Thank you for visiting Lighthouse School’s web site. Your interest is appreciated. We hope that you find helpful information at this site. Please feel encouraged to contact us if additional information is needed.
Lighthouse School, Inc. has been in operation since 1967 as a private, not-for-profit (501(c)(3)), Chapter 766 approved human service corporation serving the needs of special needs students aged 3 to 22 years. All students who are enrolled at Lighthouse School have disabilities that prohibit them from attending public schools.
Lighthouse School operates according to a Comprehensive Biodevelopmental Services Model, meaning services designed to promote total life development are provided during the day, evenings, week-ends and summers, both on-site and in the home communities of attending students. Enrolled students reside in many of the cities and towns of eastern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire and are transported to and from Lighthouse School daily by the authority of the Special Education Departments of their respective communities.
Students attending Lighthouse School are 3 to 22 years of age and have very heterogeneous, or diverse, disabilities and needs. Lighthouse School has intentionally enrolled students having dissimilar disabilities and needs to provide abundant opportunities for insight by comparison. It is often important for students in accepting and understanding their own disabilities to compare and contrast those disabilities to what may be very different disabilities of other students. This is beneficial because coping effectively with a disability involves insight based on objectivity. Insight is an important prerequisite for achieving total life success, the cardinal goal for each student enrolled at Lighthouse School. Total life success means positive outcomes in all dimensions of life experience and not only in academic achievement.
Lighthouse School’s mission involves providing the most comprehensive interdisciplinary services possible to the children who demonstrate the greatest needs for care. Services at Lighthouse School have high levels of efficiency and cost containment and are accompanied by sincere commitment and compassion, qualities that the enrolled population of children so desperately need and deserve. Children enrolled at Lighthouse School are treated like members of a close and loving family. They are nurtured, cared for, and surrounded by sensitive individuals who invest very deeply in each child’s life. That investment cultivates the child’s courage to build a bridge between the child and Lighthouse School. It is a bridge that first and foremost involves trust; each child is encouraged to emotionally bond with the staff that become the child’s partners in reaching for the gold rings of future success.With the deepening of trust, each child eventually crosses the bridge. They enter a gentle yet persistent world at Lighthouse School where they can safely explore themselves and begin to understand other people in ways that will guide their success throughout life. They safely explore their own feelings, needs, strengths, and limitations. They also learn important lessons, called insights, about other people’s needs, wants, desires, and differences. Perhaps most importantly, they learn about the complex interrelationships between themselves and other people that form the critical foundations upon which their future successes will rest. For it is the positive social experiences that a child encounters and maintains throughout life that help to make that life more enriching, satisfying, and ultimately successful.
The bridge of trust that the children of Lighthouse School build as they enter the Lighthouse School world ultimately becomes the bridge that they must cross in leaving Lighthouse School to apply their experiences to building their future lives. Endings are rarely easy but the first day a child enters Lighthouse School marks the beginning of their journey away. At Lighthouse School, that journey is called "functional adaptation".
Functional adaptation involves teaching children to use their school experiences to build better lives in the real world. It means learning the importance of such things as trust, honor, responsibility, integrity, commitment, conflict resolution, and self-awareness. It means helping children learn to not only understand, value, and love themselves but to understand, value, and love other people in spite of other people’s imperfections. It means developing a value system and making responsible decisions that engender pride. It means finishing school, getting a job, and developing personal principles and social relationships that have mutuality at their core. And so it is that the children of Lighthouse School learn about life and build their functional adaptation bridges.
All academic, therapeutic and life preparatory experiences at Lighthouse School are planned and provided according to the individualized needs of each enrolled student. Faculty share abundant communication so that quality and consistency characterize all student interactions. Faculty are trained to work together as a synergistic treatment team in order to maximize the quality and effectiveness of services.Lighthouse School's treatment philosophy is based on the notion that biodevelopmental, or life developmental, deficits represent the highest priorities for treatment. This is because biodevelopmental deficits so strongly affect a person's future chances of achieving functional adaptation. Functional adaptation is the set of practical mastery skills that reflect a person's capacity to successfully negotiate the diverse challenges of life.
The two fundamental biodevelopmental skill categories are objective understanding of self and meaningful relationships with other people. When these two biodevelopmental skill categories are enhanced, a child has a better chance of experiencing a more meaningful life because all other biodevelopmental skills, including academic achievement, are facilitated. This is because self-perception and interpersonal relationships and the feelings that are associated with them predispose virtually all other life experiences.Lighthouse School calls its bioeducational technology APEX. APEX stands for Assimilated Personal Enrichment EXperiences and refers to a set of twelve interlocking methodologies which the faculty of Lighthouse School uses to help each enrolled student achieve as advanced a level of positive biodevelopment as possible.
Lighthouse School is deeply committed to the very important goal of mainstreaming. Whenever a student demonstrates sufficient biodevelopmental progress to be successful in a less restrictive setting, Lighthouse School immediately recommends to that student's family and city or town representatives that mainstreaming be considered. If all parties are in agreement, steps are implemented to activate a transition program. Lighthouse School faculty are available to remain involved for as long as necessary to ensure that transition to a less restrictive setting is successful.Thank you for your interest in Lighthouse School. We hope that your visit to this web site will be both informative and helpful.
Michael Pappafagos, Ed. D.
Executive Director
Lighthouse School, Inc.