OTS 95: Answering OT Practitioners' Questions About Real School-Based OT Problems

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Welcome to the show notes for Episode 95 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast.

In this episode of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast, I am answering the questions submitted by several of our OT Schoolhouse Podcast listeners.

From "what is a consult?" to "how do I implement sensory strategies?" I am answering a dozen questions that were submitted by OT practitioners that work in the schools and listen to the OT Schoolhouse Podcast just like you.

Listen in to hear how I respond to these listener-submitted questions.

A special thank you to all of those who submitted a question and made this episode possible!

Additional Links to Show References:

• Journal on effective handwriting strategies (Related to speed)

• OT Schoolhouse Podcast Episode 50 - How to get your foot in the door as a new grad OTP

• Podcast episodes related to sensory processing:

  • OTS 25: How to Conduct An Evaluation Using the Ayres Sensory Integration Model feat. Zoe Mailloux

  • OTS 26: Sensory Integration Treatment and Sensory Strategies in Schools Feat. Kelly Auld-Wright

  • OTS 63: Sensory Integration & Independent Educational Evaluations with Susanne Smith Roley, OTD

• The A-Z School-Based OT Course

  • The course for all OT practitioners looking to better understand school-based OT.

• Making the Shift: Caseload to Workload

  • An online workshop helping you and your colleagues move from a caseload model to a workload model in your school-based OT practice.

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!

Episode Transcript

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Amazing Narrator   

Hello and welcome to the OT schoolhouse 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 back to the OT school house podcast for episode 95 My name is Jayson Davies, and I'm so happy that you are here today with me. We have a very special episode today, no guests, just me and you, and I'm going to be answering some questions. We have about 11 or 12 questions that maybe you submitted, but these questions all come from the OT school house community. Some are going to be voicemails. And there's some questions that I'll read because they came in via an Instagram message or an email, and I want to answer those as well. So we're going to go ahead and do that, but first I want to say that we are just about to kick off ot month here at the OT school house and just in America in general, this is ot month. And well, not quite yet, just a few days from now, if you're listening to this on the day it releases, but we have some special things going on here at the OT school house for ot month. And instead of releasing an episode every other week in the month of April, I will be releasing an episode every week where we are going to do something very special. And, yeah, that's all I'm gonna say right now. I don't want to get ahead of myself, but it's gonna be a lot of fun. And I hope you'll join me the next four Mondays as we celebrate ot month. Also, if you did have a chance to listen to episode 94 I hope that you got your handouts, and I hope you have those ready to go as soon as ot month kicks off. Remember, in Episode 94 we went over 10 different things you can do to celebrate ot month. And part of that, I think it was number four or five, was to use handouts. And I created handouts for you. You don't even have to create them. I created them. All you have to do is go to OT schoolhouse.com. Forward slash episode 94 and you can grab those handouts 100% free. Print them out and leave them out for your teachers. Leave them on their door, whatever it might be. So be sure to check those out at ot schoolhouse.com. Forward slash episode 94 to get your four handouts with tips from an OT that will help a teacher and that'll also help you build a rapport with your teachers, they're gonna find you helpful, and therefore they're going to know who to go to when they have a question, whether it be about behavior, about handwriting, about fine motor skills and various other areas that we support our teachers in need. All right, so with that, let's go ahead and dive into our first question. We are going to start with a voicemail, and this voicemail comes from Brittany. She has a question about consultation, so let me go ahead press play on this voicemail, and then I will be right back to answer that question, because who knows, maybe you have the same exact question. 

Question 1 - Brittany   

Hi, Jayson, my name is Brittany, and I had a quick question about ot consultation in the schools. So every time I have a new therapist join my team that's new to school based practice, one of the big questions that they always ask me is what is considered consultation? And obviously, when we think of consultation, we're thinking about, you know, what types of things can we do to support a child to sort of generalize their skill. But what I'm more wondering is, what are some concrete examples of what can be done for consultation time. So for example, is reviewing an IEP. Okay for consultation is observing a student when you're first getting to know them. Okay for consultation is emailing a teacher to check in okay for consultation. So specific, tangible ideas on how consultation time can be delivered would be super helpful. Thank you so much. 

Jayson Davies   

Hey, Brittany, thank you so much for your question. Thank you for submitting it via voicemail so that we could hear your voice. Not just me reading a question. We do have some of those, but I really appreciate the voicemail. You know what to start off. Consultations are the least restrictive environment that we can provide a service in. We have no direct communication in most cases with the student. During consults, we are only talking to the teacher, maybe other staff members, administrators and sometimes maybe even the parent. There are times where I would actually call it a consult when I am meeting with a student, and that might be more in a high school type of environment or even a middle school environment where I'm meeting with a student, but it's not like I'm providing direct instruction on something, whether it be handwriting or even a direct instruction on what to do with scissors or what to do with sensory strategies, it would be more of a back and forth communication. And I think that's what's also important to realize about consults, is that there needs to be a back and forth. It cannot just be a one way. Communication. So if we're talking about reviewing files, I don't see that as a consultation. I do see that more as a evaluation process, or even just a information gathering process. I wouldn't count that toward consultation minutes. Same thing with observations. Observations can be part of a consult, but it should not be the only part of a consult. If you are going in and observing a student, that's only one way communication, if you want to call it, that you are seeing what the student is doing. But then you need to respond to that in some way, right? You need to let the teacher know what you saw, and then also get feedback from the teacher and go back and forth on that. So emailing a teacher could be part of a consultation, but unless they're emailing you back, I don't necessarily know if that's a consultation, because we need to have that two way conversation going on when I have presented a service in a consultation format, what I typically look for to do is, I think, of a plan of action that we're going to do with the teacher, and then we have that back and forth about it. So we are actually going to implement something. We're not just getting feedback. We're actually implementing something, something such as maybe a self regulation program, such as the zones of regulation, or maybe we are implementing a specific handwriting program for a student, or maybe we're implementing a certain social connectedness program with that student, but you're not the actual one doing it, rather the teacher, or maybe an aide in the classroom is doing it, and you are facilitating that through consultations with that person. So whether it be once a week, once a month, or even quarterly, it would be your role to go in or to email or to even collect data from that person, and then get back to them based upon that data that you're seeing and provide them with additional strategies, and then check up on that a little bit. And then one final note here is that we obviously have to document this. And there have been times where I will document part of a consultation. For instance, if I have maybe a 30 minute consultation per month, I might write a 15 minute consultation for when I wrote an email to the teacher, but I am sure to write in my documentation that I am waiting for a response, and then I might document the other 15 minutes when I get that response back from the teacher, and maybe even email back, like I said earlier, a consultation needs to be a two way street. We can't just receive information and we can't just give information. It needs to be a two way street, and that needs to be reflected within our documentation. So one more time. Brittany, thank you so much for your question, and I hope this helps not only you, but also the new OTs that you have coming in that you work with and and explain consultations. All right, so let's go ahead and move on to our second question. Our second question comes from Krista. This comes via Instagram, and Krista is looking for techniques for working on and improving handwriting speed. So first of all, Krista, thank you so much for your question on Instagram. Really appreciate that. This is a unique question. It's not very often that I get asked either by ot practitioners or by teachers about speed for handwriting, actually. And to be honest with you, I can't actually think of a time that I wrote an IEP goal for the speed of a student writing. And you know, I did a little bit of research when I saw this question, because it's my take that the way to eventually lead to an increase of speed of handwriting is to first improve the handwriting. And as I went back and saw a little research, and I will tag an article or two in the show notes@otschoolhouse.com forward slash episode 95 that when an implementation or when a handwriting task or a handwriting curriculum is implemented, the research actually shows very little improvement in speed and sometimes even a decrease in speed when working on legibility. And so there hasn't actually been research to show long term how increasing legibility or increasing the fundamentals of handwriting could potentially lead to increased speed. However, that's kind of where I would go with this. I think I would start off by making sure that we have those fundamentals of handwriting down, that there is a program, again, being used within the classroom, that they're actually working on this. Because there's so much that goes into the idea of speed, there's motivation, volitional aspects, and you have to be sure that we have those fundamentals down. You know, we forget sometimes, and especially parents and teachers, we find ourselves explaining how many aspects go into handwriting and speed is one of those things that cannot occur until we have the fundamentals down. And so I would start there. I don't have a specific tip for increasing speed. Believe it or not, it's not something that I have actually worked. On. Typically, once we get a student to the point where they can write, to the point where the teacher, the parent, and even the student can read it, and then we kind of move on from there a little bit. It really depends on what's going on with the student. I need a little bit more information. If this is a motivational difficulty, or if we're having difficulty motivating the student, then that might look different, as opposed to if it's something where the student just doesn't have the capability to write legibly, and therefore the speed is difficult. So thank you so much for your question. I'm sorry if that wasn't the answer you're looking for, but I will try and follow up with that again in a future podcast. And for question number three, today, we have one for new grads coming from Danny on Instagram, and Danny wants to know, how do you get your foot in the door as a new grad occupational therapy practitioner? And I think I kind of did this in a way that I would recommend to you as well. And my story is that I started out as a contracted occupational therapist. I worked for a company at the time. It was called my therapy company. It is now part of stepping stones, or stepping stones. Bought them out, and I started there, and that helped me get my foot in the door, because they always seem to be looking for therapists. You might not get to be in the district that you live in or in the community that you live in, but they are always looking for therapists, and oftentimes they will cater or advertise to new grad OTs, whether that's because they feel that they can potentially pay you a little bit less than an experienced OT or because they just feel like they can mentor you and turn you into the occupational therapy practitioner that they want you to be, I'm not quite sure, but It was a great way for me to get my foot in the door, because all the districts were asking for a therapist with years of experience and experience in sensory integration and experience in handwriting curriculum and experience like even up to five years of experience as an OT before they even wanted you to apply. So I worked as a contractor for a year, and then my next tip would be to send out that application, even if you don't necessarily fit the five year experience that they want. That's what I did. I went out on a limb, and even though the district wanted five years of experience in my second job, I only had about a year and a half. And with that, I went ahead and applied, and you know what, I got it. And so don't be afraid to to say, You know what, even though they're looking for a five year person, I'm gonna apply anyways, you never know what might happen. The other thing that I would say is to actually put on your resume that you are listening to an OT podcast for school based OTs. If you've taken my A to Z course, or any of the other courses, or any courses in general that relate to school based OT, add that to your resume. Show your future employer that you really care about school based OT, not just ot in general, but school based OT, and you're willing to take those courses that will make you a better therapist for them, I think that's a great way to also get your foot in the door. You'll stand out just a little bit more. As opposed to maybe a therapist who's coming from another facility, another area of practice that hasn't taken any courses, your resume might stand out just a little bit more. So I think that is a good start to getting your foot in the door. And you know, we did do a podcast on this, I want to say is somewhere in the 40s, with Amanda Clark, we talked about getting a new job as a school based occupational therapist. I definitely recommend checking that out, and I will link to that in the show notes as well. So thank you, Danny, for your question, and best of luck getting your foot in the door as a new grad OT or OT a really wish you the best of luck in that. Now that brings us to a sensory question, straight from Lindsay on Instagram. Lindsay would like some support in implementing sensory in the classroom. She says she doesn't even know where to start. Trust me, Lindsay, you are not alone on this. I get similar questions all the time, and so let's dive into this. First remember what I said about consult about 10 minutes ago. That's very important when it comes to sensory. Another thing that's very important when it comes to sensory is that we need to keep in mind that we should not be implementing any sort of sensory strategies, at least specific sensory strategies, to a student without an evaluation in sensory. So you need to make sure that you actually have an evaluation. This comes straight from one of the A O T, A Choosing Wisely campaigns. Again, I'll link to that in the show notes, that we need to make sure that we're actually evaluating sensory before implementing sensory. Now how do you actually go about doing this? I would use a mix methods, type of service delivery model, where I am both seeing the student in a pull out model as well as in the classroom. So if we're doing maybe a weekly service every other week, I'm seeing the student outside of the classroom, and then on the next week, I'm seeing them in the classroom. That way we're working on. Of we're seeing what works in that clinic, or in that outpatient, whatever you want to call the OT room space. We're seeing what works and trying out new things there and then implementing that into the classroom in a collaborative model where we can work with both the student and the teacher, or even potentially the classroom aides, if they're in there, that way, you can say, You know what? I saw this work last week. Let's see it work in here. And the teacher is going to be watching you, the aides are going to be watching you. They're going to see you be successful and see the student be successful with this strategy. The last thing I would say is try not to give up too early. Make sure that you are actually implementing the sensory strategy, whatever it might be, for at least a month, if not six to eight weeks, before you give up and ask for a little bit of data from the teachers and the age when they're saying, it's not working, you know, it's we have to be nice about it. But to say, you know, hey, I understand what you're saying. I understand that it might be a little tricky to implement in the classroom, but we need to see if it works, and we need to have a little data. I would love to take some data when I'm there with you on those every other weeks, but I might need a little bit more. Can you help me out by taking data even one time a week, and that will help you to determine what is working and what is not working. So Lindsay, I hope that helps give you a place where to start. And I know sensory can be difficult, but I would definitely recommend going and looking for, potentially even a sensory intervention type of training if you haven't done so already. All right, and This now brings us to our fifth question, which is from Nicole about documentation, and Nicole left a voicemail, so let me go ahead and play that, and I will be right back. 

Question 2 - Nicole   

Hello. I'd like to know your process for documentation after you see a student. So I try to do notes right after each session. For me, it's I'm more in the home, sometimes I'm in the school, sometimes I'm in the clinic. And the students I work with, it can be really difficult to use a computer while I'm seeing them, so typically I don't do point of service. I try and do my notes right after, and if I'm unable to do them right after, I save them for night time. I also have a data sheet for each student and each goal that they have, and on that data sheet, I just write their progress towards that goal and the date. So those are typically the two things I do after I see each client, and I try and do them, you know, if not directly after service, the same night. But what is your process? What kind of tools do you use to keep yourself organized, whether it be data sheets or something else? Thanks.  

Jayson Davies   

Nicole, thank you so much for this question about documentation. I totally understand the difficulty all of us want to be able to just get our documentation done the second we are done with a session, right? But oftentimes it ends up that we end up doing our documentation later in the day. And I have tried so many different strategies over the years. I do something kind of like what you mentioned, where I will often create a printout by day for each student that I'm seeing and their goals. So I'll have one printout for Mondays, one printout for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and so forth. And on that Monday sheet, it has the 10 or 12 kids that I'm responsible for that day, and it has kind of the important information that I need to know, such as what the frequency is, and also their goals and maybe a little bit about, maybe where they're coming from, just so I have that refresher in my mind, and I will actually kind of write down, jot down notes directly on that paper each session. And so if a student's absent really quickly, I can just kind of cross them out and I know that they're absent, or add a little note that way I can go back later in the day, because, like you said, it's really hard to do it in the moment. I've been practicing for 10 years now, just about and I still struggled with it. I ended up writing most of my notes later in the day, just like you're saying you do now. I really liked doing that one page per day, but as you can imagine, you end up with a lot of pages. And so if you can turn that into an iPad type of system, great, and if not, then keep it pencil and paper, or pen and paper, other ways that I have tried and just it never caught on for my documentation was actually doing little documents on my phone. I would say, Hey, Siri, write a new note, and I would let Siri actually transpose my note onto my phone, then I could copy and paste that over. I was doing that back when Siri wasn't nearly as good as Siri is today. So that might be worth something to try again. I've also done Google Forms where I created a form where I could just type in really quickly student's name, or I had. Drop down for all the names and then just type it in there real quickly. And that put all of my notes into a spreadsheet, and I could copy and paste those over to another document if I needed to. And one more thing that has really helped of recent is the ability to use text replacement. So as you know, if you're on a phone and you're typing a text message, you get that auto text replacement, like auto correct, or even it wants to type the word for you. Sometimes, if you're writing an email in Gmail and you write hello, it'll automatically, you know, write the rest of your sentence for you. Well, you can actually set that up for yourself and make it customized. And so I used an Apple computer, but I'm pretty sure you can do this on a Windows computer as well. You can set up so that if you type in maybe x, x x, or something like that, it'll automatically replace the x, x x with a treatment note template. And so whatever your note template is, it'll just replace it, and then you just fill in the blanks really quickly. And that's something else you can do. So I hope that gives you a few tips where you can start with documentation. If you're going to go deeper into tracking data, then I would definitely recommend keeping something with you, like what you're doing, a file that you have on you at all times with that student, or an Excel spreadsheet, Google Spreadsheet, whatever it might be. For me, it's really hard to be on a computer and servicing a student, so I like to have the paper printed out, or even the iPad, where it's right there, like pencil and paper, and I can just write on there with an Apple pencil or a stylus. So thank you, Nicole, so much for your question. I hope that helps not only you, but also others that are listening to this podcast episode. Now that brings us to questions, six and seven from Bailey and Jessica. They're kind of similar, so I'm going to read them together and then go through them. Bailey asks, How long are sessions? What are the biggest challenges? And Jessica asks, How do you decide how many minutes a student should receive. So I will tell you that most of my sessions range from if I'm doing a consult 15 minutes a month, although sometimes that ends up being closer to 30 by time you get in contact with everyone you need to and then up to 30 minutes per week, sometimes 30 minutes every other week. I have had students that are more than 30 minutes per week, as much as one hour per week, or two times a week for 30 minutes, but that is not as typical. Now, how do I decide on these minutes? It is very much based on the goals and what I need, or what I think I need, time wise, in order to meet those goals. That is how I derive my services. That's also how I decide what type of services I want to create or want to recommend. I should say, Do I want to do, pull out or push in collaborative console. That's all based on the goals that I have set in place. Now if I have only one goal, then I'm opt to likely go for more of that consultative model. If I have several goals, then maybe I need to be seeing that student more frequently, once a week. It's very rare that I get into that twice a week or even hour long session, but occasionally that does happen. So really it's based upon the goals what I think I need in order to help the student meet those goals and also help the team help the student meet those goals. To answer Bailey's second part of her question about what's the biggest challenge, I would say, you know, the idea of not necessarily knowing if what I recommend is really the right service or the right recommendation for service and time and so, you know, the IEP is a fluid document. It can always change. There have absolutely been times where I recommended a group session for a student and then realized maybe a month in or two or even three months in that this is not the right setting for that student, that I need to see that student individually, or that I need to see that student in the classroom for less or for more time, and that's why we have such things called an addendum or an amendment to the IEP. We can absolutely change our minds. We just need to explain why we are changing our minds. What is the rationale behind changing a student from a group to an individual session, or from 30 minutes to 15 minutes, or 30 to 45 minutes, as long as you can explain it and the IEB team is on board with it, then there's nothing wrong with doing that. So thank you, both Bailey and Jessica for your questions about sessions and and choosing what type of session we might use. All right, so we are just about halfway through all of our questions for today's episode. We're on track for about 45 minutes today, which is perfect. That's exactly what I wanted to do. And you know, let's just take a quick break if you are not driving and you're doing something where you can use your hands, I would love for you to hop on Instagram or Facebook, whatever that might be, even email. That's the easiest way for you. And. And just let me know you're listening. And also ask a question. If you have a specific question, how can I help you? I would love to know, and maybe we'll answer your question on a future podcast episode. You can also submit questions that you have via voicemail at ot schoolhouse.com, forward slash question. You can leave me a quick voicemail, just like the ones you've heard today, and I will get back to you on a podcast episode to answer your question. So let's now dive into our next question from Anna on Instagram. Anna is wondering what a typical treatment session might look like, and how one chooses the activities that are used. She primarily pointed to individual sessions. So I'm going to start there. Now what's nice about individual sessions is that it really gives us the freedom and the control to really create a session that we want to create. We are not pressured by what's going on in the classroom. We don't have to try and be quiet while working with a student in the classroom, in a group. There's not external forces to have to try and work with, right? Sometimes you have that student that student that really needs a little more support today, and so you might be focusing on that student as opposed to the other two students. So with an individual session, we have a lot more control. Now with that said, while we have control, we can't do the same thing every single time. Every student needs something a little bit different, and we need to cater it around them. Now, if you look back at the history of research and occupational therapy, you see kind of two camps. You see the camp that says, hey, if you work on fine motor skills, then that will lead to increased in other occupation based areas, such as handwriting, ADLs and so forth. And then you have the other camp of research that says, No, not necessarily true. Just because you work on fine motor skills doesn't mean you are going to increase occupation. You need to go directly and target that occupation. Now, again, that doesn't mean that if a student's goal is to write letters A through Z, you're just going to sit there and write letters A through Z the entire session, every session. No, that's not what that means, but there is indeed a way to work on handwriting through handwriting. Maybe you're not using pencil and paper, but you're using an iPad app. Maybe you're not using pencil and paper, but you're using sand and a stick, right? That's still in a way, using handwriting, but you're also incorporating play to work on those skills. Now, within a typical session, I would say, for the most part, especially an individual session, I would start with some form of a quick warm up, not just to quote, unquote, get the fingers warmed up or whatnot, but also that rapport establishment, which is so important, therapeutic use of self, getting myself involved, making sure that the student understands that I'm really there for them, that they can trust me, that we're going to make some progress today, then I would dive into whatever my activity is that's going to somehow revolve around that goal I just mentioned a few potentially to do with handwriting. But maybe the goal is to cut out simple shapes. If that's the case, then maybe we're not cutting out simple shapes, but we're doing some sort of activity that's that incorporates bilateral hand integration and maybe also uses scissors to do something fun. And then maybe at the end of the session, I might actually measure the goal. Now I don't necessarily measure the goal every single time. We are not required to measure the goal every single time, we do need to somehow show data over time, so maybe once a month I'll measure the goal, or as we get close to progress reports, I'll make sure to measure the goal. But you don't necessarily need to measure the goal in every single session, so I guess that kind of puts together what my typical session might look like. For an individual pull out session would be a warm up, then an activity that really focuses on the goal in some way, and then maybe some documentation of data at the end to see whether or not there is some progress being made toward the actual goal. Great question, though, Anna, you really made me think about how I actually structure my interventions, and so I appreciate that. All right, we got about four more questions that we're going to get to today, and I really hope all of these questions are helping every single one of you. These are great questions, and I'm excited to be able to answer them for you all. This next question comes from Tiffany, and she submitted a Google Form. Tiffany, the question was a little long, so I'm going to paraphrase here. I hope you don't mind, but really, Tiffany is interested in understanding how to become a more confident therapist. She's having some difficulty with working with the teachers within the school, and she also really wants to understand sensory a little bit more, and asks how she can go about understanding sensory especially since she's getting a lot of cases revolving around sensory and kids who are having difficulty with processing sensory and integrating sensory stimuli. So with that, first, I want to say this is not about faking it until you're making it, but you do need to believe it until you achieve it. And we need to we need to know what we can do and what we can't do. I love that you are listening to the podcast. I love that you want to learn more, and I would absolutely recommend that you do learn more and go beyond just the OT school house podcast. There are some episodes that we've done with people such as like Zoe Mayu and Susanne Smith, Rowley and Kelly, alt right, that we've talked about sensory I believe those are episode 2526 and somewhere in the 70s or 80s. I'll link to those again in the show notes. But start there and then decide what type of sensory type, of course, you want to go and do. There's the star center, and there is the CLASI. And there's a lot of different sensory trainings out there that you can go to and I would highly recommend picking one and going through that one. I went through the SI, PT, the sensory integration and Praxis test course, when that was available. That's no longer available, but there are kind of like the big three out there, which is the star center, the CLASI, and then also the USC, University of Southern California courses for sensory integration. Those would be a great place to start. Or you can even start with more of a one off course that you might find on occupational therapy.com, or summit the education at Summit education.org I think it is, or.com so there are some one off courses that you can do as far as feeling more confident, that will help but also, I think what will help you feel more confident is that if you get into the classroom and provide a few quick wins for the teachers, they're going to see what you can do, and they're going to feel more confident in you, and you're going to, in turn, feel more confident in yourself. So by getting into those classrooms, building that rapport with the teacher, also building the rapport with the students, you're going to feel a little bit better about what you are doing. And so I recommend kind of getting started with that. I love that you truly believe that you're supposed to be in the schools. That's awesome. I'm sure you do. It's a great place to be, and I really hope that you continue to build in your confidence moving forward. The same thing with everyone listening to this podcast. That's the podcast. That's the whole reason this podcast exists, so that you can feel better, more confident, and be more effective in your practice as a school based occupational therapy practitioner. And now we have one final voicemail question, and this one comes from Danielle. Danielle is in Hawaii, and just her voicemail just makes me want to be in Hawaii. Just feel like it's so Hawaii in her voicemail, you're gonna hear that in a second, and she wants to know a little bit about how we can support teachers. So let me press play, and then I'll be right back 

Question 3 - Danielle   

Aloha from Hawaii. This is Danielle. My question is, what top three activities, exercises, you know, what can general education teachers do in their classroom to support students who need ot support? 

Jayson Davies   

Aloha, Danielle and thank you for your question. Next time I'm in Hawaii, we are definitely going to have to talk more about this, because this, when I listen to your question, screams out to me. RTI, MTSS, which we do have other episodes about, and I see that you want to help those general education teachers, which is amazing. This is where I think the future of occupational therapy is going, because I think we're going to help more students in less time. You know, one on one, sessions are never going to go away. Individualized therapy will never go away. But what can we do for the teachers, especially those general education teachers, to help them support their students, so that maybe there's a few of them who might need ot in the future who won't need ot in the future, because we are giving those strategies up front. So to answer your question, what are my three big things, my three activities, my three exercises that I will often recommend to teachers, well, the first one that I always go to, because I really do believe it's important, is seating, not necessarily proper seating. You know, you think of like the 9090, 90 rule, but comfortable seating. We need to make sure that our students are comfortable so that they can actually get work done. Now, what does that look like? That looks like at least taking a mindful approach to looking at the students and just sharing with the teachers. Hey, as you're walking around the classroom, here's a few things that you can look for, because these will also impact behavior, as well as legibility when writing and so many other skills that students do in the classroom, so things like making sure that the that the kid can actually reach the ground while they're sitting in their chair, making sure that they're that the desk isn't like at eye level, and the kids trying to write with their hand up in the air, simple things like that, and then giving them a few accommodations that they can do really quickly, such as turning the trash can on its side and putting that under the student's desk so that they have something to put their feet on. Yes, it's only a temporary solution, but now that teacher is going to say, okay, what can I do to replace that trash can? And they're gonna come up with their own ideas. They don't even necessarily need your support. They will go from there. So that's tip number one that I like to do with teachers. I'm. Of the things that I like to do with teachers is to incorporate movement. So sometimes I will recommend a few different YouTube channels that incorporate yoga or other types of movement breaks, and let them know about that a little bit. And then the third thing that I really encourage teachers to think about is that just right challenge. And I kind of frame this around the kids who they feel need a little bit more support, right? In a general education classroom, the idea is that everything's the just right challenge, right? The kids are at third grade. They need to be working on third grade level work, but we know that there's going to be a few kids in that classroom that are struggling a little bit, and so just to be a little mindful about thinking about what accommodations might be able to be put in place when we see those two or three kids that are struggling just a little bit, how can we make their life a little bit easier so that the student knows that we're actually thinking about them and we're caring about them, and when I use the word we, I'm not just talking about us, OTPs, but the entire school, making them feel like we actually Understand them a little bit, because we do understand them a little bit, and we know that they're struggling. How can we support them just a little to boost their own confidence and to boost their ability to feel like they belong at school? So I hope those three things help a little bit, and I'd love to hear what you are doing with your general education teachers. Again, I find RTI, MTSS that idea of tiered intervention getting into the general education classrooms, fantastic. I see it as the future of OT and so, yeah, thank you for that question. I really appreciate it. And that's kind of a perfect segue to this next question, which comes from Meredith. And I like the bigger picture that Meredith is thinking here. And Meredith says I'm planning a huge presentation soon on all of my campuses. It will include what all school based OTs do, advocating for our students and the education to to school staff. I'm reaching out because she wants to know if I have any advice for helping her have a bigger voice in this movement. And when she uses the word movement, I kind of see that as being the RTI movement, which we just talked about a moment ago with Danielle from Hawaii. And I love this. This is something that I actually teach in my A to Z school based ot course, when we go through our RTI module, and it's how to get teachers on board a little bit. And I love the idea of doing a presentation for all the teachers at every school site that is tier one intervention. I think that's a great idea. What I would say, as far as bolstering your voice when it comes to that presentation, is, don't make it research heavy. Keep it quick and to the point, make it actionable. When you're coming up with the title, make sure that you are showing what exactly the teachers are going to get through that title, something like 10 things to do related to this, or the five things that OTs can support you with, something that's very easy to digest. And then, as I mentioned, I think just a second ago, make sure it's not too research heavy. One thing that I learned by going to conferences with my wife, who was a teacher, she's now an administrator, was that when she goes to conferences, her sessions are a lot shorter than sessions of OT conferences. You know, a lot of times we go to conferences and we expect a session to sometimes be two hours, three hours long, and that is not the case when I go to the conference with her. A lot of her sessions are, like, 50 minutes, and they're very quick. They're very action oriented, and yes, they show a little bit of the research, but it's not like they're there to to really dive into theory, you know, teachers want actionable things that they can do right now. And so if you can give them that, you're going to give, give them those quick wins, and they're going to remember you. They're going to remember what more you can do for them, and they're going to come back to you when they have a next question. And that's kind of why I again, in the last episode, Episode 94 I provided some handouts for you that you can create that quick win for a teacher by just leaving these handouts, potentially in the lounge or something that's really easy. Don't overthink it. Make it simple, make it digestible, and give the teachers what they need. Be sure that you're asking the teachers what they need before you do your presentation right. We want to know what do they need help with so that we can give them the answers they need, not just general questions or not just general answers, I guess so. Meredith, thank you so much for your question, and I really do hope that helps you get the ball rolling on your training, your in service for the teachers. I think it's fantastic that you're going to do that. And yeah, let me know how it goes when it happens, because I'd love to hear if it made progress, and how you're kind of tracking whether or not that progress is being made. Make sure that you have some sort of potential data point, even if it's just like how many referrals are coming in, so that you can kind of show your administrator. Hey, look, I did this training, and now I'm getting less referrals. I need to make sure that I'm doing this training. On a yearly basis, so we can keep this up all right now, this brings us to our final question for episode 95 and this comes from Emily. And Emily is actually a learner in my A to Z school based ot course, and as such, she submitted this question as part of our A to Z school based ot collaboration hours, which is a collaboration hour that we hold on Zoom every other week, where we come together and can ask me questions and work together as a team a little bit to help each other out. And so this is a a zoom call that we do, that you get access to when you're part of the A to Z school based ot course. So if you're interested in having more questions that I can help you with then check out the A to Z school based ot course at ot schoolhouse.com, forward slash A to Z. And so Emily asks, When taking on a new student with outdated goals and a soon approaching IEP meeting, can I update the goals without doing a comprehensive re evaluation my school IEP team tells me a brief informal assessment is enough. And the second part of Emily's question is this, what if Teacher reports new areas of concern, and I have limited time to access this new area, can I assess at a later time and try to write an IEP goal based upon the information that I have? So let's tackle the first part first where, what do you do when you take on a new student, potentially with some outdated goals? I think you're right on track here. Your IEP team is on track with you to say, You know what, let's update those goals. We don't need to do a full reevaluation, unless maybe it's a triennial has passed and OT was skipped for whatever reason. Then yes, let's do an evaluation. But either way, we should get started with new goals, and in order to do that, we should still get data on the old goals and then transition forward, even if a goal is potentially two years old, that doesn't mean that it has been tracked or that it has been met, and we need to know so really quickly, as quick as we can, maybe in a single session, get some data on those goals, and then at the IEP, or even an addendum, as we talked about earlier, you can update those goals. All right, you don't need a full reevaluation, unless it is time for a reevaluation. Now, in the second part of your question, Emily, you asked, What if a teacher reports new areas of concern and you have limited time to assess the new student? I think you actually started to answer your own question just fine, you know, go into that IEP, update those goals, and then if people bring new questions, new concerns to you, then you can stay at the IEP meeting. You know what? I didn't realize these were concerns. I have seen this and this, or I haven't seen this or that, but I would love to get more information for you and bring that back to the IEP team. Now, whether or not that's going to be a formal evaluation, that's up to you and the IEP team to feel out if you need a full evaluation, but maybe you just need to have a few sessions with that student, and you can figure it out from there. There are some cases where you might need to do a full evaluation. If it's something related to sensory like we talked about earlier, we shouldn't be implementing sensory interventions without having a sensory based evaluation. So you might need a full evaluation, or at least a an evaluation that looks more into the sensory before implementing those strategies. So I hope that helps your question, Emily, and for everyone listening, I hope that answers at least one question that you had about school based OT, because, yeah, as I even mentioned, I think back in the third question about handwriting speed, that's not something that I had thought about, and so that's something that I need more information on. You know, there's always something more to learn. And by asking questions, if one person asks a question, it's very likely that another person has the same questions. So that's how I feel about questions. So I'm so happy to all of you that did submit a question, and if you didn't, that's okay too. Maybe you just weren't sure how this was going to work. This is the I think this is the first time I've done like a Q A on the podcast. But now that you know, go ahead and submit your voicemail question at ot schoolhouse.com forward slash question, and maybe you will hear your question here on the OT school house podcast, along with a little answer from myself or maybe someone else. Maybe we'll have another guest to answer some questions. Who knows? We'll keep doing this, though, a little bit I've enjoyed this. I hope you have as well. I hope this helps you in your endeavors as a school based occupational therapist or a school based occupational therapy assistant. I really appreciate having you here today, and I look forward to supporting you further. Stay tuned for ot month, when we are going to have four very special episodes every single Monday coming out in the month of April. I'm excited for that. I'm going to do something that is very popular, but I'm going to do it in my own way, the only way that I know how, via a podcast. So stick around for that, and I will see you in the first Monday of April. Take care everyone. Have a great rest of your day, and I will see you next time bye. 

Amazing Narrator   

Thank you for listening to the OT schoolhouse podcast for more ways to help you and your students succeed right now, head on over to otsoolhouse.com Until next time class is dismissed

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