Cajal Academy empowers inherently innovative thinkers by unlocking and developing their gifts

We take this approach for three reasons. First, because children who have very high reasoning skills have specific academic needs, and opportunities, which are at the core of our academic programming. Real-world, cross-disciplinary project-based learning requires and invites students to examine real world problems through a variety of lenses and disciplines, giving them the challenge they need to further develop their innate critical thinking skills. These skills become the common language that brings our students together, giving them the confidence they need to develop social and executive function skills where they may struggle.

Second, having this duality of extremely high reasoning skills and one or more area of development that diverges from that of their peers creates a unique set of both academic and social-emotional needs—ones that can be difficult to address within mainstream environments. These students gifts tend to hide their challenges, leading them to be unsupported or even traumatized. Many resist trying new challenges and pursuits unless they are directly aligned with their own interests, as external demands seem to flip-flop unpredictably between boringly easy and impenetrably hard. We take a collaborative, trauma-informed approach to help students understand and eventually overcome these fears, by giving them a deep understanding of their own neurocognitive strengths and weaknesses, and developing the growth mindset they need to overcome these fears. We couple this with targeted work to build up those skills that hold them back, through neuroplasticity. You can read more about this unique, holistic approach to neurocognitive and personal growth here.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, because having these very high analytical reasoning skills provides a powerful toolbox for addressing the challenges that hold kids back. Our team is developing new therapeutic strategies for social-emotional learning and development that leverage our students’ “superpowers” in this area to give them a deep scientific understanding and even agency over their learning, social-emotional and neurophysiological needs.

Our admissions process is designed to help us understand the whole child, and the ways in which their current cognitive, social, emotional, executive function, regulatory and neurophysiological skills are influencing their learning and life-lived experiences.

In our admissions process, we ask that each family submit a Parent Application helping to give us a “Mom and Dad’s eye view” into how their child travels through the world, along with all of the current evaluations that they have for a child. We also ask each family to upload all of the evaluations that they currently have for a child, across psycho-educational and therapeutic realms. We do not rely on full scale IQ, prior identification as gifted or other measures that are influenced by processing speed and/or working memory, and indeed we admit students who are challenged in those areas. This file is reviewed by our clinical team and Head of School, under the direction of our Director of Programs, Dr. Steven Mattis: an internationally-recognized neuropsychologist and licensed psychologist. Together, we examine the specific data in each child’s neuropsychological and neurophysiological profiles—not the labels they’ve been given along the way.

No! We look at each child’s full neuropsychological and physiological profile to determine whether they are a good fit for our program. Full scale IQ includes measures like processing speed and working memory that are highly susceptible to depression and/or anxiety—traits that are highly common in the 2e population. This can lead to both over- and under-identification of kids. We look instead at the array of scores within a child’s neuropsychological profile. Within that, we look for verbal reasoning/verbal comprehension scores in the “above average” to “superior” range, because our curriculum for self-monitoring and self-regulation depends heavily on that cognitive skill.

No! Methods for identifying “giftedness” tend to be both over- and under-inclusive, and in many cases they rely on measures like full scale IQ that don’t accurately portray students with discrepant distributions of intelligence, as is so common in this population. We look in the admissions process at the distribution of skills in the neuropsychological profile, including in particular the distribution of verbal comprehension, fluid reasoning and visual-spatial reasoning.

Community is at the heart of our programming model. Our approach leverages the power of the group as a powerful motivating and healing tool; for this to be effective, the child must feel a desire to be part of a connective community—even if they’re not sure how to go about that. Thus, ours is not an appropriate program for students who do not feel a desire for social connection.

Core to our ethos of community is the precept that all students must feel safe in order to learn. We do not admit students who are physically assaultive towards staff or peers, have a history of being intentionally emotionally or physically hurtful towards others or who show sadistic tendencies. Students who repeatedly engage in bullying behavior towards others may be asked to leave.

In our admissions process, our clinicians will work with your child to identify whether our unique toolbox is likely to be effective for addressing their core needs. Where the student has a need that requires interventions outside the scope of our program, admissions may be deferred until such time as those interventions have been obtained. For example, the effectiveness of our self-regulation interventions will depend on the nature of the drivers underlying the child’s dysregulation, and also the child’s ability to assimilate and apply our strategies. Thus, our program will not be appropriate for students having certain thought disorders and/or mood disorders without appropriate pharmacological intervention. These concerns should be discussed with our Director of Programs in the admissions process.

Finally, we do not have the knowledge, setting or expertise required for substance abuse rehabilitation and therefore do not admit students having those needs.