. We've had bad experience with OTHER tech camps where "boys will be boys" attitude reign that attitude is not encouraged here. My kids were victims of that old attitude that I despise. My kids, have wonderful experiences here. There are some children who intimidate, or act out, or are physically aggressive which scare my kids and I've observed the staff dealing with this 1:1 situations which is encouraging for me. They are learning coding and 3D modeling and video and minecraft and many other skills. I'm impressed with the staff and quality of education. Learning tech skills is not cheap, but I feel like I get a lot of value from the program. More than other programming sessions we've tried. They have female programmers which are excellent rolemodels for my kids and make me happy this is available for my kids.

My kids attended the summer camp and really loved it. Lots of good stuff to learn- robotics, minecraft, sports activities , arts, 3D printing etc. I really like the staff who go out of their way to make this a warm and inviting place for kids as well as parents. I will continue to send my kids here as this is a lovely educational setting where the kids learn in a safe and fun environment.

After school Tek Scout program is great! For the same cost as 'daycare' my kiddo is learning robotics, electronics, computers, tool skills and more. Real tech skills for the real word. I love that we can drop in or sign up for as many or as few hours as we want to. No contract or commitment.

Unfortunately we had a rather mixed experience with the TEK Center whose name is an acronym for "To Every Kid." They offer computer and sports classes day camps for children and we registered for a computer class in the morning and a sports class in the afternoon, for a week this summer. I dropped off my son and spoke with the instructor of the class about his needs. She was very receptive and sweet and I left with confidence. Later I got a call -- not from the camp, who never called me that day -- but from my son, asking me to pick him up. When I arrived, I was informed that he was not to return, because according to staff he had been 'cursing at students and teachers.' I sadly accepted this news, as while that is a bit extreme for my son, it's not unheard of that he shows such behavioral problems and is considered to be non-neurotypical. I wish I had spent more time disclosing specific issues to the instructor, or had spoken with TEK beforehand, but as anyone with a non-neurotypical child knows, they are moving targets and constantly change especially around adolescence... Once the problem manifested, though, I would have thought it more skillful to have contacted me, the parent, to trouble-shoot and perhaps de-escalate the problem before it got to the point of "He is no longer welcome here, period." Such was the clear message of TEK when I arrived and it was a rather jarring one to receive. I then requested a refund since they were not going to be teaching my son. They stated that they will not give me a refund because that is their policy in such cases. I responded that that policy makes no sense, and that I would be quite vocal in the community should they not refund our money. Then, and only then, they reversed their position and stated they would refund my money and reconsider their policy. This review was originally 1 star and I've upped it to 2 stars because they provided the refund as promised it took several days longer than expected to post. 3 stars would be too high at this time, for this customer. TEK Center appears to care about their work but to be rather new to doing business, at least this business in Portland. As a result I think they are on a learning curve, as is any new business, to be fair. They have potential to be a good provider of tech classes to kids, but in my view they especially need to iron out where they stand on child behavior problems and neurodiversity. Specifically, they need a policy and they need to make that policy part of the parent contract. Nobody likes to be taken off-guard. For my part, I plan to be very proactive in establishing contact with future providers of such classes, and assessing the willingness, readiness and skillfulness to handle some less-than-perfect child behavior. In the meantime, I do not recommend anyone with children who have a history of any behavioral problems to sign the child up for a class or camp at the TEK Center, and certainly not without first consulting proactively and extensively with TEK staff. By their own admission they do not have the resources to respond to any problem behaviors. For neurotypical and well-behaved children, it may be fine to just sign up and go for it.

Great after school location with 3d printer a computer lab, and an awesome robotics program!

Fantastic place!