Support Teacher Helps Safe Haven Youth Stay on the Right Track

This fall, Safe Haven Youth Services welcomed Cindy Collins, a Student Support Teacher, to our team. This new role reflects a shared commitment to meeting youth where they are and ensuring education remains accessible even when life feels unstable. 

“It’s hard to prioritize a diploma when your life is upside down,” Cindy explains of the youth she’s been working with, “but it really does matter down the road and help their circumstances.” 

Bringing 22 years of teaching experience with WRDSB, including the past eight years in alternative education and helping students graduate, Cindy’s first love is working with youth. Her role includes supporting youth to complete schoolwork on-site, helping those enrolled in community schools navigate attendance and coursework, and being a connection between the youth and their vice-principals and guidance counsellors. Simply put, Cindy works with youth on anything education-related, adapting support to each individual’s situation. 

The impact has already been profound. Within her first months, Cindy supported a young person who was just two credits shy of graduating high school. With life circumstances making a return to their home school challenging, Cindy worked with them to complete two in-house credits at Safe Haven. A desk in the basement outside the kitchen became a classroom. When the credits were complete, the team celebrated with a cap, gown, and graduation ceremony. It was an unforgettable milestone and a powerful reminder that a diploma can still be within reach, even during upheaval. 

Cindy is the only teacher on site, working daily alongside social workers and youth workers. She describes working with younger staff who have a different educational background as a learning curve, but an incredible gift.  

“I’m not in a classroom,” she says. “I’m in their living room, in their space.” Surrounded by colleagues who approach youth through a trauma-informed lens, Cindy has learned new ways of communicating with softer, kinder language.

“Sometimes as teachers we’re so focused on school and credits, we get lost in using language like calling a student like ‘needy’, when the term we use here is ‘searching for connection’, and I just love that.” 

This role is currently considered a pilot, but Cindy and all Safe Haven staff hope to see it become permanent. The early success, the strengthened relationships, and one hard-earned graduation already show what’s possible when education and care come together.