{"id":38408,"date":"2026-06-25T13:43:50","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T17:43:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=38408"},"modified":"2026-06-25T13:44:03","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T17:44:03","slug":"havenwood-academy-celebrates-providing-paths-for-every-learner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/havenwood-academy-celebrates-providing-paths-for-every-learner\/","title":{"rendered":"Havenwood Academy celebrates providing \u201cpaths for every learner\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A first word is always the cause for celebration, but when a non-verbal student makes an important breakthrough, it can mean so much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such was the case for the teachers, instructors, and students who are part of the Havenwood Academy community, a new neurodiverse-affirming school on Edward Street dedicated to creating an inclusive and supportive learning environment \u201cwhere every student is known, valued, and empowered to thrive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Havenwood, which now occupies the former location of Lighthouse Learning Development Centre, has become a close-knit community since its inception just eight months ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was an inception born out of necessity after Lighthouse moved to York Region\u2019s southern tier, leaving local families to look for more local learning opportunities for their children and young adults.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had a little parent gathering and asked if this was something you\u2019d want to bring your kids to, about 10 parents said yes, so we opened our doors,\u201d says Angela Caporiccio, Havenwood\u2019s Co-Founder and Director of Education, of the Lighthouse families that came together to keep this kind of specialized education available locally. \u201cIt sort of happened out of necessity because, unfortunately, the school system in our Province has a hard time supporting these learners, so we thought, let\u2019s create our own version.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been in York Region for many years in special education, teaching in the autism classes in the Public Board and I thought, okay, now it\u2019s time to do it for my kid and his community, so that\u2019s what we ended up doing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Havenwood prides itself on its \u201cholistic\u201d approach to education and helping students \u201cbuild confidence, communication, independence, and meaningful connections within their community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is actually no other school in Aurora that offers a secondary program,\u201d says Caporiccio. \u201cWe have a secondary program where kids who want to earn a high school diploma can come to us and earn a high school diploma with the proper supports that an autistic learner might need. Right now there\u2019s nothing like that as far as I know in York Region and that\u2019s a huge hole that\u2019s being filled here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe approach things [through] a holistic lens where we have everything that you might expect in a regular high school where there\u2019s assemblies and a music class, a gym class \u2013 all of those things are happening within this building, which doesn\u2019t always happen in autism schools, but then is supplemented by therapy. I think the big difference is there\u2019s a lot of therapy centres that do education, but we\u2019re really a school first. We\u2019re a school that is supplemented by all the different therapies that an autistic person might need to be successful in school, and the education is very individualized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is a saying in autism that if you ever met a person with autism you\u2019ve met one person with autism, meaning that their needs and the way they learn, the way they communicate are very different, even from each other. Their education has to match that. Each kid who comes here has an individual education plan that\u2019s catered to their specific interests, their strengths, their challenges, and building their capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Havenwood held an end-of-year celebration for the community on Saturday. While it marked the end of the academic year, the Academy had been in operation just eight weeks at that point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asked how they will measure success at the end of their first full year of operation, Caporiccio says their measures of success might look a little different from the conventional school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not about EQAO tests, grade scores, or how many kids are going to post-secondary,\u201d she says. \u201cAll of those things are great measures of success, but for our kids, I think their emotional and social wellbeing is paramount for us. The world is a difficult place sometimes for students who are autistic and that\u2019s sort of why we chose \u2018Havenwood\u2019 because we want this to be a safe haven for them, a place where they can be met where they are because, in our mind, that\u2019s the only way learning can happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe often say \u2018progress over perfection.\u2019 If that\u2019s one kid learning how to tie a shoe or another who gets an A on their physics test, they\u2019re all equally as successful to us. We have one [teen] student who has been with us for the eight weeks who is a non-speaking individual who said his first three words in the last three weeks so, for us, that\u2019s a success, and it was a really beautiful moment for us all when he came into his own wanting to express himself and it came out really naturally \u2013 and I think that\u2019s because he was feeling safe and supported.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A first word is always the cause for celebration, but when a non-verbal student makes an important breakthrough, it can mean so much more. Such was the case for the teachers, instructors, and students who are part of the Havenwood Academy community, a new neurodiverse-affirming school on Edward Street dedicated to creating an inclusive and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":38409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_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},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38408","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\/2026\/06\/2026-06-25-07.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-9Zu","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-03 11:37:44","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\/38408","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=38408"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38410,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38408\/revisions\/38410"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}