| Christos Kazyas, Associate Principal Elementary, out on an Adopt a Highway cleanup with Third Academy.
I walked into the Currie Barracks campus one spring afternoon in 2010, eagerly awaiting a job interview with Sunil Mattu. I had spent the previous few years teaching in the Northwest Territories, and I was looking for a small independent school where I could make a difference.
It took all of two seconds to see the difference here. I saw teachers hugging students. I saw a teacher lying on the floor trying to console a child. I watched staff safely hold a student who was harming themselves, and what struck me was the compassion they brought to a difficult moment. I had hoped to find a place where I could make a difference, and now I was looking at one.
Central to everything at Third Academy are the words of our founder, Dr. S. Lal Mattu: “Heal the heart to educate the mind.” We must first deal with the underlying emotional issues that stop a student from learning. By changing how a student thinks and feels about themselves, we change how they act. These words remind us to understand what brought a student here, what they have lived through, and what must be dealt with before learning can begin.
Today, families in Calgary have many choices. Thirty years ago, they had far fewer. Before schools dedicated to students with diverse learning and developmental needs existed, many children were overlooked or left out of opportunities other children took for granted. Families were too often told what their child could not do, rather than what they might become. It took people of real compassion, resilience and vision to challenge that thinking. Dr. Mattu and the Mattu family were those people.
| Staff gather around the table in the early years of the school.
There is an idea at the heart of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that no matter who you are or what challenges you face, your rights matter. Dr. Mattu’s vision carried out that same idea on a deeply personal level, every day, in a school. True equality does not mean treating everyone exactly the same. It means making sure every person has the support they need to succeed. Extra help in a classroom, patience, understanding, acceptance – these are not special privileges. They are expressions of fairness.
The Mattus did more than build classrooms. They built possibilities, a place where differences are strengths rather than weaknesses, where students who once felt invisible are supported and celebrated.
It was not easy. There were funding challenges, social stigma, and skepticism from people who could not yet see the value of inclusion. They moved forward anyway.
On any given day, that work takes a whole school. We support students with a therapy team, an occupational therapist, and a speech and language pathologist whose encouragement and warmth set the tone for the day. The front office is always ready to help a student finish a puzzle. Our classroom staff and specially trained bus team go above and beyond every hour. The supportive janitorial staff and kind administrative team run the school with student needs top of mind. And whenever we can, we support their families too. It is a holistic approach I have never seen anywhere else.
| A young student holds the stage before a full house at an early Third Academy function.
I started in 2010, and since then I have watched us grow from two small campuses to something far wider. In 2014 we expanded with ursa, a home education division offering parent directed and shared responsibility options for grades 1 to 12. Soon after came LYNX, a nature-inspired program for kindergarten to grade 9 that trades the all-day indoor classroom for teacher-directed learning in the mornings and outdoor exploration in the afternoons. In 2022 we acquired a 46,000 square foot building on a nine-acre site on the east side of Calgary, bringing our elementary and junior and senior high programs under one roof. We have become an anchor for our neighbourhood, where our high school Life Skills class has partnered with residents of the senior living centre next door to start a We Read program.
At the beginning of the academic year every September, the task for staff is simple. Create an environment where students get to know one another and begin to see that not all schools are alike. They feel comfortable because they are surrounded by others with similar struggles, passions and interests. A school year has yet to pass without a parent telling me, with tears and excitement, about their child having a friend over or being invited to a birthday party, all because of Third Academy.
Our most important day belongs to our grade 12 graduates. This is where we see new dreams, families re-energized and excited about what comes next, telling us almost without exception that their child’s options are now wide open.
Canada’s Charter became a promise to a nation. Third Academy became a promise to families that every child matters, every child can learn, and every child deserves a chance to thrive. Every September I watch a new group walk in for a fresh start, the way I once did, looking for a place to make a difference. What I found was that promise already being kept. Heal the heart and the mind will follow.
