Cajal Academy offers a first-of-its-kind solution empowering bright, gifted and twice exceptional kids

Immediate and academic year placements available.

Cajal Academy is Connecticut's innovative K-12 school for bright and gifted kids with learning, social-emotional, executive function or chronic medical differences. We have made a break-through for the field of education: a research-backed methodology that is proving successful at reducing or even removing learning and in some cases social-emotional and executive function difficulties in bright kids with asynchronous profiles.

We do this work within the context of comprehensive academic programs tailored to the needs of intellectually-advanced students, up to and including profoundly gifted kids. Our students develop the ‘super-sized’ executive function, peer collaboration and self-care skills that these inherently innovative thinkers will need in college and beyond, through deep dive project-based learning units that requires them to master and integrate curriculum aligned with Connecticut state standards.

Unique opportunity to access cutting-edge educational programming, and current availability:

More than just a school, Cajal Academy is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to developing neuroscience-based approaches that reduce educational costs while improving student outcomes. We're expanding our cohort (and research work) from 6 to 20 students and have immediate openings for the current school year and fall 2026-27. This includes mid-year placements for families who are concerned that their child’s current educational program is not fully developing their gifts and/or supporting their challenges; are looking to transition from a home-based to a peer-engaged environment; or are eager to begin the work of better understanding and addressing the difficulties holding them back. We recently moved to a beautiful, 20,000 square foot facility in the heart of historic South Norwalk, within walking distance of the South Norwalk train station - easily accessible from NYC, Westchester County, and throughout Connecticut via both the main and branch lines.

Use these links to learn more about how your clients can benefit from our program, or contact us to make a referral. 

Is Cajal Academy the right fit for your clients?

Students Who Excel at Cajal:

✓ Intellectually gifted - Strong verbal comprehension, fluid reasoning, and/or visual-spatial reasoning (WISC-V scores typically 88-99.9 percentile on one or more of the GAI skills, however lower scores will be considered depending on profile); prior designation as gifted not required

✓ Analytical and creative thinkers - Students who naturally "connect the dots" differently and see the world in innovative ways

✓ College-bound with high curiosity - Students who thrive with runway to think deeply, including students whose learning profiles interfere with their ability to follow through on those interests through rigorous academic work

✓ Learning differences and asynchronous profiles - May have dyslexia, orthographic processing challenges, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, ADHD, dyspraxia, sensory processing disorder, ASD, language processing disorders, chronic medical conditions that variably impact access to learning skills and/or “cohort of one”; often have uneven scores across their neuropsychological profiles; processing speed, working memory, or full scale IQ scores may not reflect their reasoning abilities

✓ Complex social-emotional needs - May have social and/or academic anxiety, depression, social cognition difficulties (including ASD), prior school trauma, task and/or school avoidance and challenges connecting with same age peers, and the behavioral differences that these challenges drive

✓ Need help to unlock their gifts - Students whose intellectual capabilities exceed what they're currently able to demonstrate, whether due to learning differences, social or academic anxiety, task or school avoidance

✓ Social learners - Students who want to be part of a collaborative community, including those who may lack the skills to do so effectively

Our Intimate Learning Community Propels Social and Academic Growth

Our small cohort (currently expanding from 6 to 20 students) isn't a limitation—it's our strength. This intimate setting allows us to implement our intensive, individualized neuroplasticity interventions with the level of precision and expert attention they require. Here are some of the benefits:

• Small cohort with skills-based focus drives social growth - We leverage our small size to help students understand how their unique profiles of strengths and challenges drive patterns in their social interactions that may be holding them back, learn how to those patterns and develop new social approaches that better align to their social goals

• Neuroscience-based approach to improving emotional resilience - Students learn the neuroscience between brain-body connections and how to use them to maintain and optimize self-regulation, together with personalized strategies to self-monitor, self-manage and self-advocate for unique social, learning and/or physio needs. This powerful toolbox improves emotional resilience by reducing instances of dysregulation itself.

• Cutting-edge therapies within research-driven program - Families are part of documented research proving transformational outcomes not yet available outside Cajal Academy that reduce special education needs and bring cross-setting social-emotional progress that improves quality of life and opens up future educational and professional opportunities

• Personalized attention - Every student receives individualized instruction and therapeutic support matched to the data in their neuropsychological profiles

• Integrated diagnostic expertise - Our on-site, multi-disciplinary team of clinicians are experienced diagnosticians and independent expert evaluators and provide both normed assessments and informal observations tracking student progress as they evolve in the program

• Small class sizes and deep relationships - Our small class sizes and data-driven model for working with even the most complex students foster authentic, deep connections that help students overcome academic and social fears to access their strengths and understand school as a safe place for taking the academic risks required to grow

• Mixed-age mentoring - Having a single community spanning K-12 matches provides the conditions for gifted students to thrive, while developing leadership skills for older students and providing role models for younger ones

• Safe community - Intellectually curious students find peers who think like they do, with a culture based in helping peers understand how neurodiversity impacts both their own and their peers’ social communications

• Parent coaching - Direct access to teachers and clinicians through private family portals and parent coaching sessions with our Head of School and psychologist help parents break difficult cycles that undermine student emotional and academic growth and carry our unique ways of understanding and moving children forward to the home setting

• Exceptional outcomes - Families often report changes in their child’s outlook and interactions at home within weeks of starting the program, and academic growth follows a ‘hockey stick’ growth curve not seen in traditional special education environments

Transformational Change for Complex Learners

Our educational approach is fundamentally different from that of traditional special education programs. Those programs presume that learning, executive function and social-emotional disabilities are immutable and thus seek only to make up the gap between that and the average skill level of a same age peer. Science suggests that more is possible, and our work proves that that’s true. At Cajal, we use the well-established principle of neuroplasticity to actual rewire how the child performs the challenged tasks, evening out their neuropsychological profiles so they have greater access to their strengths. Read about some of our students’ transformations here:

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