ADHD – Sophia Academy

Sophia Academy Plans for Re-Set for 2026-2027

Many families struggle to find an educational environment that meets both the neurobiological needs of their children and their desire for a Christ-centered, relationally rich education. Traditional schools, Christian or otherwise,—while strong for many learners—often lack the staffing ratios, therapeutic expertise, and neurodevelopmental structure needed for students with dysregulation, developmental delays, trauma histories, anxiety disorder, executive-function deficits, and other neurodevelopmental differences.

Sophia Academy has long been committed to awakening the unique genius in students with learning and developmental differences through a multisensory, hands-on curriculum and targeted interventions in reading, math, executive function, and social-emotional learning.

Families consistently praise the school’s compassionate environment as well as the academic and personal success experienced by their students. Sophia Academy’s current registration as a high school restricts our services to grades 9-12, but the need for deeper, more clinical, and more relationally-structured interventions is great in the community and across the school years.

Our art-based school enables students to work with both sides of their brain

Sophia Academy is working to transition to a Christian therapeutic-education school grounded in the Interpersonal Whole-Brain Model of Care (IWBMC™) from the Jacob’s Ladder Group serving grades K-12. The school would continue to offer our multi-sensory, hands-on education with small class size (5–7 students), individualized interventions (1:1 or 1:3), executive function coaching, SEL curriculum, and on-site counseling/social work support, We would add the neuroscience-based IWBMC model to target root brain-based challenges (not simply symptomatic behavior) leveraging neuroplasticity and whole-brain integration.

What is IWBMC?

Multi-faceted, whole child support
Supports neurobiological goals. Specialized testing enables us to design a curriculum that works for each student.
Belief in growth possibilities
Individualized curriculum for social, emotional, relational, physical, and academic needs
Wide Application: dyslexia, ADHD, trauma-related disorders, developmental differences, anxiety, and more

Middle States Accreditation Now Official

Unisys Engineer Introduces Students to the Amazing World of GIMP

Teaching computer skills and tech to Sophia Academy students thanks to Unisys Cares!

This week Mr. Tom Tomer, electrical engineer with Unisys, shared exciting tech advancements and computer skills with students.

He and some of the seniors had a great time learning how to use the free computer graphics tool GIMP. The students were thrilled to see how they could place pictures of themselves in different visual settings and occupations, and improve photographs and works of art.

Different Year, Same Warmth

Different subjects, same hands-on discovery. As we welcome new students into our midst, we also are happy to report that we are now offering Spanish as a language option, joining the Latin we have offered for nine years. Spanish 1 is taught by Mr. Hazelton, our newest teacher.

Classes are bonding well even though we are only on day 4 of the new school year. This is what Sophia Academy is known for: a safe and welcoming environment where students who have experienced difficulty and failure in the past find academic and personal success.

Largest Class Graduates with Gratitude

Graduations are always exciting. Graduating five seniors who have shown incredible growth and achievement in their years at Sophia is extra special. Seniors are moving on the college, trade school, and into jobs.

Our salutatorian had this to say on graduation day: “Sophia Academy helped us realize we have more potential that we had thought when we were younger.” He confessed that when the class came together in 9th grade, they had not always liked each other, but through the kindness of both teachers and other students, along with an encouragement to share vulnerabilities, this class formed a tight bond with each other. He also expressed gratitude on behalf of his fellow classmates for the patience of the faculty, the safe space that Sophia provided, the acceptance each student felt, and the educational help given to each.

Our valedictorian shared that for her, the “future is a collection of our hopes and dreams [that have been] slowly blossoming . . .the seed that we’ve planted throughout our time at Sophia.” She reminded her fellow classmates that no matter where each student goes, God has already gone before them and knows their future. She concluded by encouraging them all to keep planting, keep growing, and to embrace all there is to love and to fight for.

All the City Has to Offer

Sophia Academy loves to use the resources of our city to help students learn and prepare for the future. Here, junior and senior students visit a the Philadelphia Technical Training Institute where post-high school students learn one of seven trades such as building houses

And here the art students use watercolors to paint the Wissahickon Creek.

Whether we take trips to museums, check out geological features of local creeks, use the park behind the school for PE classes, or head to the Free Library’s central branch, Sophia students enjoy outside the classroom learning.

Cooking With Garbage

Sophia students participate ever year in the Philly Service Award project. This year, students in STEM classes are building –from scratch–a methane digester that can be used as an outdoor lamp or stove. It will be powered completely by organic trash. Anyone living in a city knows that there is usually plenty of trash to be found. Students have gone into the neighborhood multiple times to pick up trash, thus meeting two needs at once: beautifying the school’s neighborhood and securing a stash of free fuel for the methane digester. Win-win. Just another way for Sophia Academy students to use all their senses and abilities to learn.

More Hands-on Opportunities

(JR intubating a “patient” prior to surgery)

The annual Minorities in Health Sciences Symposium, held at Esperanza College of Eastern University, provided students from Sophia Academy and numerous other high schools in Philadelphia with the opportunity to explore the many varied options in the health sciences field.

Morning speakers passed on great nuggets of information. What do our students remember?

–That when you feel a panic attack coming on, placing your right hand firmly over your chest will simulate the feeling of a hug. That four hugs a day are necessary for life, eight are necessary for growth, and a minimum of twelve hugs each day are necessary to thrive.

–That Jefferson Hospital and Esperanza College have a PACE program which gives students full-time jobs at Jefferson while they take pre-nursing or pre-med courses at Esperanza. And that Jefferson provides scholarships for tuition in addition to the jobs. Win-win.

–That there are many ways to the future and everyone can take the path that works best for them.

The afternoon sessions were completely hands-on as students could choose between dissection, virtual reality, healthy cooking, extracting DNA and much more. Our students compared healthy and diseased retinas under microscopes, used VR to rescue victims of a car crash, handled real human brains with the eyes still attached, and practiced forcing the brain and eye to work together while looking in a mirror to draw a star. Now, that was hard!

Welcoming New Teachers

For a school dedicated to awakening genius through creative discovery, it is important to find teachers who have caught the vision and love being pushed to be their best. Our new teachers this year fit the bill. Let us introduce Ms. Melody Heath (Temple U), new teacher of science and math, Mr. Aaron Vander-Collins (Liberty U, Rutgers), our new teacher of music.], and Mr. Jabarr Graves (Chatham U) new teacher of art.