There has been a revolution in scientists’ understanding of how kids learn.

It’s time to bring those insights into the classroom.

At a time when the field of education is being thrown into a state of disarray, Cajal Academy is innovating education by grounding every element of curriculum design and the classroom experience in what scientists now understand about how children’s brains develop, how their bodies inform their learning, social and emotional experiences—and what strategies prove effective to change those outcomes. The net result is a new educational approach and new model for what school can look like—one that’s bringing transformational results, even for some of our most complex learners, with the promise to dramatically reduce the costs of special education as we know it today.

We’ve developed these innovations working with cohorts of 5-10 kids at a time, and recently relocated into our beautiful historic home in the center of South Norwalk so we can expand to serve up to 50 kids. Find out about our innovations, or apply today to see how your child can grow with us, and how our innovative approaches can empower your child for a future defined not by the things that hold them back but by their strengths.

We’ve made a break-through for the field of education, by leveraging connections between the body and the brain to accelerate learning while transforming learning profiles

Cajal Academy puts the science behind body-brain connections at the heart of a full-service school for students with high analytical abilities, resulting in a new model for how we understand the role—and the power—of school

Three fundamental shifts in our understanding of how children learn, socialize and grow are at the heart of Cajal Academy’s groundbreaking program. Both are by now well-established in the scientific literature. Until now, neither has been operationalized in our schools.

1. The human brain is constantly rewiring itself to improve its ability to do the things we ask it to do (a principle called Neuroplasticity).

2. Each skill we learn builds on a neural foundation developed through the skills that you’ve learned before.

3. Connections between the body and the brain play a big a role in our learning and social-emotional experiences (both positively and negatively), just as our emotions do.

Putting these three core principles together, we’re unlocking children’s gifts through research-backed approaches that are proving successful at transforming learning disabilities like dyslexia, dyspraxia, language processing disorders and dyspraxia.

Watch this brief video to learn how it works.

Our innovations could revolutionize the field of special education, through a paradigm-shift in how we understand student needs, and a second paradigm-shift in how we address them

Each student’s program is highly-individualized, using the data in their own profile to customize their learning, social and physio development. We integrate these learnings together for each child through our unique Growth Mindset and Agency Coaching, empowering them to continue their own growth in the community and beyond. Find out more about the exclusive interventions at the core of our model.

We re-engineered education from the ground up, starting with the science of how kids learn. The net result is a whole new model for school that redefines what education can do when we put the science behind body-brain connections at the heart of it all — without compromising on academic rigor and actually accelerating academic growth.

Use these links to learn more about what this can mean for education.

We’re making special education more effective, while decreasing its cost, pointing the way to how we can address the fiscal crisis crippling school districts across the country

Our Neuroplasticity School model offers a fundamentally different approach to special education, under which we close the gap between the child’s current “Not Yet Skills” (as we call them) and their strengths, rather than just accommodate for the different between their “disabilities” and the abilities of their mainstream peers. For the gifted and “twice exceptional” kids that we work with, the results of this approach can be dramatic, with rapid improvements in both learning and such wide-ranging social-emotional impacts as perfectionism, academic anxiety, demand avoidance, school refusal and disruptive classroom behaviors.

Economically, this translates to a totally different “ROI” or “return on investment” for our families, and for sending school districts. Our students have made up as many as 6 grade levels in reading and writing in as little as 6 months, and transformed from socially isolated to recognized social leaders. We pass these savings on to the family or sending school district, with tuitions that actually decrease as the child’s abilities develop.

This unique educational model actually reduces the cost of educating the child over their lifetime, while increasing their quality of life and academic growth. That means that for some students, Connecticut school districts can contract with us directly under section 10-76d, which provides that school districts can make section 10-76g payments to a private school like Cajal “if the public arrangements are more costly than the…private school…provided the…private school…meets the educational needs of the child and its program is appropriate and efficacious.” Some students who come to Cajal with even significant special education needs may be able to transition from Cajal back to a mainstream “general education” population after only a few years, drastically reducing their cost over the course of their educational lifetime.

Attend an Info Session to learn more about our program and the science behind it!

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