We empower kids by helping them understand the ways that our hidden neurophysiology influences our learning and social-emotional experiences—and how they can use those connections to their advantage.

When we were growing up, school was understood as a place for educating our children: a place to learn about reading, writing, math, civics and science, and hopefully come to understand a little bit about the world around us and how to get along with the people we find in it.

Scientific advances made in the last 30 years to provide something more: strategies and insights that kids can use to optimize their access to the cognitive and social-emotional “machinery” they need for academic and social-emotional experiences.

That’s a profound shift in our understanding of humans as organisms, and provides a basis for going beyond educating children to actually empowering them to take charge of their own learning and social-emotional experiences—not just in school but across community and home settings, in college and in the professional world beyond.

Cajal Academy is proud to be at the forefront of that work. Steven Mattis, PhD, A.B.P.P., our Director of Research, has been recognized as one of the founding fathers of modern neuropsychology, and continues to drive the field forward with his original research into the ways in which hidden neurophysiological events such as autonomic regulatory disorders can drive learning and even psychiatric outcomes. Bringing this science together with strategies utilized for decades in occupational therapy settings, we have developed protocols that have already brought transformative results for students within our program who have a disparate range of profiles, strengths and challenges.

Adding a neurophysiological foundation under our understanding of how children learn, socialize and grow

Traditional educational practices and teacher training are premised on a psychological model of education. Academic and behavioral student success or failure interpreted through the lens of student motivation and intent. The trauma-informed schools movement builds on this model, recognizing that children cannot learn until they feel safe—and that strong teacher connections are essential to helping them do so.

Over time, as the field of neuropsychology evolved, researchers like our own Dr. Steven Mattis recognized that there were connections between the human brain on the one hand, and learning and behavior on the other. Individual neurocognitive skills were identified, and what are by now well-normed neuropsychological tests were developed to assess them. Institutions like Winston Preparatory School developed new educational programs differentiated not just on a child’s ability level but based on the relative strengths and weaknesses revealed in their neuropsychological profile.

Cajal Academy takes this understanding to a next level, by integrating into it the most recent generation of neuroscientific research, which reveal how our physical and cognitive or emotional states interoperate in real time—insights that we can use to give children agency over those connections and use them to optimize their own experiences. Beginning with the development of the functional MRI machine in the 1990s, scientists learned that our brain dynamically “rewires” itself to allocate resources away from networks required to do things we no longer do, and towards the tasks we commonly employ. Recent research in the field of “embodied cognition” goes further, indicating that we can accelerate learning retention and engagement when we pair it with motor and sensory input, increasing the brain centers engaged in the learning task. Meanwhile, researchers studying various autonomic nervous system functions that are essential to human survival have found that these and other hidden neurophysiological events can directly impair our access to the neurocogntive skills and/or emotional regulation required for learning and social activities. As a recent report published by the National Academy of Sciences recognizes, these connections are also important to understanding the learning impacts of seemingly unrelated medical conditions like Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and other connective tissue disorders.

Connecting the dots for a whole new educational approach.

In February of 2019, Cajal Academy, Inc. began working to develop a new educational framework leveraging these insights through new pedagogies and approaches that could be used to give even our most complex learners agency over their learning and social-emotional experiences.

Named after the 19th century scientist and artist who’s credited with discovering the basis of the human nervous system, Cajal Academy’s approach has been guided by the simple principle that educational environments should follow current neuroscientific understandings of how children learn, socialize and grow, including in particular how interactions between our physical and cognitive and/or psychological experiences influence one another.

Following the science, we developed new protocols and approaches that can flexibly be applied across a diverse mix of educational, neurophysiological and social-emotional profiles. The core of this framework includes:

• executive function and social collaboration instruction embedded into standards-aligned academics through multi-disciplinary deep dives to solve real world problems, with instruction differentiated according to children’s cross-cutting neurocognitive strengths and needs;

• movement-enriched, “Body-Informed Learning” combining the benefits of embodied cognition and embedded sensory integration therapy to simultaneously increase children’s academic retention and engagement, their organization and self-regulation skills;

• new special education Neuroplasticity Interventions that close the gaps in students’ neuropsychological profiles by increasing their neural capacity to perform low-lying skills;

• a new, “Trauma- and Neuro-Informed Approach” with integrated self-regulation coaching to empower children to self-monitor, self-manage and self-advocate for dysregulating factors including prior academic trauma, chronic medical conditions, sensory integration disorder and more; and

• an intentioned focus, integrated throughout all areas of the program, on fostering an authentic growth mindset, supported by our “Human 101” curriculum giving kids a deep understanding of the science behind their strengths, their differences and the “why” behind how each intervention works to address them.

The net result is a new educational model that understands the purpose of schools not just as to provide curriculum for children to learn, but to enhance the ways that children can learn, thus immeasurably improving their quality of life today while unlocking their professional and economic potential for the future—all while decreasing the cost of their education. Equally exciting, by teaching kids how to understand their own actions, preferences and social interactions as the product of their unique profiles, we give them a lens to understand their peers’ needs as well, creating a nurturing and inclusive environment for more of the kids in the room.