OTS 94: 10 Ways to Celebrate OT Month as a School-Based OTP [Free Handout]

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Welcome to the show notes for Episode 94 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast.

In today's episode of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast, we are talking about OT Month coming up in April. Why are we doing this in March, you ask? Because OT Month is worth planning for, of course!

In this Episode, I am going to share with you 10 ways you can celebrate and promote our fantastic occupation in a serving manner (because that is what we do here at the OT Schoolhouse. We serve first. 🤝)

Here is a list of those 10 things, but listen in for more details on how you can implement each action.

1. Get the occupational therapy crew together.

2. Introduce yourself to the school teachers and support staff.

3. Put together grade level kits.

4. Leave resources and snacks in the teachers lounge. (See handout below)

5. Create and conduct and inservice.

6. Inform others of OT Month and why OTs are awesome!

7. Create an opportunity to meet the parents.

8. Answer questions on Q&A sites.

9. Share OT related content on social media platforms.

10. Share your A-Z list of school-based OT terms on social media platforms or wherever you have an audience. Use hashtags: #ABCsofOT and #ABCsofSBOT

Get the OT Month Handouts

With everything you've got going on, trying to promote OT Month can be tough. So, we are making it easy for you. Submit the form below to get your OT Month Tips Handouts that you can share with your school colleagues as a way to share how amazing you are and how you can directly support them and the students. Subscribe below to get your handouts!

Additional Links to Show References:

• AOTAs 10 Ways to Promote OT Online

Episode Transcript

Expand to view the full episode transcript.

Amazing Narrator   

Hello and welcome to the OT school house podcast, your source for school based occupational therapy tips, interviews and professional development now to get the conversation started, here is your host, Jayson Davies, class is officially in session. 

Jayson Davies   

Hello everyone. And welcome to episode 94 of the OT school house podcast. My name is Jayson Davies. In case this is your very first episode that you've ever listened to, and I'm a school based occupational therapist down in Southern California, whether this is the 94th episode that you've listened to or the very first episode anywhere in between, I want to say I appreciate you being here. Really happy to have you. I live to serve. I live to help. So I'm just happy to be able to support you in your career as a school based occupational therapist or a pediatric occupational therapist, maybe a mixture of the two. Again, just thank you so much for being here today. This is episode 94 and this episode actually signifies a lot of achievements for the OT school house. I just kind of wanted to point that out, because many of you have been on the ride right there with me. Some of you have listened to all 94 episodes, which is just insane. That's like 90 hours of listening to myself and and guests that we've had along the way. And I just want to say thank you so much for being here. This also actually signifies the four year mark of the OT school house podcast, which, again, just blows my mind. I've been doing this for four years now, and, you know, I thought I would have had more than 94 episodes after four years. But I am glad we are where we are right now, because putting out one episode a week, maybe I would have, I don't know what's 52 times four, about 200 episodes or so, but that is just beyond what I could even think to produce for you all, and the content just wouldn't be as great as what we are producing every other week right now for you. Oh, in addition to that, we have 100 episodes. The 100th episode will be coming up fairly soon, which, again, just blows my mind. So this is episode 94 and I'm just so happy that you're here with me today. I'm so happy that we got into 94 and I can't wait to continue more for you in the future. Now, this is also the first episode in a while where it's just me, there's no guest. And you know what? Today we are going to talk just me and you about ot month. It's coming up in a few weeks, and what we can do to celebrate ot month. You know, we are very prideful people as occupational therapists. We love our profession. We know that our profession helps so many people, not just the kids we work with, but all the other OTs in the world. They do so much. And so we want to celebrate, and we also want to teach others and let them know about ot month and how we can support them, and how maybe even they can support us a little bit. And so that's what we're here to talk about. I have 10 things that you can do to celebrate within ot month, and I'm giving this to you ahead of time because I want you to have some time to plan for them. Some are very simple. Some are a little bit more complex. It might take a few weeks to get going. So I want to share that with you right now. All right, before we dive into all of that content, I just want to share a little bit about what's coming up, because this is a solo episode, and then our next few episodes are also going to be solo episodes. We're actually doing a Q and A for episode 95 and so if you haven't yet submitted a question that you'd like to hear me answer on episode 95 be sure to do that right now. Click on over, press pause, click over to OT schoolhouse.com forward, slash question, and you can actually leave me a voicemail and potentially hear your voice on the next episode of the OT school house podcast. Going beyond that, in the month of May, we have a four episode series coming up that's going to be all about occupational therapy, of course, like it would be, but it's going to be celebrating occupational therapy, and it's a very special four series, four episode series, and I don't want to spoil everything for you, but it's going to be a lot of fun. It's also going to be educational. So stay tuned for that one last thing, if you do appreciate this podcast, if you have been appreciating this podcast for however many episodes you've been listening to it, I'd really appreciate if you could leave me a quick comment review. If you're listening on Apple podcast or Spotify, both of those platforms have an area where you can just write in a quick comment. Give me four stars, five stars, eight stars, I don't know, however many stars you want to give. And, yeah, I'd really appreciate that it just helps other school based occupational therapists to find the show, so that we can all support each other. So really appreciate you taking a moment to do that. All right, so let's talk ot month. You know, ot month, it's our month. We we really appreciate it. You know, we love that we have a month dedicated to us. But if you've had similar experiences to me, then other people don't necessarily know it's ot month. April is much more known as either Autism Awareness Month or autism experience. OTs month. It's not something that people say, Oh yeah, you know April, that's ot month. I need to find an OT and and say, Thank you or whatnot. That just hasn't been my experience, and I'm sure that that necessarily hasn't been your experiences as well. So what can we do to not necessarily change that, but still celebrate our month of April. Well, here are 10 things that I think that you can do to not only share what we do as occupational therapists, but also to promote occupational therapy as well as potentially lead to down the road. People may be celebrating you. I don't know about you, but I have felt very left out of emails from anyone, from a principal to a superintendent to even teachers, where they just like, forget that OTs even exist. In the schools, we get emails that celebrate psychologists week and counselors week, and Teachers Day and principals day, bosses day, secretary's day, everything like that, but OTs, we're often left out of that and just we don't get it. And it's frustrating. It can be frustrating. It definitely is. But there's things that we can do, starting with the most simple thing, the most potentially even fun thing. Let's go ahead and put together a little group, an OT crew, lunch or happy hour together. Find the OTs in your area. Find the OT, the OT as in your area, even if they're not necessarily in your district. Hopefully there's a few other OTs that you're familiar with within the region that you live in that you can just set something up and find that time to share. You know, as ot practitioners, we are often left to our own ot room, or we're left to kind of take care of five schools, and we don't see another ot for days, weeks, sometimes even months. But for the month of April, find a time that you can set aside to meet with some of your ot friends, and maybe this does need to be a virtual thing that's okay. Maybe you have some ot colleagues from back in college that you you remember and you just haven't had the chance to meet up with them as frequently as you'd like. This is a great excuse to reach out and say, hey, you know what ot month is coming up. Let's go ahead and set something up on Zoom. Or let's go ahead and meet over at the local restaurant, wherever, wherever you like to go on april 15, or whatever that might be. This is a great excuse to get together with some OTs and OT practitioners, OTs included, to just celebrate our profession. All right. So that's something that you can do with your ot friends, your ot colleagues, all of those people, and kind of keep it within the field of OT but let's get outside of the scope of just seeing our OT friends as well. Let's move beyond to help the teachers understand what we can do. I'm going to share with you five things that you can do to celebrate our OT profession while also helping us to better understand the teachers and help the teachers to better understand us. If you are pretty new to your campus or your district, and you haven't had the chance to simply get to know the teachers, then the first thing I'm going to recommend is that you actually just walk around campus one afternoon and introduce yourself to the teachers, let them know who you are, how you support students on campus, and how you maybe plan to eventually support students on campus. Maybe, right now, you are doing a lot of pull out sessions, but you want to know how you can support them more in the classroom. Let them know that. Let them know what your goals are, what your plans are, and how you can support them. Then before you leave that room, be sure to ask them how you can support them. You want them to walk away, or you want to walk away from their classroom thinking, oh, right, this is Miss Myers. I can support Miss Myers by doing this, whatever she says she needs help with. Now maybe you don't get to that today, but there's likely going to be a few teachers that you might be able to provide a very quick win for. And you can just say, Oh yeah. You know, back in the OT room, I actually have some Thera band. Let me go grab that real quick, bring that over, and maybe you can try it out with a few of your kids. And maybe it works, even if it doesn't, you have built a relationship with that teacher. So if you are new to a campus, new to an area as the OT I highly recommend you start here. And you can do that during ot month. You can even let them know that you're doing this as part of OT month. That's perfectly fine as well. Now, if you have multiple campuses, you're not sure you're going to be able to get to all of the campuses, because you just don't have that much time in your day. Maybe consider making it a video. Upload a video to YouTube and share a link in an email out to all the teachers, some of the teachers, whoever you want to get your your face, your name and what you do out to it's not too much work. It's pretty simple. You just got to put that video to. Together or come up with kind of what you're going to say when you knock on their door and they answer and ask, Wait, who are you? So that's a good way to start to get to know people and to let people know that, hey, it's O, team up. All right. So this next one requires maybe just a little bit more work, and maybe you've already had a chance to get to know most of your teachers. Well. Now I have this idea for you where we kind of separate it out by grade level. And I would say, maybe make a little kit, not for each classroom, but for each grade level. And so you can kind of put together some things that maybe you think all the kindergarten teachers should try out, or all the second grade teachers should try out, and put a little kit together for them and give it to them as a grade level. So maybe, for instance, in the kindergarten kit, you have a few different pencil grips, some adapted scissors, maybe some Thera band, maybe some adapted paper that you provide them, versus maybe the older kids, maybe fifth grade or so. Instead of providing with a lot of those physical, tangible resources. Maybe you put together a list of different websites to help with motor movements and different activities that they can do to support mindfulness, that could all be specific to a grade level, and you really only need to do it maybe six times if you're in an elementary school, four times if you're in high school, and you can kind of repeat it oftentimes. We have many of these resources either available to us in the OT room, or, if it's online, it's a free resource, right? We just have to put it on paper, but take some time to actually put some thought into it and say, You know what, I understand that your classroom is different from a different grade teacher's classroom. And here are some resources specific for the kids that are your age, they'll really appreciate that. They'll remember you for it. It's not just a box of chocolates that you're giving them, it's something that they will actually remember. And if you can send them a digital download even better, then they can kind of keep it on their computer somewhere. So that is our second thing that you can do directly for teachers, along the same lines as that, if you don't necessarily have the resources to maybe separate it out per grade level, maybe you find a resource that you can actually just leave in the staff lounge with a bag of Cheetos or something that people can crab snacks for them, right? We're likely to get people to see what we put out if we add some food to it. I am actually going to make these worksheets available that I've made, and it's four different worksheets designed to kind of explain the role of OT and how OTs might be able to support in the classroom teachers. So I'm going to make these resources available for you. Be sure to go over to OT schoolhouse.com, forward slash episode 94 where you'll be able to download these four documents that you can just leave out one per week that'll kind of say, Hey, I'm the school OT, this is me. Here you go. And then the next week is going to have a different thing that maybe you can support with, or something that the teacher can try in their classroom each week, there's a different resource that they can try for all four weeks of the month of April. I really hope that you will take me up on this and head over to otschoolhouse.com, forward slash episode 94 and grab those resources. And again, all you have to do is lay them out in your lounge. Or maybe there's a board where people share things. Put it up on that board. Add a bag of whatever is your favorite candy, maybe you can even personalize it a little bit. Say, oh, by the way, these are my favorite chips, Cheetos next week. Oh, this is my favorite candy, whatever it might be, just to make it a little bit more personable, make them a little bit more aware of you. And that brings us to our fifth thing that you can do during ot month to celebrate our wonderful profession. And this one does require more work, but I guarantee the results of it will be ever lasting. And maybe you can do it during ot month, but maybe you start it during ot month, and then you go beyond that. And what I mean by that is, remember, in one of the first things, I said, you know, going around finding out how you can support your teachers, right? You're gonna get a list, but you're gonna start develop some patterns. You're gonna see teachers are really saying the same two or three things over and over and over again. They need help with handwriting. They need help with sensory and they need help with behavior. Maybe those are the three things that you hear over and over and over again. Well, let's take that and let's turn it into an in service and support all the teachers, right? So maybe you go in the first week of April to all the teachers and they say, hey, those are the three things I need help with. Well, it might be a little difficult to turn that around into an in service within three weeks, by the end of the month, but maybe you can let them know that you'd like to provide it in service. Talk to your principal and say, you know, when can we schedule something? Even if you can just give it on a calendar and send out an email to all the teachers and say, Hey, I just want you to know I heard your concerns and I want to support you. This is how we're not going to be able to do this during ot month, which is April. Again, throw it out. It's ot month, but. But I'd love to be able to support you in May with an in service, work with your principal to figure out a date that you can do that. Maybe it is even after hours. Maybe it's on Zoom. It's okay. Maybe it's optional. It doesn't have to be mandatory. But if we can get a few people there, we are getting those few people on our side, it can be so simple, and it doesn't need to be what many of us think of an in service as a hour and a half long thing. No, you can make this super simple 30 minutes. Just give them the information you want them to have. Give them the information that you actually have. Don't go out of your way unless you really want to make this some big production, to get all the research and you know, 20 different things that you can do in the classroom for these teachers. Give them something simple that they can actually implement the next day or the next week. The easier we can make it for them, then the more likely they're going to do it, and also the more likely that they're going to remember that it was us that gave it to them and that it was part of OT month. So next April, maybe they'll remember, and maybe they'll even ask you for another in service during ot month in 2023, 2024, whenever that might be. If you'd like to learn more about how an in service can play into your RTI impact or your RTI strategy, be sure to check out episode 42 of the OT school house podcast. Or also check out my A to Z school based ot course, where we have an entire module on RTI, and that includes how to conduct a in service. I even actually give you a full PowerPoint that you can use as part of your in service. All right, that's going to wrap up our section where we talk about things that you can do specifically for teachers, but now let's talk about some things that maybe you can do that don't directly impact teachers, but eventually will have an impact on them. We can do this by impacting those who actually have some say over the teachers, such as principals, superintendents, a super assistant superintendents, the people that are both their bosses and our bosses. So how do we actually have an impact on someone who is our boss and the teacher's boss? Let's set up a time to have a discussion with those people, with maybe the special education director, coordinator, maybe if you can get to the superintendent or assistant superintendent, even a principal, can have an impact, but they need to know you exist. They need to know what you do, so reach out to them, or even have someone else kind of give you an introduction email, right? Maybe the speech therapist or another special education teacher you know, actually already has an established relationship with someone at a higher level, and they can CC you on an email or email both you and the superintendent, or whatever it might be, and say, Hey, Superintendent, I'd love to introduce you to our occupational therapist, and that's how you can start that conversation. Then set up a time to meet with him. It doesn't have to be anything super formal again, if you can just say, Hey, are you going to be on my campus anytime in the next few weeks? I'd love to talk to you for just five minutes and let you know about OT and what we're doing to support our students. These people need to know what we are doing. That's why we get so many emails that say, thank you teachers, thank you principals, thank you lunch room staff, thank you bus drivers. Thank you all these people, and we are never included in it, because they barely know that we exist. Let's give them a face to put to the profession of occupational therapy. Let's let them know we are a real person. Let them know that we are actually helping these students to be successful in their education, let them know that you exist before I move on to the next one. I do want to acknowledge that I know many of you that listen to this podcast are contract therapists. And you don't just have one district. You have multiple districts, and I understand it can be more difficult to do some of these things that I'm talking about when you have 12 different schools that you have to go to in four different districts. I understand that completely. And you know what? Maybe some of these things that I'm sharing with you, maybe they're not the best solution for you, or maybe you do it in a different way, and that's totally fine, because if you're a contracted therapist, there's no way that you can have a conversation with like four superintendents. It may just not be possible. I get that, but there are some things that you can do. Also, be sure to reach out to whoever your boss at your contract company is and make sure that they understand what you do, and let them know what your concerns are about working in this specific district or what's going well. They need to know that they're not at the school every week like you are. So even that person, your boss, your recruiter, whoever that might be, call them up, have a conversation with them, let them know what's going on in your contract world at school a or district B, whatever that might be, I'm sure that they would love to know how things are going, good or bad. Yeah, and who knows, maybe they'll be able to reach out to their contact at the district and maybe even set something up with you. They could be that person that connects you two together, and that brings us to our seventh thing, or seventh actionable item, that we can take of 10 for ot month to celebrate it, to bring awareness to ourselves, and that is to have a meet the OT night for parents. I actually did have a chance to do this kind of it was more disguised as a in service, per se, but it was nice because my principal supported me, and all we did was hop on Zoom. It was actually during the pandemic, and I gave the parents a little in service, about 30 minutes long. Again, not too long about setting up a homework or a at that time, it was more than homework, right? Because everyone was learning from home, setting up an area for school at the home, it was a great opportunity for me to not only get to know the parents of the students in the special education programming, but also the general education programs, parents from all the kids, not just the special education students, came to this and so again, it was a way for me to get out that, hey, I'm the OT. I work at this district. Your child might see me. You might see me if you're on campus. My name is Jayson, and I'd love to chat more, right? A great opportunity, just to get ourselves out there. Of course, also mentioned in there, if you can, by the way, April's ot month. You know, don't say it in a way that you expect anything. That's the last thing anyone wants to hear from you. But again, just throw it out there. April's ot month, and I'm just here to support you, support your kids, support the teachers in any way can. I would love to continue this conversation with you at any time. Here's my email. Please reach out to me with any questions you have. Now, even when you give out your email, the likelihood of you getting any emails is very slim. There are times that I send out emails to 1000s of people and don't get many responses. That's okay. The idea that you are opening yourself up, you're seeming approachable. You are being approachable is a big thing, and parents appreciate that, so set that up. Maybe you already had an OT night, or maybe you go to the back to school night and you do make yourself available. That's awesome. Maybe you don't need to do this during ot month if you already do that, but this is an idea for you. If you want to do something for ot month, potentially, that's a way to do it. Set up an OT night for parents to meet you. And again, this can be virtual. It doesn't necessarily need to be in person, all right. And that now brings us to the final three things on our list, and before I jump into these final three things, of 10 things that you can do to support occupational therapy during ot month, these final three things are really kind of outside of potentially what you might do as a school based OT or at least in that setting, these are more related to doing things online, social media. However, I'm sure there are ways that you could actually incorporate this into your school based ot practice, even if it's through like a newsletter or something like that. So let me get into these, and then maybe I'll relate them back to what you can do on campus that would be similar. So this first one, I have to say I actually got this from a short blog article from the A O T, a website. They have a list of 10 things that you can do for ot month. And this was the one that stood out to me the most, because it was unique. And what they suggested was actually getting onto some of those websites where people ask questions and just replying to a few there and pointing out that you're an occupational therapist replying so websites like Reddit, where people it's it's like a form an open forum right Reddit, where you can just answer any questions about health or about education. Maybe jumping on there, maybe finding parents that have difficulty with their kids in the area of ADLs, handwriting, sensory, whatever it might be, and just providing your perspective from an OT perspective. Other websites like ask.com There's various things here where you can just jump on and answer a few questions. Now, how would that potentially look if you do it in a school based ot setting? Well, that could be kind of like what we talked about earlier, a Meet the Parents, or in service for teachers. That might be a maybe. It's like a newsletter that you send home to either all the parents of the kids that you work directly with, or maybe even the entire school, if your principal is open with that. In the past, what I have actually done that's been kind of fun to do is I've sent out a newsletter before breaks, so before the holiday break in December and then again in the summer, I'd usually do it twice a year. I send out a newsletter of maybe different ways that parents can support their students over that break, whether it's iPad apps or different games that they can play, maybe doing things outdoors, something like that. Very simple, and it just goes out to everyone. So that's something that you. Be able to do from the school based ot perspective within your practice, number nine is to share ot related content on social media platforms, just to kind of just as outreach, to bring people awareness to occupational therapy. Now, the one thing I will say about this is that oftentimes, as occupational therapists, our community, the people that follow us are occupational therapists. They already know about OT. And the whole point of this social media outreach is to try to get the word of OT outside the OT circle. And so if there's any way that you can do that, maybe it has to do with different hashtags that you use. Maybe you're using something that helps you target educators in general, or more specifically, I guess, or parents specifically, or doctors specifically, find out what hashtags they use, and then use those types of hashtags, so maybe your posts will show up on their feed. As far as doing this within your school community, find out maybe your school, or your schools, or your district, has social media outlets, and maybe you can find out how you could potentially have something shared within those media outlets. That'd be kind of cool, right? Imagine the district Instagram account sending out something like, Hey, meet our occupational therapist. This is what he or she does with the kids in our schools. That'd be pretty cool. So find out if you might be able to do that, even if it's just your school, or maybe your teacher, parent committee. Maybe they have something like that that can go out. That'd be pretty cool, I think. And finally, that brings us to our 10th and final thing that you can do to promote occupational therapy during ot month, and that is to share your ABCs of OT, or, as I will be doing this April, my ABCs of school based OT, the ABCs of OT hashtag was originally started by Shannon Marie underscore OT. Shannon Marie ot on Instagram, and it has blown up over the last two or three years, and now you will see this all over the OT, Instagram, Twitter, social media world where people are sharing their ABCs of OT. What I mean by ABCs of OT is that they pick a word for each letter of the alphabet, and they share one post per day on that letter. So for me, for instance, for school based ot this year, I am going to be sharing a to z of school based OTs, which, for just reference, I'm going to start with administrators for the letter A, B for behavior core strength for letter C. Potentially, these are just some ideas that can help get you started. And then again, be sure to tag people that aren't necessarily ot related, or maybe not tag them, but use hashtags so that people that are not OTs will see this information. Really try and reach out to people that are educators, administrators, special education teachers, speech and language pathologists, maybe physical therapists, Adapted PE teachers, people that are outside the OT world, but would really benefit from knowing what we do. If you'd like to see an example of the ABCs of OT, be sure to check out Shannon Marie's ot page on Instagram, where you can go back and look at her history of things that she has done for ABCs of OT. Also, many other people have done them. I know Alvin from ot outside the box did one last year. I believe that Sarah from ot for life has done them before as well. Be sure to check those out and yeah, just what are your ABCs of OT? Share those on social media, or get creative and do it within your school. Maybe you just have, like, a list that you send out, or maybe you send out an email every day to a few teachers, maybe not to everyone. You don't want to frustrate anyone by sending them a daily email, but those teachers that you think might actually appreciate it, send them a daily email with today's letter is a for whatever you want to use letter A for. I think there are actually some teachers that would appreciate learning more about you and what you do, and maybe you can actually throw in a few of those letters that are more specific to you, so that the teachers get to know you, not just occupational therapy. All right. Well, that is going to wrap up our episode for today. This was episode 94 and if you'd like to hear any of the show notes, or sorry, not hear them, you're hearing them here. But if you'd like to see the show notes, where I list out these 10 things that you can do as part of OT month, head over to OT schoolhouse.com, forward slash, Episode 94 while you're there, there is a lot to check out. We have courses, we have free resources. We have a conference coming up in August. That's going to be amazing. It's not yet available for registration, but I look forward to seeing many of you there. Thank you so much again for spending this time with me. I know we are right at about the 30 minute time period. Thank you for spending these 30 minutes with me. I really appreciate it. I appreciate you being here. I value you, and I actually enjoy learning from you. So reach out to me if there's anything. That that I missed on this list, reach out to me on Instagram or send me an email at jason@otschoolhouse.com and let me know what I forgot. What should I have added to this list? Please don't forget to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss any future episodes. And then also, if you wouldn't mind, please do leave a star rating and a little comment about what you enjoy about this podcast that is gonna end our episode 94 and I will see you next time on the OT school house podcast. Take care. Have a great rest of your week. Yeah. Enjoy. Bye. You

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