Family Handbook 2025-26

HC-X: HAVERGAL’S INNOVATION HUB

TC-9: The Challenge (Grade 9) TC-9 is a course designed specifically for Grade 9 students to explore, learn and take action on the most urgent challenge of their time: Climate Action. The course introduces students to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), their targets and indicators. In a Blended Model, they learn about different aspects of how climate changes are impacting people around the world in different ways. Students go “off timetable” for two weeks following March break, with full days devoted to research, futures and systems thinking, and diverse worldviews, as well as how to adopt a trans-disciplinary approach to complex challenges: learning from experts, completing field research and more. Key considerations in the framing of this course are hope, joy and optimism. This course is founded upon student agency, interest and action. The SDGs are challenges for all of us to meet head-on. Without fostering eco-anxiety, TC-9 is an opportunity to hear what today’s youth have to say about issues, discover what they want to do about it and be supportive in this action. To support this approach, we are integrating futures thinking tools like the Futures Triangle ; mindsets like creative confidence; diverse worldviews such as Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing; and compelling, inspiring, action-based research, such as Hope Jahren's The Story of More . The course is structured as an immersive experience, where students are provided the time to integrate their learning into their project and course work and to look ahead and see what action they may want to take to extend their impact. This course uses competency-based assessment and asset-based feedback through a participatory reporting process that is distinct from their formal report card. TC-9 focusses on student agency and their identity as a learner. This course was premised on students engaging in research, action and learning — in that order. In this way, students need to adopt innovator and entrepreneurial mindsets, where the learning is the journey.

Virtual Learning Lab VR Club (Grades 9 to 12)

This student-led club is supported by HC-X as part of the Virtual Learning Lab (VLL). A mobile “laboratory,” the VLL is an opportunity for Havergal students and faculty to learn about emerging technologies: Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, 360° media and 3D design. Through workshops in partnership with the Global Learning & Leading Diploma and hosted experiences such as National Film Board’s Biidaaban: First Light , students experience and build using immersive technologies right here on campus.

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