He has more than 25 years experience in special education, with this work focusing on students with learning and behavioral challenges and their families/guardians. As a practitioner, McKenna has worked in a variety of settings including residential programs, substantially separate classrooms, and inclusive school settings. McKenna has extensive experience as a home based family worker, a child behavior specialist, and special education teacher. More recently, McKenna's work has focused on collaborating with secondary grade general education and special education teachers assigned to high need/low resourced urban schools. He is also actively involved in designing and revising special education course work at the undergraduate and graduate level and supervises pre-service special education teachers.