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.