Unique opportunity to join a gifted special education school with an expert team and innovative, neuroscience-based program!

Cajal Academy is looking to expand our Science department with a teacher who is experienced working with students through the high school level who have very high analytical reasoning and/or creative thinking skills. We are looking for a teacher who is passionate about empowering students to access reading and written expression while overcoming any obstacles that may be standing in their way. This is a unique opportunity to join an alternative school with a novel, neuroscience-based educational model and a tight-knit team of teachers and expert licensed therapists, and to collaborate with colleagues from across different disciplines to create bespoke, standards-aligned project-based learning curriculum. The successful candidate will have an analytical mindset and the deep subject matter expertise required for providing standards-based instruction, up to the AP level, for bright and gifted students including ones who have a range of special education needs. On-the-job training will be provided in the protocols and the neuroscience behind them. A special education background is not required, however a passion for working with students who are up against challenges their peers don’t need to confront is essential.

About our School:

Cajal Academy is an innovative, nonprofit small special education school for bright and gifted students with high analytical reasoning skills, along with a wide range of learning, social-emotional, neurophysiological and/or chronic medical conditions. This includes first-of-their-kind programs for under-served cohorts of high intellect students, including dyspraxia and heritable connective tissue disorders such as Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.  

Cajal Academy is a new kind of special education school. Cajal Academy was co-founded by an occupational therapist and a social entrepreneur who is mom to two very bright but neurophysiologically complicated children and with direction from a recognized neuropsychologist. Together, we developed a novel approach that moves beyond accommodation to actually reduce children’s disabilities, by leveraging the connections between children’s neurophysiology and their learning and social-emotional experiences. PT and OT therapies are integrated into academic and social-emotional therapeutic approaches, such as increasing core muscle strength to improve academic focus; pairing movement with academic instruction to increase learning retention (embodied cognition) and increasing a child’s capacity to perform targeted cognitive tasks by pairing them with gross motor movements (neuroplasticity). Meanwhile, cranio-sacral therapies provided by our team of manual PT experts and coaching to help children learn how to self-monitor, self-manage and self-advocate for autonomic and sensory regulatory challenges are a core piece of our social-emotional learning. 

Ours is a small school with a mixed-age cohort of bright, gifted and twice exceptional students in grades 3-12, growing towards a full K-12 school. Instruction is provided in small groups of 6 students or fewer; total enrollment for fall, 2023 is not expected to exceed 15 students. Over time we hope to grow the school to a total of approximately 50 students. All staff members form close and nurturing relationships with each of our students, using a trauma-informed approach. Cajal Academy is not a "behavior management" or ABA school and does not implement ABA approaches. We do not accept students who are physically aggressive towards staff or peers.

Cajal Academy was granted Candidacy status by NEASC in June, 2023 and will strive to achieve full accreditation over the coming year.

Responsibilities of the Position:

Teachers at Cajal Academy are involved in all stages of our students’ development, from creating our bespoke project-based learning curriculum to participating in the screening process for new admissions candidates. 

This is a unique opportunity to develop project-based curriculum in collaboration with teachers from across academic and therapeutic disciplines, and to deliver standards-based curriculum to a cohort of bright, creative kids through cross-disciplinary deep dives into real-world problems. Projects are chosen through full team collaboration, and implemented through core skills classes that are grouped by ability within our mixed-age cohort. OT, PT, social-emotional and executive function skills are integrated directly into the classroom through collaboration with an expert team of licensed therapists.

Specific responsibilities of the position include:

• Collaborating with other members of the team to develop new, standards-aligned project-based learning units integrating curriculum from across language arts, science, social studies, math and visual arts

• Developing lesson plans aligned to Next Generation Science Standards and differentiated for students in different grade levels and having different learning styles, strengths and challenges

• Delivering instruction in language arts to small, ability-based classes

• Coordinating with other academic teachers to ensure the on-time delivery of lessons necessary to the progression of our multi-disciplinary project-based learning curriculum

• Designing, implementing and analyzing assessments for each child’s current knowledge, strengths and weaknesses, and monitoring their progress

• Fostering a love of science and supporting students who have academic anxieties and/or freeze-fight-flight reactions to academics through a trauma-informed approach to help them monitor and eventually reduce these reactions;

• Implementing Cajal Academy protocols for growth mindset and social-emotional coaching, and supporting children’s growth by prompting students to utilize personalized self-regulation strategies provided by our clinical team

• Implementing Cajal Academy’s physio-based standards for classroom management, including prompting students on “safe body” usage and integrating movement into instruction through “Body-Informed Learning,” following guidelines and training provided by our OT and PT team

• Participating in weekly team meetings with all academic and therapeutic staff, in which student needs and profiles are discussed in depth, and implementing the team’s evolving findings and recommendations in your classroom

• Identifying areas of evolving challenges for individual students and raising them to our therapeutic team and in our team meetings

• Keeping parents and team members informed through written and oral communications, and expanding teacher and parent understanding of each child’s development

• Drafting in-depth, narrative-style progress reports assessing students’ mastery of both curricular and growth mindset competencies, aligned to Cajal Academy inter-disciplinary competency-based grading standards

• Designing and administering assessments and maintaining appropriate records of student progress and performance

• Participating in our admissions process, including by providing reading and writing assessments to incoming candidates or other screening activities and speaking with parents at our information sessions

• Supporting our accreditation process by contributing relevant expertise to our “self-study” report and documenting therapeutic and curricular approaches

• Contributing to the growth and development of our school by looking for opportunities to help our skeletal administrative team move us forward, in a true startup environment

Potential advancement opportunities include opportunities to become our future Curriculum or Academic Director and/or positions in school administration.

This is a full-time, 12 month position, with a daily commitment of 9-4:30, Monday through Friday. Participation in our summer program is required in order to maintain consistency for our students.

Requirements:

Our science teacher must have sufficient knowledge and expertise in providing standards-based science instruction within biology, chemistry, physics, environmental science and /or other relevant domains to provide stimulating and in-depth instruction to intellectually-gifted students.

Our ideal candidate will be an educator who has experience developing and implementing high quality science instruction, including at the high school level, or a scientist having in-depth experience in-industry and a deep passion for inspiring our next generation of scientific leaders. Teacher certification is desirable but not required.

All Cajal Academy staff members must be flexible thinkers with very high analytical and organizational skills, and strong attention to detail. (S)he must be comfortable with the fluidity that is required to provide highly-responsive, quality education to children with complex needs. Our model has brought transformative results for students, but it requires our teachers to think about differentiation, scaffolding, curriculum development, behaviors and social-emotional growth in a whole new way. All staff must be committed to a trauma-informed approach to education and to classroom management, and to collaborating with staff from other academic and therapeutic disciplines. This is an opportunity to be at the forefront of our work to modernize education but requires that you be open-minded to learning new instructional approaches.

All Cajal Academy staff must also be prepared to meet children where they are, and to support children struggling with anxieties, atypical neurophysiological regulation and/or prior school-based traumas.

The successful applicant will have a strong grasp of a range of ELA instructional strategies, although candidates from non-traditional backgrounds with demonstrated high written expression will also be considered. A master’s degree or higher level of education in a relevant field is required; teacher certification and/or credentials for special education are desirable but not required. Regardless of background, (s)he must be able to flexibly adapt educational strategies and/or develop new ones to respond to the needs of this cohort or of a particular child.

The successful candidate must also be a team player comfortable working independently and collaboratively in a fluid environment. (S)he will be intellectually curious, and eager to learn from expert colleagues about the science of how children learn, develop, and grow and to apply the new pedagogical and social-emotional approaches that the team has developed. (S)he must be comfortable with the fluidity that is required to provide highly responsive, quality education to children with complex needs.

The successful applicant must also be passionate about empowering and inspiring bright and gifted children to develop into future thought leaders. (S)he must be prepared to support children struggling with anxieties and prior school-based traumas, which may display as “behavioral differences,” with collaborative problem-solving and unconditional support, applying Cajal Academy’s Neuro- and Trauma-Informed Approach, for which training will be provided.

How to Apply

Interested applicants should complete the Employment Application available on the Cajal Academy website, including a resume and 3 references. Applicants are encouraged to apply as soon as possible.