Please donate to support our work!
We’re a small non-profit with a big mission. Our breakthroughs are already redefining what’s possible for a child, for a school and for K-12 education as a whole when we apply modern neuroscience in the classroom. Now we need your help to make it accessible to more kids, expanding our cohort so we can publish and broaden its impact beyond our walls.
Want to get more involved?
Help us raise funds to support scholarships, research and our grassroots movement to know what’s possible and make it accessible to families in our community!
We’re comfortable being first…but we need your help to make it possible for others to follow
Cajal Academy is a trailblazer for our region, for the cohorts we serve and for education as a whole. We are the first of our kind on many fronts, because the traditional ways of doing things simply weren’t able to get at the root causes of our Co-Founder’s children’s complex profiles.
Since we started in 2019, the results have been extraordinary—yet we didn’t do this to keep it to ourselves; it’s in our non-profit charter to publish and disseminate these breakthroughs for an impact well beyond our walls.
Here are some of the ways that we are blazing new pathways with our work.
We have redefined the mission and the possibility of special education from accommodating special needs to removing them.
Special education as a field evolved when it was assumed that one's cognitive abilities were largely set by the end of early childhood, making disabilities immutable. Thus, special education in public and private settings alike are designed to accommodate those difficulties. But it turns out that that science was wrong, and today neuroscientists know that the brain is constantly wiring itself through neuroplasticity. We've developed a 1st-of-its-kind, research-backed methodology using that science to rewire how a child performs foundational skills, reducing or even removing disabilities. It's a break-through that could revolutionize all of education.
We are the first school with proven results removing learning disabilities others can only accommodate
We’ve made a major breakthrough for the field of education: a research-backed methodology for reducing or even removing learning and in some cases social-emotional and executive function disabilities, by using neuroplasticity to rewire how they perform foundational skills from the ground up.
Our results prove that when we apply neuroscience, we can get better outcomes at lower cost
The results for our students have been transformative. Students jumping up 2-6 grade levels in less than a school year. Kids with social challenges being recognized and included as social leaders. Kids who had given up—on themselves, on learning and on the idea that school could feel emotionally safe to them—complaining to their parents that on the weekends they have to stay home. This approach reduces the costs of meeting that child’s needs over the K-12 years ahead, by as much as $50K-100K per child, per year.
We are Connecticut’s only home tailored to kids with “2e” profiles
Cajal Academy is the only school in Connecticut or Westchester County, NY with academics and expert therapies tailored to the unique needs of kids who have both very high analytical or creative abilities and a learning, social-emotional, executive function or neurophysio difference. Because every child deserves a school.
We are the 1st school anywhere for kids with EDS
The complex connective tissue disorder Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome creates complex, chronic, invisible challenges that have equally complex impacts on learning, social and emotional experiences. In fact, our breakthrough approach reducing learning disabilities happened because we knew EDS management is all about the connections between systems—so we were looking in a different place than others in the field of education. We are proud to provide specialized instruction and coaching empowering kids with EDS to self-monitor, self-manage and self-advocate for their needs—because our co-founder and her kids needed it themselves.
Sharing our break-throughs is in our DNA
We are not just a school, we are a non-profit educational think tank dedicated to developing, publishing and disseminating our findings to impact the field of education far beyond our walls. We look at it as creating a blueprint for a next generation of schools that are grounded in what neuroscientists know today—not 80 years ago. These “Neuroplasticity Schools” are a new breed that we hope is the way of the future for education everywhere. We look forward to partnering with public and private schools to bring these breakthroughs to more kids.
Grounded in science; fueled by a parent’s passion to make a difference for her kids
“Cajal Academy is the first-of-its-kind in many different ways—because the traditional ways of doing things just didn’t get to the heart of what my kids needed. When I learned how much more could be done for my kids if only we followed the science, it led to a very different kind of a school. When I saw how my children were transforming with even our first protocols, I looked at my co-founder and said, ‘Who else can we help?’ Now, when we see other kids’ lives transformed through things we created for my own, it brings me such joy.
I left the law firm to make a different kind of difference; I’d say reengineering education certainly qualifies!”
- Cheryl Viirand, Co-Founder & Head of School
About Cajal Academy, and our Mission to Change Education
Cajal Academy is a non-profit organization started by a a Mom and former attornery in Fairfield County, Connecticut who refused to accept that her children’s futures might be limited by challenges that science suggested we should be able to solve—so she assembled an expert team and together they re-examined every aspect of school from the ground up.
What has emerged is a first-of-its-kind, research-backed approach to reducing or even removing learning disabilities as well as some social-emotional and executive function challenges, by ‘rewiring’ how the child performs the targeted skills through neuroplasticity.
We believe this is what the future of education looks like—yet today, parents seeking access to our program are coming up against policies, and their interpretations, that were put in place based on the assumption that the things we do every day at Cajal weren’t possible.
Your donation today will help us to change that. Each donation you make to our Scholarship Fund has a double impact: it helps a student get access to transformational education, and in the process it expands our research cohort so we can publish & share our findings to broaden access to our approach.
Thank you for your support.
Your chance to make a mark on education.
We continue to be a lean team doing this extraordinary work through our entirely tuition-funded school program. That means that your donation can have an immediate and concrete impact by helping us expand the reach of a program that has already developed a research-backed approach with proven, transformational effects. It won’t get lost in the bucket of large research institutions that are working on important foundational science but are still years away from bringing that work into the classroom.
Being a lean team on a tight budget, we make the most of every donation, and truly even a small donation makes a difference. In addition, we are looking for individuals and corporate sponsors who would be interested in supporting our work through a named scholarship, research chair position or other large gift increasing student access to our program and thus accelerating our innovation work.