Social interactions are far more complicated than cultural models recognize, and the same neurocognitive and neurophysio skills that influence a child’s academic learning can greatly influence their social interactions as well. Each student’s program at Cajal starts with identifying the specific challenges holding them back. Then our multi-disciplinary clinical team develops a data-driven program to build up the skills they need to propel their social growth.

This analysis begins in the admissions process, through a detailed parent questionnaire, a review of the child’s prior assessments and an on-site interview day. Throughout this process, we view emotional and behavioral differences as “bread crumbs” indicating problems that this child needs our help to solve. For some children, these difficulties reflect poor social cognition. Traditional approaches such as pragmatic language therapy may be utilized to help fill those gaps, but we take this a step further by identifying and then developing relative deficiencies in the child’s neurocognitive and neurophysiologic skills that interfere with their ability to pick up that information in the first place. Often, the children in our cohort know what to do in a given situation, but struggle to act on that information in real time—in which case the child requires a different approach, that is more focused on helping them to maintain neurological regulation to gain agency over their social experiences. Find out more about how we assess social-emotional learning needs.

We empower transformative social-emotional growth that transfers across settings, by teaching them how they can turn core universal truths about body-brain connections in their favor

We propel sustained, cross-setting social-emotional growth by helping students understand how their learning, social & emotional experiences are influenced by their unique profiles—and how they can use those connections to improve their own outcomes. At the heart of this approach is the scientific reality that our thoughts, feelings and academic access are deeply influenced by our unique profile of neuropsychological “splinter skills” on the one hand, and our then-current level of neurophysiologic regulation on the other.

This premise flows throughout all aspects of Cajal Academy’s social-emotional approach. Use these links to learn more about our pioneering, Neuro- and Trauma-Informed Approach and how we use it to empower kids to understand their own actions and shift from social learners into social leaders; to give kids agency over their experiences in the moment through strategies they can use to self-monitor, self-manage and self-advocate for their needs; and to propel student growth through coaching in moments of conflict—whether that is between two students or between a student and a task that scares them. Parents report that this translates to sustained social growth at home and in the community, often within just a couple months of joining the program.

Use these links to learn more about the core components of our approach.

Our Agency and Growth Mindset Coaching brings a powerful new tool to kids’ psycho-social toolbox, helping them make and leverage the connections between body and brain experiences

Stress, anxiety, sadness, joy, excitement, happiness and depression are not just emotional states but physiologic ones. Often, physiologic responses are so closely tied to a given emotional state that we will experience them as an emotional reaction. However, these body-brain connections are bilateral—so they can be used to re-regulate the brain as well. For instance, students who have sensory processing disorders may be profoundly overwhelmed by a strong sensory input, but for all of us, specific sensory inputs release neurochemicals in the brain that, when applied in the correct sequence and amount, can re-regulate the brain as well.

Our Neuro- and Trauma-Informed Approach to social-emotional growth teaches kids how to utilize this powerful toolbox as a way to regain and proactively maintain the regulation required for learning and social-emotional growth. We help students integrate, master and ultimately utilize these strategies in real time through Growth Mindset and Agency Coaching: a powerful component of the Neuroplasticity School model pioneered at Cajal Academy, which helps students apply their analytical reasoning skills to make connections between their social, emotional, academic and physical experiences and the neuropsychological and neurophysiological influences that drive them. Over time, this knowledge lays the groundwork for students to learn how to interrupt those processes, driving a “Moment of Choice” between their reactions and their responses so that they can better align their actions to their social and academic goals.

Use these links to find out more about this powerful approach.

Our unique Growth Mindset and Agency Coaching is a real-time coaching model that brings together all aspects of even our most complex students’ profiles to help them disentangle the many competing motivations, desires, autonomic and/or emotional triggers and “Not Yet Skills” within the context of specific social, emotional and/or academic events. This powerful approach is a collaborative process in which the coach helps the child to analyze a specific event in the moment, modelling how they can bring the high analytical skills for which our cohort is selected to better understand experiences that may happen very quickly or may be very overwhelming in the moment. Over time, students learn to distinguish between their triggers, their neurophysiological and/or emotional reactions thereto and their responses, accepting reactions they may not yet be able to control while giving them agency to start “driving a Moment of Choice” to select responses that align with their social and/or learning goals.

It is now well understood that children cannot learn until they feel safe, but the reality is that children cannot experience emotional safety until they are in a state of neurophysiologic regulation. Factors that can undermine that regulation include sensory processing disorder, but also many hidden neurological events connected to the functioning of the autonomic nervous system itself, including temperature regulation, circulation and pain. These factors are most acute in children having chronic medical conditions, however they affect all children at some level.

Our team integrates expertise in neurophysiological regulation with a trauma-informed approach to coach children in how to identify and gain agency over triggers ranging from prior academic trauma to ongoing learning differences to hidden neurophysiological events like sensory processing disorder and even immunological reactions. We partner with each student to help them learn to identify their own triggers, understand their autonomic and emotional reactions to them and then, gradually, to learn how to interrupt these cycles and choose how they want to respond to them in the moment. Once we have identified the challenges holding a child back, we create a personalized social-emotional learning program systematically building up the skills that are holding them back, filling in social cognition gaps and giving them strategies they can use to self-monitor, self-manage and self-advocate for their needs in real time.

Having a jagged neuropsychological profile with uneven skill development leaves students without a compass with which to predict which tasks or activities they will find to be so disappointingly easy that it’s not worth their time, and which will be so impenetrably hard that it’s not worth the effort. Thus, even if a student’s weakest skills are all in the average range, the very fact of the gulf created by their outlying strengths can itself create significant emotional difficulties, and in some cases that gulf may even act as a learning disability.

The result for twice exceptional kids and many other students with similarly jagged profiles is that they often become resistant to new tasks, or seek to avoid ones that aren’t directly within their areas of interest. We understand task avoidance not as a “behavior” problem, but as evidence that the child has become hypervigilant to the possibility of failure—a common response to the difficulties of going through life with both outlying strengths and outlying challenges. We help students to overcome this resistance through Growth Mindset coaching that helps them to “connect the dots” between it and the splinter skill inefficiencies that drive it, and a stimulating project-based learning academic framework that requires our students to develop the essential life skill of learning how to engage on an external task demand that is outside of their interest areas. Together, this comprehensive approach is redefining what’s understood to be possible for a given child and, for our twice exceptional kids, for the cohort as a whole.

Depending on the condition, growing up with chronic medical conditions can fundamentally alter the experience of childhood. Social isolation, feelings of injustice on the one hand and being somehow “less than” on the other—and that’s before you get to the layers of scaffolding required to manage your symptoms. For children who have vulnerabilities in core autonomic regulatory functions like regulating sensory processing, neurovascular dysregulation (such as postural orthostatic intolerance/POTs), body temperature or heart rate (tachycardia) or who have chronic pain or fatigue syndromes, these challenges are made still more difficult by the fact that these core physiologic functions “map” in the brain to emotional responses. In some cases, these hidden events—invisible to the caregiver before them—can cause a reaction that is physiologically similar to PTSD, with equally detrimental effects on their learning and emotional access. Those responses can further undermine the executive function skills and emotional resilience required to monitor and manage those responses in real time.

Learning to self-monitor and self-manage these connections in real time is an essential life skill for any student with chronic medical conditions, maximizing their ability to thrive independently. This was undeniably apparent to our co-founders: a successful professional who had to learn how to manage her own chronic medical conditions and then found herself looking at the same challenge in both her children, and the licensed occupational therapist who teamed up with her to create a curriculum and therapeutic approach to make that toolbox actionable for her kids. We are proud to pioneer this critical form of specialized instruction under the IDEA, and to offer the world’s first educational home for students with connective tissue disorders and similarly complicated medical conditions.

We help kids “leap frog” from social learning to social leadership by leveraging our small setting to give them a toolbox for how to foster truly-inclusive neurodivergent communities at home and in the community

At the core of the curriculum itself is the understanding that social interactions reflect each child’s “Not Yet Skills:” a lens that replaces culturally-loaded concepts like “character” that kids may struggle to make actionable with the more scientifically-grounded understanding that our current social experiences are the product of myriad skills—which we can develop through the process of neuroplasticity. This gives kids permission to be who they are and where they are in the learning process, and a growth mindset about their own emotional development.

We coach our students in how to use this powerful lens to understand their peers’ actions as well, giving them powerful perspectives that foster social and emotional resilience. We infuse these understandings throughout our program, specifically fostering our community’s unique culture of not just accepting but celebrating one another’s differences. By educating students on the science of how children grow, think and feel, and on the range of neurophysiological differences, we provide the basis for true empathy towards one’s peers. Learning differences, self-regulation challenges and more become “just science,” taking the judgment out so kids can bring their best selves to the learning experience. Within our student body, this translates into an authentic culture of shared progress, as students gain confidence and a vocabulary for sharing and supporting both our challenges and our victories, harnessing the healing power of a safe and supportive peer group. This provides what is for many kids a first experience of being able to safely acknowledge and receive support for their struggles within a peer community, fostering life-long skills in seeking and accepting support for our challenges.

Taking this a step further, we put these understandings at the heart of a toolbox kids can use to foster truly inclusive neurodivergent communities, with a shift from “following the rules” to “fostering community” as the goal of our social-emotional and behavioral curriculum. Paradoxically, our small setting accelerates this work, by giving students a safe and more predictable social environment within which to do the self-reflective work required to master these new skills. Parents report that this approach, which is unique to Cajal Academy, translates to sustained social growth at home and in the community, often within just a couple months of joining the program.