D’Jon McNair

1. What grade level to you teach, how long have you been teaching what is the name of your school?

I primarily teach fifth graders at Bartow County Public Schools’ Allatoona Elementary School in Acworth, Georgia. I am certified K-12 in Special Education, K-8 in math, language arts, social studies and science.

2. Has the content been useful to you in you work as a classroom teacher?

Absolutely. My instruction centers around attention, transfer and retention of information. I create a safe, motivating environment in the classroom. Kids come in with varying degrees of readiness at the start of the day and a lot of that has to do with the home in the morning. So I start with SMART to hook them into a learning frame of mind.

I place a lot of emphasis on understanding the science behind Thinking For Results. How can I deliver lessons at input-output, how do kids think and why is it important to have cognitive skills at various levels. I was excited and stunned to learn that cognitive skills can be learned. Clear intent states that ‘I know what I’m going to do next.’ That course was instrumental in teaching me that many of the things I took for granted that kids know – they don’t – and if we’re going to talk about clear intent, for instance, what should the next thing that I do. Teaching kids the cognitive skills has been instrumental in helping kids feel successful in what they’re doing and getting them motivated to learn.

While I was working through Courageous Learners material, I happened to get a troubled student in my class with a long history of behavioral issues. I strove to reach this child and decided to invest a lot of time establishing our relationship. Until they’re comfortable with you, kids aren’t interested in opening up like that. Everyday I read the child ‘The More You Do, The More You Can Do,’ because it was a lack of effort that caused a lot of problems for him in the past. I tied his personal interests into our classroom material, for example, asking him to consider what it would have been like to fly a prop plane as an explorer in the 1800s during America’s time of territorial expansion. I had to allow him some literary freedom to write about what it would be like to fly over a covered wagon. He could tie necessary facts to something more expressive that he wanted to add to it. Because he didn’t read on grade level, he was significantly behind. I allowed him to do verbal lessons because he was an auditory learner. When I think of any of the kids I’ve worked with, he’s the one who stands out, because he went from being reevaluated for a behavioral disability to learning what he needed to learn and even won an award from a local civic group in only nine weeks. You should have seen the expression on the child’s face when he was called to accept his award and realized he was being recognized. He is still doing very well. He has accommodations for the statewide test we’re getting ready to take and he’s been scoring up to 70 percentile, which is a passing score. We always try to keep a positive perspective; you got more than 50 percent. You have learned more. You have achieved more. Let’s keep trying to improve.

The culmination and sequence of the BrainSMART courses has been extremely important in how I approach things in the classroom. There are situations where we are required to follow state guidelines on timing of a subject in the curriculum. BrainSMART allows me to think outside the box. My co-teacher in math and I were able to design an activity to allow kids to go shopping, to allow kids real life experiences. What is a better deal – one of each or two for one, based on price? The kids were really motivated to do this with their parents the next year. We have them the ads from three different stores and they worked together to find out where they’d save the most money, it connected to state standards and yet kept them engaged.

3. What do you like about earning your degree 100% online?

I like the flexibility, not having to travel and having access to the content and curriculum online. I am involved with our region’s Special Olympics, heavily involved in the church and also coach baseball, so the online program allowed me to put in a couple hours as an independent learner and it was conducive to my learning style. My peers have been reluctant to embrace online because they require face-to-face contact but I have been able to study with a mini-cohort from my own school so anyone considering an online degree can feel highly confident that having a few peers involved as a cohort would help you feel more connected. 4. How does this degree compare with other higher education programs you have studied?

The BrainSMART curriculum ties into what I do as a special education teacher, as far as the science and education of learning. I was taught the art of learning but not the science and BrainSMART gives me the science of what’s new about brain research. I considered a Master degree in Special Education but it would have been a repeat and I needed something different. The BrainSMART program has been a wise investment and choice when compared to my alternatives in a traditional degree program. Many of my peers who pursued on-campus traditional degrees say they have wasted their time and money because, although they will receive a pay raise for this attainment, they were not able to turn that information around and use it in the classroom. Every bit of information I learned in the program has been immediately useful in my classrooms.

5. Would you recommend this program to other teachers?

I highly recommend BrainSMART programs to my colleagues. I look at new teachers just coming in and ones who are struggling and I’ve been able to share some of the information with peers. You can see the light go on in their head – they come back and say, ‘that really worked,’ it gives me an opportunity to talk more about the BrainSMART program.

6. What would you say to other teachers about the program?

This coursework will help you understand the science of learning and what you can do on a daily basis to impact your kids in a positive way. BrainSMART techniques will be instrumental in helping students improve their successes and academic achievements. If you want to improve your teaching skills, this is the program you need to consider. I have about six colleagues seriously considering enrolling in the program. We had 30 –40 teachers for info session and more than half signed up for the program.

7. What would you say to an administrator about the program?

I’ve had a chance to share my portfolio with my principal and assistant principal and I use the terminology ‘proof in the pudding.’ I’ve encouraged them to encourage other teachers to look at and consider the program.

8. What would you say to parents?

Wow. That’s a good question, even though the kids, my philosophy is this: regardless of who the kid is, what their family circumstance, what issues they bring to the school, positive or negative, once they enter that door, they’re ours, we have to do everything we can possibly do in the five or six hours we have them to help them achieve to their potential. I would tell a parent its inherent in skills, my strategies, and me this is what’s going to happen every single day working with a brainSMART teacher. I hear a lot of complaints from my peers about the kids not able to learn because of what’s happening in the home. I don’t want to blame anyone else. Kids spend 90 percent of their lives with the family, we get them for about 13 percent of the time and we have to optimize that time 100 percent of the time by not complaining about things we have no control over.

9. What have you enjoyed the most about the content?

One thing I enjoyed most about the coursework and the information were the additional resources Donna and Marcus provide in their study guides. BrainSMART literature cites the research and links to external websites that further delved into concepts and studies woven into the BrainSMART program.

10. Did you have a friend or colleague who took the program? What did they say about the program?

Mark, our technology teacher in the BrainSMART program, will be adding to the computers, a front page where kids can come in and as they do initial rotations they will do a learning styles survey and Mark will get that data back to the homeroom teachers who can disseminate that to teachers so they can better target kids. They will have individual student and classroom profiles based on learning styles and it will also incorporate Thinking For Results into the survey.
It’s been the best dollar investment I’ve made in my kids and myself.