From Unique Medical Needs to Universal Human Truths: Reflections from our Founder

Dear Friends,

As many of you know, my kids and I are among the estimated 1 in 5,000 people who have the complex connective tissue disorder, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. Because connective tissue is what holds the body and its organs together, this medical condition causes variable impacts across the body.

As I worked to understand my kids' educational needs, the connections between their medical health and their learning and social-emotional experiences was undeniable--so much so that it convinced me and the occupational therapist who had long supported them in the community that to give them the futures that their high intellect would find satisfying, we were going to need to create a different kind of school: one that goes beyond not triggering medical flares, to actually teach kids how to use the connections between their body and their brain to optimize their learning experiences.

My kids' very unique needs are what got us started looking into the intersections between neurophysiology, psychology and learning--but we soon discovered that in fact, we were tapping into universal human truths about how all kids bodies impact their educational experiences, they just aren't usually so readily apparent to observe and to test as they are with EDS kids. 

Today, we are proud to be the first school in the world with a program empowering kids with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome: a program that is now also helping kids with other complex medical conditions to get out of home-bound instruction and back into learning with peers.

This spring, our little school hit two monumental milestones at once. First, my older son became Cajal Academy's first graduate, and proved the power of the program to take a child from a life-threatening medical crisis that had knocked him far off his academic and social-emotional course, to confidently and independently resuming that course at the college of his dreams.

Second, we hit a critical mass of students in whom we'd seen transformational changes across a very short window in time that we realized the time has come for us to begin publishing and sharing the break-throughs in education that have come out of this new methodology, including interventions that are proving successful at removing learning disabilities like dyspraxia and orthographic processing--not just accommodate them.

As a social entrepreneur and educational leader, I could not be more proud to see the greater good that is already coming out of my kids' difficult journeys. And as a "Zebra" (and my fellow EDS'ers know what that means!), I couldn't be more thrilled to see our kids not struggling to fit on the edges but at the tip of a spear that we hope will one day revolutionize all of education.

With great hope,
Cheryl