Newsletter feature: Grant Helps Teacher Make the Most of BrainSMART Strategies
Florida elementary school teacher Nichole Galinkin was so inspired by the BrainSMART strategies she learned while working toward her master’s degree that she applied for and received a grant to build on those ideas in her exceptional student education classroom.
Galinkin, who teaches third through fifth graders, received a $707.50 grant from the Broward Education Foundation CitiBank Success Grant Fund for a program she calls "The Power of Positivity (POP) Initiative." Here’s how she summarized the program in her grant application:
The POP Initiative allows elementary students opportunities to discover and apply cognitive thinking skills, which fuels success in school and in life. The skills are explicitly taught in a manner that fosters optimistic thinking, diminishes negativity, and prevents potential dropouts.
In developing the program, Galinkin came up with a theme for each month incorporating BrainSMART strategies. "Focusing on strategies to increase optimistic thinking gave my students the boost they needed," she notes. "Winning the grant allowed me to buy a lot of motivating materials and fun things to incorporate learning about their brains."
Incorporating those strategies into her teaching have allowed the 10-year teaching veteran to create "an amazing learning environment" where her students look forward to coming every day.
"A resource room should include activities that are different, fun, safe for risk taking, strategy-based, motivating, and relevant," she says. "I can now say that my room includes all of these elements, and my students are more eager to leave their regular class for their ESE sessions."
Galinkin says she found the resources and books available through the BrainSMART program especially helpful and user friendly. "It’s very useful to me to be able to adapt these strategies for use with my students," she says. "But what I’ve enjoyed most of all is listening to the kids as they remind themselves of a catch phrase or a strategy and hearing them share those strategies with others. It’s great to actually see them using the information they’re learning."
