{"id":10442,"date":"2015-04-22T17:16:54","date_gmt":"2015-04-22T21:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=10442"},"modified":"2015-04-22T17:16:54","modified_gmt":"2015-04-22T21:16:54","slug":"new-school-will-address-grey-area-in-autism-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/new-school-will-address-grey-area-in-autism-education\/","title":{"rendered":"New school will address \u201cgrey area\u201d in Autism education"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Serena Thompson\u2019s young son, Daniel, lives on the autism spectrum.<\/p>\n

He has been in public school and private school, he has even been home schooled, but he has yet to find the perfect fit for him.<\/p>\n

Ms. Thompson, however, thought she had struck gold in an autism-specific private school in Toronto, but when told by the director parents were not allowed in the facility, there was no turning back for this mom.<\/p>\n

Joining forces with Laurie McRae, whose son is also on the Autism spectrum, the duo have set about turning a large Aurora house into Lighthouse Learning and Development Centre, slated to open this September on Old Yonge Street, next to Oakland Hall restaurant.<\/p>\n

Unique for York Region, the school is focused on individual education plans, direct instruction, and sensory experiences, all lead by Ontario-certified teachers with specialization in teaching children with autism at a maximum rate of four students per teacher.<\/p>\n

Throughout Daniel\u2019s journey, Ms. Thompson said he had \u201camazing teachers\u201d in the school system, but these teachers were not given the adequate support they needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn all the centres we went to, people wanted to tell me about my son, but I am with him 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so I am pretty sure I can tell you way more about my son than you can tell me,\u201d says Serena. \u201cThere seems to be a gap. [We chose the name] Lighthouse because a lighthouse is the only thing you can see in the dark from miles and miles away. Being a parent, I have felt a lot of times very isolated because you have to trust people to help your child, but that is really hard. There has to be something out there to help you and that is where this all came from.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to service this grey area of children who are too high functioning for a typical community class, but they are not high functioning enough to not be supported in a regular classroom environment. Academically, Daniel is very strong, but he learns in a certain way. You have to talk to him in a certain way. You have to deliver the information in a certain way, and that is something that, unfortunately, the school boards have not caught up with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Opening up a school to address this gap has been a dream of Ms. Thompson\u2019s since 2012. At the time, she says she knew how smart her son was but there weren\u2019t a lot of people who believed it. She was trying to fight for his education and convince people \u201che was worth teaching\u201d, she explains. He has the potential to be great, but if you don\u2019t believe in him first, he is not going to reach that potential.<\/p>\n

That is a struggle common for parents with kids on the Autism spectrum, something 850 likes and counting on Facebook can testify to, she says.<\/p>\n

Parents will have their first opportunity to take in Lighthouse with an Open House on Saturday, May 9. When completed, the school will have room for 25 students, ample volunteers, and even a \u201cgrandparents\u2019 room\u201d where grandparents of students can come and spend time with their grandchildren with the support of trained staff.<\/p>\n

Tuition is $2,400 per month per student for the school year and, in partnership with Under the Umbrella, Lighthouse aims to raise a minimum of $150,000 per year to provide student bursaries.<\/p>\n

Students will follow a typical day familiar to everyday students in the public school stream, and this is by design.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re hoping this is sort of a middle point for kids where we can transition them into the regular school system seamlessly and we can\u2019t do that unless they are familiar with how that routine works,\u201d says Ms. Thompson. \u201cAlthough we would love to keep them, we would love to see them move on. [We\u2019ll measure our success] by seeing some of our children integrate beautifully into the public school system, something they probably wouldn\u2019t have been able to do without coming to us first.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother way is by our parents telling other people how great this is, how welcoming it is, and by seeing the smiles on these little kids\u2019 faces \u2013 little kids who have anxiety about going to school, seeing them come here, want to be here, and be happy.\u201d
\nFor more information on Lighthouse, visit www.lhldc.com.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

York Region parents, teachers team up to establish new kind of autism school in Aurora.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10421,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/2015-04-23-10.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2Iq","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-13 15:28:29","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}