Engineering, Robotics, Coding, Music, Theater & Magic the Gathering all Come to Cajal!

We are thrilled to announce the addition of STEAM aficionado Darra Snow to our team!

Darra comes to Cajal Academy with a freshly-minted Masters in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelors of Science from Brown University—so she knows what it means to dream big and make things happen, and will provide the perfect role model for our high school students looking towards even the most competitive college opportunities.

Given her background, Darra had lots of avenues she could pursue, but her passion for teaching neurodivergent kids won out. She fell in love with teaching while working as a physics and environmental science teacher in summer camps for gifted teens from around the world through the highly selective Experimental Physics Research Academy. Given her sciences and engineering background, Darra was drawn to Cajal for our neuroscience-based and data-backed approach to understanding, empowering and progressing twice exceptional kids.

“She’s a bit of a unicorn,” said Cajal life sciences teacher and Clinical Project Manager Nidhi Vishnoi, PhD. “She has this amazing background, and what she’s passionate about doing is teaching. She’s a great fit for our team.”

Darra brings equal parts enthusiasm, knowledge and passion for teaching neurodivergent kids to a wide array of topics. In just her first few days on the team, Darra has shared her love of music and of theater, rolled out new robotics project ideas fully baked yet seemingly off the top of her head, shown herself to be positively giddy at the prospect of teaching physics and math—and then casually mentioned her career as a Magic the Gathering champion. Roll that all up together and it makes Darra a perfect match for our multi-disciplinary project-based learning format, in which students demonstrate their mastery of standards-based curriculum by solving real world problems requiring them to integrate curriculum from across math, science, language arts, social studies, and the arts.

“Darra fills a long-standing hole in our team. The core of our Vision to Voice Curriculum is all about teaching our highly-creative group of kids the super-sized skills they need to turn their unique ways of seeing things into reality,” said Cajal Academy co-founder and Head of School Cheryl Viirand. “We do this through a very specific curriculum approach that is specifically designed to teach kids the essential skill of combining their analytical and creative abilities, through a design-thinking, engineering process. Darra brings an engineering tuition, combined with enthusiasm and passion for empowering our unique cohort of kids. We are thrilled to have her!”

Read Darra’s biography on our website, or contact us to find out how your child can benefit from our unique program!