Unique opportunity for flexible thinkers to teach science within a school that’s pioneering a next generation educational model

Cajal Academy is a non-profit K-12 school with a ground-breaking program. We’ve made a paradigm shift in how we understand and address student needs—with transformative results that previously hadn’t been thought possible. Students with dyslexia whose reading levels jump up 3 grade levels in a single school year. Students with isolating medical conditions coming back to in-school learning within a matter of months. These are just a few of the ways we’ve empowered kids in the last year alone.

Teach alongside our visionary founding team, including an internationally-recognized neuropsychologist, while learning a whole new way to understand children, human interactions and teaching. All members of the team work together collaboratively across academic disciplines and side by side with our team of experts in how children learn, socialize and grow. Our team created a new educational model, taking neuroplasticity and other well-established neuroscientific principles and operationalizing them in the classroom. You will learn our proven methods and the science behind them while working within a tight-knit team that is passionate about bringing this model to a broader scale.

Cajal is a fast-paced environment with a deep commitment to innovation and a startup culture of constant iteration, striving to redefine what’s possible for a child, a school and education as a whole. We are looking for a diverse mix of educators. Some come to us after full careers in traditional educational environments, where they were convinced that something more was possible. Others come to us from successful careers in unrelated fields but with a passion to move complicated kids forward.

We do this work with a very unique group of kids. All Cajal students have very high analytical reasoning and/or creative thinking skills, which are paired with a range of learning, social-emotional, neurophysio and/or chronic medical conditions. This includes first-of-their-kind programs for many high intellect students who don’t have a place in mainstream education. We are the only school in all of Connecticut or Westchester County to provide expert programs for this group of kids, and the first in the world to offer our model.

Being a non-profit organization dedicated to educational innovation that’s run with a startup culture, Cajal offers our teachers growth opportunities that simply aren’t available in other schools. Our teachers have the opportunity to get involved in developing the methodology, researching new approaches, sharing our learnings with educators in traditional environments and growing our school.

We do not require teacher certification , however a passion for working with students who are up against challenges their peers don’t need to confront is essential.

About our School:

Cajal Academy was co-founded by an occupational therapist and a social entrepreneur/former attorney who is mom to two very bright but neuro-physiologically complicated kids. They were unwilling to accept that these and other children’s futures would be limited by challenges that they didn’t ask for, and which established scientists suggests should have been possible to solve. They were joined by an internationally recognized neuropsychologist and research scientist. What emerged was a novel approach that moves beyond accommodation to actually reduce children’s disabilities, by leveraging the connections between neurophysiology and their learning and social-emotional experiences. PT and OT therapies are integrated into academic and social-emotional programming, movement is paired with academic instruction to increase learning retention (embodied cognition), and movement and games are used to increase a child’s capacity to perform a given neurocognitive task, through neuroplasticity. Our bright cohort of kids is empowered with coaching in how to self-monitor, self-manage and self-advocate for their needs, and learn how to foster truly inclusive, neuro-diverse communities.

Ours is a small school with a mixed-age cohort of students in grades 2-12, growing towards a full K-12 school. Instruction is provided in small groups of 6 students or fewer; total enrollment for fall, 2024 is not expected to exceed 15-18 students. Over time we hope to grow the school to a total of approximately 50 students. All staff members form close and nurturing relationships with each of our students, using a trauma-informed approach. Cajal Academy is not a "behavior management" or ABA school and does not implement ABA approaches. We do not accept students who are physically aggressive towards staff or peers.

Cajal Academy was granted Candidacy status by NEASC in June, 2023 and will strive to achieve full accreditation over the coming year.

Responsibilities of the Position:

Teachers at Cajal Academy are involved in all stages of our students’ development, from creating our bespoke project-based learning curriculum to participating in the screening process for new admissions candidates. 

This is a unique opportunity to develop project-based curriculum in collaboration with teachers from across academic and therapeutic disciplines, and to deliver standards-based curriculum to a cohort of bright, creative kids through cross-disciplinary deep dives into real-world problems. Projects are chosen through full team collaboration, and implemented through core skills classes that are grouped by ability within our mixed-age cohort. OT, PT, social-emotional and executive function skills are integrated directly into the classroom through collaboration with an expert team of licensed therapists.

Specific responsibilities of the position include:

• Collaborating with other members of the team to develop new, standards-aligned project-based learning units integrating curriculum from across language arts, science, social studies, math and visual arts

• Developing lesson plans aligned to Next Generation Science Standards and differentiated for students in different grade levels and having different learning styles, strengths and challenges

• Delivering instruction in chemistry, physics, biology and/or environmental science to small, ability-based classes up to and including advanced high school learners

• Developing and delivering science lab curriculum within an untraditional environment

• Coordinating with other academic teachers to ensure the on-time delivery of lessons necessary to the progression of our multi-disciplinary project-based learning curriculum

• Designing, implementing and analyzing assessments for each child’s current knowledge, strengths and weaknesses, and monitoring their progress

• Fostering a love of science and supporting students who have academic anxieties and/or freeze-fight-flight reactions to academics through a trauma-informed approach to help them monitor and eventually reduce these reactions;

• Implementing Cajal Academy protocols for growth mindset and social-emotional coaching, and supporting children’s growth by prompting students to utilize personalized self-regulation strategies provided by our clinical team

• Implementing Cajal Academy’s physio-based standards for classroom management, including prompting students on “safe body” usage and integrating movement into instruction through “Body-Informed Learning,” following guidelines and training provided by our OT and PT team

• Participating in weekly team meetings with all academic and therapeutic staff, in which student needs and profiles are discussed in depth, and implementing the team’s evolving findings and recommendations in your classroom

• Identifying areas of evolving challenges for individual students and raising them to our therapeutic team and in our team meetings

• Keeping parents and team members informed through written and oral communications, and expanding teacher and parent understanding of each child’s development

• Drafting in-depth, narrative-style progress reports assessing students’ mastery of both curricular and growth mindset competencies, aligned to Cajal Academy inter-disciplinary competency-based grading standards

• Designing and administering assessments and maintaining appropriate records of student progress and performance

• Participating in our admissions process, including by providing reading and writing assessments to incoming candidates or other screening activities and speaking with parents at our information sessions

• Supporting our accreditation process by contributing relevant expertise to our “self-study” report and documenting therapeutic and curricular approaches

• Contributing to the growth and development of our school by looking for opportunities to help our skeletal administrative team move us forward, in a true startup environment

This is a full-time, 12 month position, with a daily commitment of 9-4:30, Monday through Friday. All our teachers participate in our summer program in order to maintain consistency for our students, and use the summer months to collaborate on the innovation aspects of our work.

Requirements:

All Cajal Academy staff members must be flexible thinkers with very high analytical and organizational skills, and strong attention to detail. (S)he must be comfortable with the fluidity that is required to provide highly-responsive, quality education to children with complex needs. Our model has brought transformative results for students, but it requires our teachers to think about differentiation, scaffolding, curriculum development, behaviors and social-emotional growth in a whole new way. All staff must be committed to a trauma-informed approach to education and to classroom management, and to collaborating with staff from other academic and therapeutic disciplines. This is an opportunity to be at the forefront of modernizing education but requires that you be eager to learn new instructional approaches and challenge traditional ways of doing things.

The successful applicant will have a strong grasp of a range of inquiry-based science instructional strategies, although candidates from non-traditional backgrounds will also be considered. A master’s degree or higher level of education in a relevant field is required; teacher certification is desirable but not required. Regardless of background, (s)he must be able to flexibly adapt educational strategies and/or develop new ones to respond to the needs of this cohort or of a particular child.

The successful candidate must also be a team player comfortable working independently and collaboratively in a fluid environment. (S)he will be intellectually curious, and eager to learn from expert colleagues about the science of how children learn, develop, and grow and to apply the new pedagogical and social-emotional approaches that the team has developed.

The successful applicant must also be passionate about empowering and inspiring bright and gifted children to develop into future thought leaders. (S)he must be prepared to support children struggling with anxieties and prior school-based traumas, which may display as “behavioral differences,” with collaborative problem-solving and unconditional support, applying Cajal Academy’s Neuro- and Trauma-Informed Approach, for which training will be provided.

Above all, the successful applicant will share our passion for moving kids forward by redefining education.

How to Apply

Interested applicants should complete the Employment Application available on the Cajal Academy website, including a resume and 3 references. Applicants are encouraged to apply as soon as possible.