We don’t just accommodate children’s differences…we start with the data in each child’s profile and then apply our team’s clinical and neuroscience expertise to address them

Parents with unique learners are often told to look for a special education school that can “teach to the way your child learns.” Yet the field of neuroscience has meaningfully evolved in the last several decades, pointing the way to how we can not just accommodate a child’s differences, but actually reduce these barriers for many kids, giving them the opportunity to go forward to whatever setting—and future—they choose.

Over the last five years, we have developed protocols that use this science to redefine what’s possible for a child, for a school and for education as a whole. Where other programs accommodate difficulties like ADHD, dyslexia and more, we have made a paradigm shift in how we understand, and treat, those needs.

The first paradigm shift is in how we identify where there is leverage that the bright, gifted and/or profoundly gifted cohort of kids we serve can use to improve their academic and life-lived experiences. Beginning in the admissions process, our multi-disciplinary team takes a deep dive into the data in a child’s neuropsychological, neurophysiological and social-emotional profiles. Internationally-renowned and board-cretified neuropsychologist Dr. Steven Mattis draws on over 50 years of expertise to connect the dots between foundational splinter skills and the higher-order learning and social-emotional tasks that employ them to understand how each child’s unique array of strengths and challenges combine to inform their everyday lives. What results is a map that reaches well beyond the labels to break down differences like “dyslexia” or “ADHD” into the specific neurocognitive skills that drive them, retracing the developmental chain to identify the skills our very bright students lack.

The second paradigm shift is in how we treat these differences. Rather than just accommodate them, we apply task-driven processes developed by Cajal Academy’s team that target those skills through task-driven treatment plans that build up the neural network in the brain that the child needs to learn that skill (a process called “neuroplasticity”). While that work proceeds, the child’s curriculum is differentiated to reduce demand for those low-lying skills—giving the child the opportunity to experience their own gifts.

Throughout a child’s program, we bring these learnings to life and into the classroom through an iterative, three-step process to identify at a very granular level the specific skills that are holding a child back, how can we move that needle forward, and then how can we give the child agency over that process. We do this across all areas of a child’s profile, including their learning, social and emotional experiences, through an in-depth understanding of their neuropsychological strengths and weaknesses along with factors affecting their emotional and neurophysiological regulation. This information is then integrated to create holistic programs to address each of the challenges identified and prepare the student to accelerate their growth.

Here is an overview of this process.

All learning and social activities are in fact a bundle of individual neurocognitive and neurophysiological tasks. In order to excel at that task, we need to excel at each of its component skills as well. Turning this around, if we can build up a child’s capacity to perform cognitive and physiological skills that are required for a range of learning, social and emotional experiences, then we can make meaningful improvements in their life-lived experiences. This is a fundamental principle behind Cajal Academy’s approach, and one that makes us meaningfully different from other special education schools.

The critical first step in this process is to identify, at a very granular level, which cross-cutting neurocognitive skills are holding a child back. This work starts in the application process, with the data in each student’s neuropsychological and other assessments. This information is reviewed by our Director of Programs, a recognized neuropsychologist, researcher and professor at Weill Cornell medical school. As the child’s program progresses, these insights are refined through formal and informal assessments, observations and multi-disciplinary investigations by our embedded team of licensed therapists and diagnosticians.

A similar analysis is conducted to appreciate how the child’s unique mix of neuropsychological and neurophysiological skills influence the child’s social and emotional experiences. This Neuro- and Trauma-Informed Approach, developed at Cajal Academy, provides a scientific and data-driven lens through which to understand the intersections between learning differences, social difficulties, physio needs and emotional experiences, and how they drive children’s observable actions and reactions within the school environment.

These steps are not unrelated. For instance, we find that many gifted students identified as having social difficulties or inappropriate classroom behaviors in fact have undiagnosed learning disabilities (most often the motor coordination disorders dyspraxia or dysgraphia, in fact). From there, our clinicians work their way back down the neurodevelopmental chain until they find the specific neurocognitive or neurophysio skills holding back their ability to perform that skill; that is the skill that we would prioritize to target.

Step 2: How can we move the needle for this problem?

Once we’ve identified the missing foundational skill(s) that can best improve the child’s quality of life, the second paradigm shift is in how we treat or address their challenges. Our work has demonstrated that when we build up the child’s ability to perform those foundational level skills and provide Growth Mindset and Agency Coaching to help the child re-incorporate that growth, the child’s learning abilities increase and their “behaviors” dissipate organically, often in a matter of months. Contrast this to behavioral programs, which focus on reducing the child’s maladaptive responses to those difficulties without moving the needle on those challenges themselves, thus requiring that the student continue to receive accommodations and specialized instruction to close the gaps created by their learning difficulties.

Once we’ve developed a picture of the student’s cognitive strengths and weaknesses, we put this in the context of their life-lived experiences. This helps us to understand how differences in their learning, social-emotional and neurophysiological development have brought them to this moment—and what negative self-beliefs will need to be unwound in order to help them move forward. For many of the kids in our cohort, the very experience of having both outlying strengths and outlying weaknesses creates ongoing experiences of stress—often in front of their peers—that has reached the point of academic trauma.

Unwinding these challenges and helping the student to see a path forward requires a full court press. The very bright children with whom we work require the opportunity to experience their learning strengths and intellectual gifts in order to get to feeling happy, healthy and whole — so the notion that we can work only on the emotional side and then go on to the learning needs simply does not work. Instead, we must simultaneously build up a child’s capacity to perform tasks that were once challenging, and replace any associated negative self beliefs with an authentic growth mindset. This is an intensive and multi-disciplinary process that is integrated across all academic and therapeutic areas, however both the intensity and complexity of the work declines over time as the child responds to the program. Our tuition declines over time accordingly, sometimes in as little as one school year.

Here are the main building blocks for student programs; you can learn more about our broader educational model and how all the pieces fit together here.

Across all spheres, one of our primary tenets is that children should be taught to use these tools themselves, giving them agency over their own outcomes. We leverage our cohort’s high reasoning powers to do just that, by teaching them the science behind all that we do. This curriculum is integrated into our physio and social-emotional therapies, but also into our project-based learning, through an in-depth life-sciences curriculum targeting the neuroscience, anatomy and health and nutrition content children need to understand not only their challenges but the interventions that address them. This understanding increases their ability to generalize skills across settings for increased independence, while building perspective that leads to increased empathy towards themselves and others.

Customized doesn’t have to mean isolated. Our academic curriculum, social programming, pedagogy and educational environment were all designed to bring students together despite their differences, providing a flexible based on which to differentiate for their individual needs. Even our most complex students learn in a mix of small group classes and, where required, 1:1 programming as their needs require, and all students collaborate together to solve real world problems through the project-based learning units that unify our curriculum across different academic and therapeutic disciplines. This is supported through our Human 101 curriculum, which builds true empathy by helping students understand scientifically each other’s differences, and the commonalities that unite them.

Transformative results that cross settings

No child should have to choose between academic challenge and the support they need to thrive.

All Cajal Academy programs integrate both stimulating academic programs and highly-personalized individual growth plans that leverage neuroplasticity to build up the skills they need to overcome any weaknesses in their otherwise strong neuropsychological and neurophysio profiles. Find out more about these core elements of our program below.

Cajal was founded on the premise that children can only fulfill their full human potential when they are given the opportunity to discover and experience their own gifts—and that this shouldn’t come at the cost of the expertise and support they need to overcome obstacles and have agency over their own life-lived experiences. Achieving this balance is especially important (and challenging!) for children having complex learning, social, sensory and/or neurological profiles. Our program is specifically-designed to meet these students’ needs, while leveraging modern neuroscientific research to address—not just accommodate—their differences, enabling them to thrive independently in the academic, social and professional settings of their own choosing.