Jefferson County Post Staff Writer J. D. Swann Publishes Book for Teachers and Parents

Jefferson County Post Staff Writer J. D. Swann has entered the world of authorship with the February 25, 2015 release of A Roadmap to Success: Foundations of STEM Learning. David, a White Pine eighth grade science teacher, has worked in education for nearly 15 years. David has had further experience with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) through his personal business, Mindflight Science, as well as working on the professional development of the White Pine STEM program. According to David, A Roadmap to Success was inspired by his experiences as a parent, as well as a teacher. “As a teacher trying to get students to be better learners and a parent wanting my child to be a better thinker, I realized there was a set of basic skills needed to operate at a higher level of thinking, and that nobody was detailing these skills for use in the classroom and at home.”

David Claims the universal application of these basic skills is a central message in A Roadmap to Success. “The book is designed for parents who want to give their child an advantage and have the skills necessary to succeed not only in the classroom, but also in life. It is also for teachers who are being asked to teach students to think, as well as retain information, and who may not have been given the tools they need to help students perform at this level. This book contains those tools.”

While A Roadmap to Success is STEM based, the underlying skills transcend these subject and can be used in all walks of life. As a teacher, David found that he was constantly breaking down complex activities into basic skillsets so that they can be more easily understood and accomplished. “As a parent, I have those same goals, and I found I needed to break down what I wanted my child to succeed into the individual skillsets necessary. Parents and teachers share a common goal, and therefore can travel a similar path. Both want the young people in their life to be successful. But when we take a moment to define success, we come to a more specific goal. What we really want is to create independent problem solvers. We want the young people we care about to imagine, create, think, and solve problems on their own, at a high level, which will allow them to attain freedom both monetary and otherwise. I don’t know any teacher or parent who does not have this goal for the young people in their life. We don’t want them to be just another cog in the wheel,” David explained. “We want them to be the wheel, or to create the wheel.”

While A Roadmap to Success is endowed with the experiences of a teacher, the book is designed to avoid any jargon or confusing vernacular that would be unfamiliar to someone outside of a career in education, making the book user-friendly. Currently, A Roadmap to Success: Foundations of STEM Learning is available as an E-book on Amazon and can be found by clicking here. Further plans are in the works to publish the book in hardback.