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The community-based learning community for school-based OTPs looking to make an impact! Unlimited CEUs Live-online Mentorship Every Last One of Our Resources Join the OT Schoolhouse Collaborative, where we provide all of the necessary tools to help you implement evidence-based practices in your schools. GET INSTANT ACCESS Kelsey K. School-based OT Jhenny R. School-Based OT Talia G. School-Based OT In the OT Schoolhouse Collaborative, we are putting an end to the "learn but never implement " cycle that OTPs often experience after attending PD courses. Our goal in the Collaborative is not to learn more best practices. Our goal is to help you implement best practic es . With our practitioner-powered professional development community , you will benefit from things like: 12+ hours of LIVE-online AOTA- approved sessions every year 30+ on-demand AOTA- approved CEU courses Over 75 templates, handouts, resources, and tools to share and make your own (Plus new tools every month!) Group Mentorship Calls, where you can ask your most pressing school-based OT questions And the ability to receive ongoing support from the OT Schoolhouse team and your colleagues . Here are some of o ur recent and upcoming AOTA-approved courses: Price Only available to members of OTS Collab Live (recorded) on: March 19, 2026 Duration This course is 1.5 hour in length. (0.15 AOTA CEUs) Learn More Price Only available to members of OTS Collab Live (recorded) on: January 21, 2026 Duration This course is 1 hour in length. (0.1 AOTA CEUs) Learn More Price Only available to members of OTS Collab Live (recorded) on: December 17, 2025 Duration This course is 1 hour in length. (0.1 AOTA CEUs) Learn More VIEW ALL COURSES OT Schoolhouse is proud to be an OTS Collab gives you the education, resources, and support you need to make changes in your school-based OT programs. 01 Highly specific course material Attend highly specific, action-oriented courses directly related to school-based OT. You may attend live or watch the replay to learn from our speakers who have your best interest in mind. 02 Mentorship Group Calls Engage in group mentorship meetings where we review current research and create plans to improve outcomes for our students. Hosted by Jayson, these live and recorded calls are designed to meet your needs. 03 Ongoing community support Utilize our resources and research library to make changes to your practice and ask for feedback along the way. Share what worked, what didn't, and how others can do what you did. By combining professional development courses from leaders in the field with a community of professionals dedicated to school-based OT, you will be ready to take what you learn and implement best practices to better support your students. Each month in OTS Collaborative, we host: One highly specific live professional development course. And one "Ask Anything" Collaboration hour, where no question is off limits. Ask Jayson and the community anything you'd like in a live Zoom call. Plus, all courses, team meetings, and collaboration hours are recorded, so you can catch anything you missed at your convenience. What members are saying? The OT Schoolhouse Collaborative may be new, but we already have therapists thrilled to be a part of this community-powered professional development community! Here is what they are saying: "Having other OTs to collaborate within a safe place is exactly what I have been looking for." "In the OTS Collab, I know I have a group of people in the same boat as me that I could lean on for help, vent to, and share my wins with." "THANK YOU for organizing this!" The support continues long after the courses are over inside OTS Collab. In addition to the live events, you will also receive tons of support and the just-right amount of accountability in our private community. Studies show you are 42% more likely to reach a goal that you declare publicly. But when we attend a professional development course, we often head right back to work without any time dedicated to reflecting on what we learned, developing a goal, and creating a plan. In OTS Collab, we help you to develop goals you can take action on in your practice. The days of attending a course to implement only 1% of what you learned are over. It's time to incorporate best practices, not just learn them. The OT Schoolhouse team and OTS Collab Members are here to support you in our dedicated community portal. Learn More Earn Professional Development. Collaborate with your people. Implement best practices. $39 9 per year SECURE YOUR SPOT HERE Member Pricing SECURE YOUR SPOT HERE Interested in a group rate? Contact us here OTPs Supporting OTPs A safe place to ask questions, seek research and therapy interventions, commit to growth challenges, and generally learn and grow without fear of judgment or rejection. Relationship-building opportunities with like-minded school-based OT practitioners that can yield solutions to problems, lead to job opportunities, and establish friendships. First access and discounts to new content and other offerings from the OT Schoolhouse. A community that welcomes members from diverse backgrounds, including race, ethnicity, gender, orientation, neurodiversity, and physical ableness. A focused environment to accelerate professional growth and networking due to the absence of fluff content, noisy discussion channels, advertisers, and recruiters. A privacy-first attitude toward all current and future aspects of OTS Collab. The OTS Collab is a place for occupational therapy practitioners who are serious about using strengths-based and best practices to support all students accessing their educational curriculum. We promote and encourage knowledge translation, collaboration, thorough evaluations, tiered interventions, and the creation of evidence through documentation to support students. Feel like it's a match? Outstanding! We can't wait to support you inside the OT Schoolhouse Collaborative! Join Today Community Fun & Emotional Support While fun and professional development are not always mentioned in the same sentence, we know as mental health providers that all work and no play does not make for a great day. That is why we like to have some fun within OTS Collab. The school year is long. So to break up the grind and let out some steam, we like to have an occasional OTS Collab celebration to acknowledge all the hard work we put in as OT practitioners. Your Community Managers Supporting you to achieve your school-based OT goals, whether you are an experieinced therapist or just getting started in the schools. Jayson Davies, MA, OTR/L Jayson is the host of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast and has been emersed in school-based OT for over a decade. He is a husband, father, and dog dad who loves to spend time with his family. Jayson loves school-based OT because he believes that all students deserve to have access to education no matter their abilities. Jayson aspires to be a school district administrator and have a larger impact on staff development and student success. Favorite OT Model: P-E-O Location: Southern California Pets: TJ, a black lab/staffie Favorite aspect of SBOT Jayson loves seeing teachers have success with students. He believes that it is important for both the student and the teacher, that they succeed together. This builds vital rapport among both individuals. Love of Community As a new therapist, Jayson was fortunate to work in a district where the OTs met monthly. But that didn't happen in his second job. Jayson appreciates the ideas and growth that come as a result of OTs gathering. Interesting fact about Jayson Jayson lacks pain sensation on the left side of his face as a suspected result of trauma to the Trigeminal nerve when he was younger. He attributes this to one of the reasons he wanted to become an OT. Favorite OT Model: Kawa Model Location: Ch icago, Illi nois Favorite Activities: Dancing, outdoor activities, traveling, and reading Chandler Sárközi, MOT, OTR/L Chandler is an occupational therapist who began her career as a travel clinician, supporting preschool, middle school, and transition-aged students up to age 22. Prior to graduate school, she worked at a nonprofit school for Autism that utilized the DIR/Floortime model—an experience that deeply shaped her relational and developmental lens. Through her clinical work and global travel experiences, Chandler has developed a culturally responsive approach grounded in compassion, curiosity, and collaboration. She approaches her work with a holistic lens, recognizing that meaningful progress happens when children, families, and educators are supported together. She prioritizes authentic relationships and interprofessional collaboration to create cohesive, goal-aligned support systems that are sustainable and contextually responsive. Chandler is passionate about strengthening caregivers as a way to strengthen entire communities, and she aspires to one day develop innovative, developmentally informed schools in underserved areas—creating environments that empower both children and those who support them. Interesting facts about Chandler Chandler has played the violin since she was seven years old and was a part of her school orchestra for eight years. She has a love for music, languages, and has traveled to over 30 countries and over 30 states. OTS Collaborative Community + Professional Development + Mentorship JOIN NOW Important FAQs That's a lot of information. Still, you may have questions. Here are some important ones to know about as you consider joining. Is there a cost to joining OTS Collaborative? Yes. The OTS Collab is a paid membership. Members can cancel their subscriptions at any time inside the community or by clicking here . Do I have to participate in all the live events? How much time does this community require? You can spend as much (or as little) time as you'd like in the community. All events are optional and recorded in case you'd like to watch them at a later time. We host three 1-hour live events each month on Wednesday and Thursday evenings. One of the three events is a live AOTA-approved professional development course. Some members attend each of the three live events and post or comment in the community a few times a week. Other members attend some of the events and occasionally post in the community. You get to choose what works best for you. What platform is used for OTS Collab? We did a ton of research on various membership platforms before making our choice. Ultimately, we chose Circle. Think of Circle as a cross between Facebook Groups and LinkedIn, but without the need to have a profile out in the open. Courses and other events are held on Zoom. Does OT Schoolhouse Collaborative include access to the Back to School Conference? It does not. While the OT Schoolhouse Collaborative includes a great amount of support, it does not include admission to the annual Back to School Conference. However, as an OT Schoolhouse Collaborative member, you will be able to save and get the best available price for the Back to School Conference. Once a member, check out the "Start Here" space for more details. Will professional development be AOTA-approved? All live and recorded professional development courses are AOTA-approved. Podcast Courses are the exception. They will not be approved for AOTA credit, but you can still earn a certificate of completion. As a reminder, NBCOT and most states do not require courses to be approved by AOTA. Be sure to check your state guidelines. Can I earn professional development from the podcast without being an OTS Collab member? Yes, you can. However, we feel that the community aspect within OTS Collab helps therapists to incorporate the knowledge they learn into practical use and student outcomes. Can I register via purchase order? Absolutely. We accept purchase orders for annual membership plans. Click here to learn how. What is the refund policy? We do not offer refunds for OTS Collab. However, you may cancel your subscription at any time. Do you have Community Guidelines? Absolutely, we do. You can read them here. Still have questions? Contact us here. $39 9 per year SECURE YOUR SPOT HERE Member Pricing SECURE YOUR SPOT HERE Interested in a group rate? Contact us here OTS Collaborative Community + Professional Development + Mentorship JOIN NOW

OTS Collaborative Community Guidelines Hey there! We are excited to support you and learn how you will support others in the OT Schoolhouse Collaborative Community. OTS Collab is a place to connect with others, ask questions about school-based OT, and have conversations about everything school-based OT. The community is only great because our members make it great. Please help us to keep OTS Collab a place where all OT practitioners feel safe, welcomed, and heard by reading and complying with our Code of Conduct. Code of Conduct OTS Collab is an inclusive conference community intended to help members connect with one another and grow their capacity as school-based OT practitioners. The dos: ❤️ BE KIND Be kind to each other. Use welcoming and inclusive language, be respectful to others’ viewpoints and culture, even when they differ from your own Behave professionally. This is a safe space for OTPs to network, brainstorm, learn, and collaborate. Be inclusive. This is a community of humans from all over the globe 🧠 Be Mindful Be aware. Respect each other’s digital boundaries. We all experience the internet differently, so it’s important to remember that personal space exists online as well. Be thoughtful. Become a pro at active listening and know when it’s time to let others speak. Be purposeful. Maintain interactions with other members that are driven by good intent. 👍 BE COMMITTED Be involved. The value of this community lies in your commitment to participating; get involved, ask for and offer feedback, and utilize the resources available. Be open to feedback. Accept feedback gracefully, and offer helpful and kind constructive criticism. Share your perspective! The do nots: No solicitation This is not a place to solicit other programs. Mentioning programs relevant to the discussions is allowed. Non-disclosure and intellectual property agreement Do not quote anyone outside of the OTS Community without permission and do not share anything told to you in confidence or private messages. No Spamming or infringing on other people’s ideas or content, including that of the OT Schoolhouse, without expressed permission. How we moderate: Members asked to stop any inappropriate or unacceptable behavior are expected to comply with OTS team requests immediately. Behavior that violates our Community Guidelines will be met with appropriate action, which may include: Gentle reminders of the Community Guidelines Firm warnings and removal of inappropriate content Removal from the community without refund or eligibility to reapply in the future We have a zero-tolerance policy for harassment and sexual advances. We maintain the right to determine the consequences of any issue at our discretion and are under no obligation to share our findings or determinations beyond the individual involved. How to report issues: Reach out to your Community Manager directly with serious concerns You can directly message us in the community or email J ayson@otschoolhouse.com We look forward to supporting you! No person is perfect, no community is perfect, and no guidelines are perfect. As we grow, learn, and change together, these community guidelines must also evolve so that we can continue to make OTS Collab a safe and inclusive space that is mindful and considerate of all experiences. Being a member of OTS Collab means you are committed to embracing learning, even when it’s hard. Be available to educate and learn from each other with kindness. Be open to feedback and avoid becoming defensive when things may seem challenging. Mistakes can be a powerful teaching moment when used with compassion and empathy. As a community, we’re thankful for our members embracing this process with us. Join OTS Collab OTS Collaborative Community + Professional Development + Mentorship

Here we recommend books, apps, treatment tools, and other products that OTs, COTAs teachers, and parents can use to help their developing students. RECOMMENDED RESOURCES & GOODIES THE TOOLS I USE TO ENSURE EFFECTIVE AND ETHICAL SERVICES On this page, you will find resources that I use on a regular basis as treatments, resources, and IEP related guides to better myself as a clinician. These resources will be updated to help you find the best therapy tools we, and others, offer. We may even post a few places to buy a product if we feel that it might be beneficial to you. Free Gray-Space Paper Package Just subscribe here to get the paper! I created this paper to help my students learn to space, size, and place their letters on the line You can download your unlimited use document now by subscribing below! Want to know more before subscribing? Visit here to learn more about how, why, and for whom I developed this paper. The OT School House Podcast Do you enjoy free podcasts? How about a podcast that is dedicated to the intricacies of school-based OT? Every other week I produce a new episode of The OT School House Podcast where a special guest and I talk about a specific topic. You can even earn professional development for listening in. Earn Continuing Education Credit as you listen during your commute or anywhere else you listen to podcasts Interactive OT Practice Map OTs from all over the USA, and the world for that matter, rely on this site for guidance in their school based-practice. For that reason, we put together this interactive map that can help you find your state's OT practice guidelines for school-based therapy. Unfortunately, not every state has guidelines for school-based OT practice... yet. If your state is one of those which don't yet have guidelines, we encourage you to look at some of the other states documents to see what they have to offer. Click here for this resource Professional Development Course Are you new to School-Based OT or thinking about becoming a School-Based OT? If so, I have the perfect course for you! The A-Z School-Based OT course is designed to teach you how to support students through effective RTI strategies, thorough and efficient evaluations, efficient SMART-E goals, treatment planning for success, and providing services in the least restrictive environment. If you would like to learn all that you need to be a School-Based OT in 8 hours as opposed to 5 years of learning on the job, join me in this self-paced online course! Lean more! Want to know when we have more Resources for you? Subscribe now to receive our weekly school-based OT digest!

Interviews, trainings, and discussions about common school-based OT topics Mentoring for the new or transitioning therapist We each deserve to have someone to help us navigate the school-based OT world. Listen on Apple Podcasts Earn Professional development for Listening Why This Podcast Exists I am a huge Podcast fan! It's one of my favorite ways to benefit from both my long and short commutes between home and schools. So now, I would like to give every school-based OT the opportunity to learn on the go with me and over 4000 other therapists. In each episode, I discuss how we can improve ourselves as school-based OTs and improve the outcomes for our students. I also bring on guests and get their take on school-based OT and what they are doing to help their students succeed. So please, join me and many other school-based OTs for the show. It will be a pleasure to have you! View episodes below Do you want to learn more about every aspect of being a school-based OT with Jayson? Join more then 200 other therapists in the A-Z School-Based OT course to receive a comprehensive understanding of school-based OT with 8+ hours of valuable content & over 25 templates and editable documents. Learn more about the course here Podcast Episodes & Show Notes Episodes List Screenings in SBOT Episode 59 cover art OT in Preschool Episode 58 Art Telehealth Evals & Ethics Episode 57 Art Telehealth Guidance, Practice, & Research Art for Episode 56 Part 2 - Back To School During a Pandemic Podcast Cover art - Back To School Plans During a Pandemic Part 2 Back To School Plans During a Pandemic Back to schools during a pandemic occupational therapy OT school house The Collaborative Process OT & Teacher Perspectives Complex Behaviors Landing a School-Based OT Job OT & Homeschooling Teletherapy in a Pandemic Show More Earn continuing education by listening to The OT School House Podcast! Podcast PD First, select and listen to an episode Then, purchase and pass the quiz Check your email for your certificate of completion Start by listening to & purchasing the corresponding episode opportunity Podcast or "Podclass" If you already listened to the podcast episodes, you can now get a certificate of completion for your professional development needs in as little as 5 minutes! The OT School House Podcast is 100% free to listen to and you pay only IF you need the professional development units associated with the course. Don't need the PDU's? Then feel free to listen for free. The professional development opportunity will still be here if and when you need those extra NBCOT units. To earn professional development for your NBCOT renewal via the OT School House Podcast, simply listen to the episode, order the professional development opportunity you wish to complete, and take a short quiz demonstrating you understood the content from the episode. The quizzes are 10 questions long and when you pass, we will send you your certificate of completion. Simple as that! No expensive fees! No traveling! And no nights away from your family (and students) in a hotel. Testimonials "I absolutely love this podcast and that I am able to earn PD/CEUs by doing what I already do all the time..... listen to podcasts!!" -Laura Wills, OTR/L " I found your podcast today and was so happy to find it! I love podcasts and listen to many different podcasts on my 50 min commute to work. I've been thinking for a while about wanting to learn about my job on my drive, but other OT podcasts I've tried were not great. I'm really impressed with your podcast! It's informative, yet not boring. I've been an OT for 4 1/2 years and worked at my job- an ABA private school for 4 years in July. (I also used to work PRN at a community hospital.) A lot of the content of your podcast is exactly what I want/need! Thank you for making your podcast!" -Sarah Szymanski Horn, OTR/L Frequently Asked Questions Is the OT School House Podcast an AOTA approved provider of continuing education? No, it is not. However, it is not required to be an AOTA approved provider in order to issue professional development units. Will NBCOT accept these units to meet my recertification needs? Yes! You can read for yourself the NBCOT guidelines for what constitutes a qualified professional development course using the link below. Click here to see what counts toward NBCOT renewal (See # 14, The OT School House constitutes as a "Third-party entity") Will my state licensure board accept this as professional development? This depends on your state. While NBCOT guidelines are clear that they will accept this form of professional development, every state has its own set of guidelines. We are not yet an AOTA approved provider of continuing education. Click here to see what counts toward NBCOT renewal (See # 14) Click here to see what your state's OT board requires The Podcast is free to listen to, why aren't the certificates of completion? Our vision is to one day be able to provide free continuing education certificates to all listeners because we know from your emails that you feel that this is, in fact, professional development. Unfortunately, it does cost money and time to produce this podcast and the necessary materials in order to offer continuing education credit. We will continue to produce the OT School House Podcast for as long as we can because we love OT and we love to share knowledge. Professional development is only useful if it is accessible. That's why it is our mission to get credible research and information to as many therapists as possible. The guests on this show do earn a small percentage of each sale and the rest goes back into making this resource possible for you. We thank you in advance for supporting us by purchasing our professional development course and using our embedded links to other sites that help us earn small commissions. Are podcasts as effective as attending a course? Short Answer: Yes Recent statistics have shown that nearly than 50% of the US population is now listening to podcasts. And we know from our podcast stats that over 3000 OTs, COTAs, Teachers, and other professionals are looking to enhance their abilities to help students by listening to each episode of the OTSH podcast. From our surveys, a majority of our customers say that our professional development podcast courses are as effective as live courses. Everyone learns slightly different, but when you enjoy the experience you are likely to get the most benefit! Can I earn Professional Development for every Episode? Not every episode will have an opportunity for professional development to be earned. And that is because not every episode meets our standards for what we think qualifies as professional development. Episodes with special guests sharing research and episodes where we put the effort into research materials for you to use with your students and peers are the ones that are likely to make the cut. But don't worry, we'll let you know which ones will be available to earn units for at the beginning of each episode from here on out. So when you're driving home, listening at the gym, or listening by the pool, know now that what you are listening to can save you time because you have the ability to earn your necessary professional development while engaging in your everyday occupations. Will the OT School House Podcast continue to be free? Yes, you will still be able to access each and every episode for free where ever you listen now. Only pay when you want to demonstrate that you have listened to the podcast in order to earn professional development units. The last thing we would want to do is take away education for all. Do You Have Something To Share With Listeners of The OT School House Podcast If so, click here to get in touch with us Looking for More? Click on a button below! About Us Reduce Referrals School House Goodies

Do you have a service or product that you think aligns with the OT School House Brand? Sponsor the Podcast here! OT School House Partners Interested in partnering with the OT School House Podcast? Email Jayson to learn about sponsorship opportunities for each OT School House podcast episode and on the OT School House Website. Below is a graphic that outlines why sponsoring the OT School House Podcast may be right for your brand! Have a listen to some of our recent podcast episodes below Episode 13 Reviewing the Research: Handwriting Episode 37 Preventing Burnout Episode 36 Every Moment Counts Inclusive Education Episode 31 Unpacking Dysgraphia Episode 28 Preventing, Defending, and Conducting IEEs Episode 26 Sensory Integration & Sensory Strategies in Schools The OT School House Podcast is currently sponsored by DoubleTimeDocs.com Helping you to write great OT and PT reports in a fraction of the time! Use Promo Code OTSH20 for 20% your first order! View more here! If it sounds like the OT School House Podcast and Audience align with your brand and needs, email Jayson at Jayson@OTSchoolHouse.com for a complete list of sponsorship opportunities.

The self-paced course for school-based OT practitioners covering everything from RTI and evaluations to student graduation The self-paced course for school-based OT practitioners covering everything from RTI and evaluations to student graduation " Every aspect was fantastic. Every OT working in the schools should take this course . Thank you, Jayson for all you hard work." Tara Larson M.S. OTR/L A-Z School-Based OT Course Participant Print Registration form Waitlist The A-Z School-Based OT Course will be reopening March 19th! Join the waitlist to be the first to know when registration is open * Not seeing a form to join the waitlist, try accessing this page on Google Chrome or Firefox. Still not working? Send me a quick email & I will add you! Hi, I'm Jayson & I am a School-Based OT You and I, w e can both be great school-based practitioners! My name is Jayson Davies, and over the past decade I have worked closely with all kinds of professionals in the educational realm to better understand occupational therapy in the educational world. I even started the OT School House Podcast in 2017 so I could converse with more school-based OTs and help OTs around the world better understand SBOT. All of these experiences has led me to helping more therapists through the creation of this very course! As an OT practitioner looking to improve yourself as a therapist, you may be hoping to become a more thorough evaluator. Or perhaps you are curious about learning how to incorporate a Response to Intervention (RTI) program as a way to slow down your growing evaluation list & caseload. You may want to learn how to move from your evaluation, through the IEP process, and into the fun part where you get to work with the kids! If that is the case, the A-Z School-based OT course is right for you! We are going to walk through the process of being a therapist in an educational world. We will start with creating an RTI program and only continue form there into referrals, evaluations, PLOPs & goal planning, and then on to services. From there, we will look at effecting planing to help manage the ever growing OT caseload and the ethical graduation of students with OT. Unfortunately, OT programs do not yet put enough focus on school-based OT despite estimates that 20-25% of OTs and OTAs work in the educational realm. Likewise, continuing education courses tend to focus on individual treatment models as opposed to the systems and educational aspects of school-based OT. The A-Z School-Based OT course is designed to teach you how to support students through effective RTI strategies, thorough and efficient evaluations, efficient SMART-E goals, treatment planning for success, and providing services in the least restrictive environment. I hope you will join me today and start down the path to fully understanding school-based OT and how we can efficiently and effectively help more students! I also look forward to meeting you soon in our A-Z School-Based OT Office hours! (More on that in just a second!) -Jayson Davies, MA, OTR/L Waitlist Registration form A-Z School-Based OT Course Curriculum 8 strategically organized modules walking you through the process as a School-Based OT step by step Module 1 The scope of OT in schools (50 minutes) Module 2 OT in general education and RTI (67 minutes) Module 3 The referral and evaluation process (83 minutes) Module 4 Preparing for the IEP PLOPs goals, & accommodations (61 minutes) Module 5 Preparing for the IEP OT services in schools (68 minutes) Module 6 Presenting at the IEP team meeting (53 minutes) Module 7 After the IEP (86 minutes) Module 8 Graduating student from occupational therapy services (86 minutes) Bonus Module Getting organized (35 minutes) What's Included? The recorded modules are just the beginning! What's a course without all the supplemental materials? Well, here is what you will receive when you sign up for A-Z School-Based OT. Access to all 8 training modules broken up into 20-60 minute easily digestible videos and totaling 9.5 hours of material. Access to the Private Student Center that will allow you to seek advice from Jayson and your peers in the A-Z School-Based OT Course Access to monthly LIVE Q&A sessions (Office hours) with Jayson via private Zoom sessions! Access to digital PDF reference handouts that will make your job easier and keep you organized. Access to customizable word and digital templates including Jayson's evaluation template and annual report template A certificate of completion for 9.5 contact hours good for your certification and licensure renewal where applicable (Pease refer to your state guidelines to determine if your state accepts live and/or recorded online course for renewal) BONUS ORGANIZATIONAL VIDEO for those of you who are just transitioning into the school-based setting or who are starting at a new school site. This video will help teach you how to get organized at your new site and provide tips for your first few weeks on campus. Get instant access to the course & Extras! Waitlist More than just a course! Continue learning with bonus materials & virtual interactions Editable Templates In addition to the course video and slides, You will also receive valuable handouts and templates that will guide you through the RTI, referral, evaluation, goals and services recommendations, intervention, and documentation processes. Many of these templates are editable and customizable to your need! Live Office Hours With Jayson Even with 8 hours of video content, I know you are going to have questions. So, I have set time aside every month to answer your questions live in a private Zoom session. During the office hours I will be available to answer your questions directly, along with others who have taken the same course and have similar questions. Private A-Z SBOT Student Center Upon purchase, not only will you have full access to the content of the course, but you will also be welcomed into the Private A-Z SBOT Facebook Student Center where Jayson and other likeminded professionals are available to answer case specific questions. Ask for help and help other school-based OT practitioners! Course Objectives Yeah, We are going to cover a lot in this course. But dont worry! By breaking it down into modules, we'll get though it in a logical way that all comes together. Participants will: Identify the role of school based OTs as outlined by governing bodies and laws Recognize the key factors within the Educational Framework for Child Success Select an appropriate screening process under the Response To Intervention model Differentiate between the uses and procedures of a screening and an evaluation Identify the steps of moving through an IEP from present levels to recommending services Identify appropriate language and content to include in an IEP Identify how the frequency and type of service can impact a student engaging in the least restrictive environment. Recognize and acknowledge that participants of the IEP team have different views and perceptions of the IEP process Identify strategies to streamline the process of getting organized as a therapist Recognize ethical and logical methods to graduate a student from OT services when the time is right. Broken Down Module Objectives Scope of OT in Schools Identify the focus of occupational therapy in the schools identify the difference between 504 programs, Student Support Programs, and IEPs Recognize the history of occupational therapy in schools Identify national laws and state entities that govern the practices of therapist in schools OT in General Education Identify the importance of a pre-referral and referral process Identify the 3 tiers of RTI and how occupational therapy can support children and staff in all 3 tiers Identify the difference between a screening and an evaluations List the steps to complete a occupational therapy screening The Referral Process Identify the importance of a strong referral process Select the steps to a referral process Develop a referral form for your OT practice The Evaluation Process Identify the laws and timelines in completing an evaluation process identify the steps to completing a school-based occupational therapy evaluation Identify common tools used for OT evaluations in the schools Identify the components to evaluation report Identify how frequently to assess a student Present Levels, Goals, and Accommodations Recall what information to write in the present levels of an IEP Explain the process of moving from present levels to goals and services Describe the process of moving from present levels to services Demonstrate the ability to write SMART-E IEP goals Module Objectives Continued: OT Services List 5 common accommodations used in education Identify 4 types of services provided by OTs in schools Identify the difference between the 4 types of services Define the term LRE Use resources to identify the least restrictive service for a student Presenting at the IEP meeting List the steps to preparing for an IEP. Identify social communication skills to use in an IEP Identify the roles of each participant in an IEP List the pieces of information an IEP will need to report on in an IEP Intervention plan and documentation Recognize the difference between an intervention plan, an IEP, and a treatment plan Recognize the importance for using an intervention plan Identify how to save time by using digital documentation Identify how to document a daily treatment note Graduating students Identify how to start an evaluation to make increase the likelihood of ethically exiting a student for services Recognize the variable to consider when looking into exiting a student Identify the common procedures for graduating a student from OT services I promise, I have structured this course to make learning all this, super easy! Don't believe me? check out these reviews! "I highly recommend this course!" "Jayson does a great job of organizing all parts of a school therapist's job and making it seem not as overwhelming. The resources he provided were great! Also, for new therapists this is a great course to take to feel more confident in what your role is as a school-based OT. I I highly recommend this course!" Rebecca Olsen First Year School-Based OT One Time Cost A Lifetime of Knowledge It has taken me nearly 10 years to compile all of this knowledge and to create all of these resources. Now I want you to have them so you don't have to reinvent the wheel! Two easy ways to register now! A 1-time payment of $299 or Two payments of $150 Both options get you full access to the course and resources today! Plus, you will have access to the next office hours session! GET ACCESS NOW! Waitlist Group & Employee Enrollment Have your employer or district help you pay using the registration form! Enroll as a group! Get a discount! Have a group of 3 or more OT practitioners that want to take the course? Use the registration form to get a 10% discount for each attendee! Registration form About your Instructor Jayson has been a School-Based Occupational therapist for over 8 years in Southern California. In addition to his "day job" as a school-based OT, he created the OT School House Website and Podcast to support other occupational therapists transitioning to, or currently working in, the school system. In addition to working as a full time therapist and providing support to other therapists, Jayson also advises occupational therapy students at the university level and volunteer on committees for the Occupational Therapy Association of California. Jayson is the owner of Schoolhouse Education, LLC and OTSchoolhouse.com Great Value! I know, $299 seems a bit expensive, but when you consider the amount of time you will save with the knowledge and resources provided in this course, it will easily pay for itself! You will get access to time saving interactive documents like my evaluation template, Google Forms to make getting info from parents and teachers in minutes instead of days, and my flowchart that guides you in selecting the least restrictive service for a students based on the goals you have developed. Plus, you get lifetime access to this course and live office hours, meaning when I update the course and create new documents, you get them at no extra charge! How does that sound? Pretty good, I hope! Still have questions? Let's see if I cover them here Who is the OT Schoolhouse Goal Bank for? This Goal Bank is designed for school-based OTs and OTAs who frequently draft IEP, 504, and/or Student Support Team goals. Therapists will find that the the OT Schoolhouse Goal Bank saves them time and provide ideas for how to help students meet their goals. This Goal Bank is NOT designed for teachers, administrators, parents, or others looking to replace occupational therapy services from a licensed and/or registered OT professional. Will professional development be AOTA-approved? All live and recorded professional development courses are AOTA-approved. Podcast Courses are the exception. They will not be approved for AOTA credit, but you can still earn a certificate of completion. As a reminder, NBCOT and most states do not require courses to be approved by AOTA. Be sure to check your state guidelines. How many goals are in the goal bank? As of 1/1/2024, there are more than 25 goals in the bank and we aim to add 5 new goals each month. If you can't find a goal that fits your needs, you can use our goal request feature, and we will move your goal needs to the top of our list for goals to create. Can I earn professional development from the podcast or CEU courses without being a Collab member? Some OT Schoolhouse podcast episodes and individual CEU courses may be available outside of the Collaborative. However, membership provides the most consistent, cost-effective way to earn school-based professional development while staying current with evidence and best practices. How will I find the goals I need? We group the goals by skill (ex. Handwriting, sensory, executive function, etc.). However, you can also use our seacrh bar to find a goal the works for you. There is also a Bookmark feature available for you to easily find the goals you most frequently use. Is there a cost to joining The Collab? Yes. The Collab is a paid membership, and memberships do automatically renew each year until cancelled. You can cancel your subscriptions at any time inside the community and by clicking here.(https://collab.otschoolhouse.com/account/billing?tab=subscriptions) Do I have to participate in all the live events? How much time does this community require? You can spend as much (or as little) time as you'd like in the community. All events are optional and recorded in case you'd like to watch them at a later time. We host three 1-hour live events each month on Wednesday and Thursday evenings. One of the three events is a live AOTA-approved professional development course. Some members attend each of the three live events and post or comment in the community a few times a week. Other members attend some of the events and occasionally post in the community. You get to choose what works best for you. What if I cannot find a goal to meet my needs? Oh no, that wouldn't be good. While we cannot guarantee that we will have all the goals you will ever need. We can promise to help you write the goals you need. If you cannot find a goal to fit your needs, Use our Goal Request form to request a goal and add it to the bank. Share with us what you are thinking and we will work to create a new goal for you and the bank. What platform is used for OTS Collab? We did a ton of research on various membership platforms before making our choice. Ultimately, we chose Circle. Think of Circle as a cross between Facebook Groups and LinkedIn, but without the need to have a profile out in the open. Courses and other events are held on Zoom and a similar video hosting platform How long will I have access to the goal bank? Great question. As long as you remain subscribed to the monthly or annual goal bank payment plan, you will have access to the goal bank. You can end your plan at any time by clicking here.(https://collab.otschoolhouse.com/account/billing?tab=subscriptions) Does The Collab include access to the Back to School Conference? Impact members receive full access to the OT Schoolhouse Back to School Conference at no additional cost. This includes live attendance, access to session recordings, and the opportunity to earn AOTA-approved CEUs. It’s intentionally included as part of the Impact experience to support learning, reflection, and implementation at a key point in the year. Note: Access to the Back to School Conference is not included with the Essentials membership. Is the goal bank free? There is a cost to access the goal bank. Why? Maintaining the bank and continuing to create goals worth using takes time, energy, and software. We put in many hours a week to help you save time and to have a great experience with the goal bank. Rest assured that if and when best practices change, we will be there to update past goals and create new goals to reflect those practices? If there a refund policy? We do not offer refunds for the OTS Goal Bank. However, you may cancel your subscription at any time. Can I register via purchase order? Absolutely. We accept purchase orders for annual membership plans. Click here to learn how.(https://otschoolhouse.forms.ac/otscpo) Do I already have access to the goal bank? If you are a member of the OT Schoolhouse Collaborative,(otschoolhouse.com/collab) then yes, you do have access to the goal bank as part of your membership. If you are not a member of The Collaborative, then you can subscribe to the goal bank here. (https://collab.otschoolhouse.com/checkout/the-school-based-ot-goal-bank) What is the refund policy? We do not offer refunds for either tier of The Collab. However, you may cancel your subscription at any time. Do you have Community Guidelines? Absolutely, we do. You can read them here.(https://editor.wix.com/html/editor/web/renderer/render/document/cea483a3-93fa-4187-bba6-a80ecb53a12e/communityguidelines) Still have questions? Contact us at Contact@otschoolhouse.com(Contact@otschoolhouse.com) How is the A-Z School-based OT course presented? The A-Z School-based OT course is a recorded, learn at your own pace course. Unlike some recorded seminars, this is not a "previously recorded session." This compilation of videos were recorded directly for the purpose of this online course. Will I earn Continuing Education for participation? Schoolhouse Education, LLC is an AOTA approved provider of continuing education and this course is an approved course. At the completion of the course, you will have the opportunity to demonstrate your learned knowledge through an online quiz. Upon completion of this quiz, you will receive your certificate of completion for 9.5 hours worth of continuing education. The assignment of AOTA CEUs does not imply endorsement of specific course content, products, or clinical procedures by AOTA. https://static.wixstatic.com/media/undefined What's the difference between The Essentials and The Impact tiers? The Essentials tier ($249/year) includes unlimited CEUs, access to the OTP Lounge for community support, access to resources associated with CEU courses, and the A-Z School-Based OT Course. The Impact tier includes all of these benefits plus live group mentorship, the full library of resources, access to the OT Schoolhouse Goal bank, AI tools trained by school-based OT practitioners, research briefs, and access to the Back to School Conference. Is the A-Z School-Based OT Course for me? The A-Z School-Based OT Course is designed for occupational therapy providers who are relatively new to the school setting, who are ready to take the leap to school-based OT, or experienced therapists ready to revamp their systems and become more organized therapists. Both novice therapists and therapists with a few years of experience will appreciate the handouts, templates and everyday tips that will help create an organized occupational therapy system at your school. More experienced therapists may appreciate hearing how Jayson provides RTI services in general and special education classes as a means to help more students in an effective manner. Educational content is rated as introductory with some intermediate concepts in the area of Response to Intervention (RTI). AOTA uses the following definitions to grade educational levels: Introductory—Information is geared to practitioners with little or no knowledge of the subject matter. Focus is on providing general introductory information. Intermediate—Information is geared to practitioners with a general working knowledge of current practice trends and literature related to the subject matter. Focus is on increasing understanding and competent application of the subject matter." Can Essentials members attend the Back to School Conference? Access to the Back to School Conference is not included in the Essentials Tier. If you would like to attend the Back to School Conference, you may purchase that separately at an additional cost. The Impact Tier provides the most cost effective way to attend the Back to School Conference. Are the CEUs in the Essentials tier truly unlimited? Yes, they are. Essentials Tier Members can access the A-Z School-Based OT Course (https://www.otschoolhouse.com/a2z)as well as all courses listed at OTSchoolhouse.com/courses (https://www.otschoolhouse.com/courses)for as long as your membership remains active. What is the cost to me and can I pay via a purchase order? The total cost of the A-Z School-Based OT Course is $399. This price includes all recorded sessions, slides handouts, customizable templates that you can use the next day, and lifetime access to the Student Center and Q&A office hour sessions. You may also opt to have your district or employer pay via a purchase order. to submit a purchase order, please email us at Registration@otschoolhouse.com(Registration@otschoolhouse.com) For even more support, you may appreciate the OT Schoolhouse Collaborative where you can access this course and many others. Learn more here. (otschoolhouse.com/collab) Will my membership auto-renew? Yes, memberships are set up as annual subscriptions that will automatically renew each year. You'll receive renewal reminder emails before your membership renews, and you can manage your subscription settings at any time to cancel or modify your membership. What if I don't like the course? Oh no! We don't want that. We offer a 30-day money back guarantee. If you are unhappy with the A-Z School-Based OT Course for any reason, let us know and we will refund your payment within 30 days. We may ask a question or two, but it would only be find out how we can improve the course better for future participants. No hard feelings, I promise! This does not apply to the OT Schoolhouse Collaborative. OT Schoolhouse Collaborative purchases are non-refundable. Will I be taking the course alone? Absolutely not! Everyday, therapists just like you login and learn from this course. As a student of the course, you will have access to all videos as well as a private Learner Center with myself and the other participants. Over 800 therapists have registered for and benefited from this same course. Will The Collab help me get a job in the schools? Many OTPs have told us the courses we offer in The Collab helped them to secure a school-based job. While we do not frequently provide content around applying and interviewing for jobs, the content you'll learn in the community will absolutely help you during your job search. Aside from the live videos, what else will I receive? Let’s be honest, the best part of a presentation are the slides, right? Well, you are going to get all of my slides and more! Along with the slides to my presentation, you will also receive several handouts and templates designed for you to customize and use in your practice! This includes the evaluation template that I use and the treatment plan template to help you guide your student outcomes. I'll even show you how to easily digitize your records. You will also be invited to join our private Learner Center where your questions and ideas can be shared and responded to by myself and the OT Schoolhouse Team. We're here to support you! What equipment/tools will I need to complete the course? You will need a computer or smart device with an internet connection to access the course. Videos cannot be downloaded to your device and must be watched while connected to the internet. All files (slides and resources) may be downloaded and/or copied to your Google Drive or Microsoft Cloud What if I need accommodations or support in accessing the course material? The A-Z school based OT course uses an audiovisual platform That allows for making the video presentation full-screen on your device (use of a computer recommended) and allows for you to adjust the volume to your desired volume. Likewise, you will have the opportunity to play, pause, and re-listen to the content for clarity if needed. Handouts of the slides are provided to all participants AI generated subtitles for the video content is available, but may not be 100% accurate. If you feel that you might require additional accommodations to access the course, please reach out to info@otschoolhouse.com (info@otschoolhouse.com)prior to registering for the course. For questions about your billing or accessing the course materials, email help@otschoolhouse.com.(help@otschoolhouse.com) If you have a question about how you put the course methods to work in your own practice, we encourage you to ask those in the Learner Center or at the Office Hours with Jayson. How is the Caseload to Workload Workshop presented? The Caseload to Workload Workshop is a recorded, learn at your own pace course. Unlike some recorded seminars, this is not a "previously recorded session." This compilation of videos were recorded directly for the purpose of this online course. The workshop also includes optional assignments that are designed to facilitate your ability to make the shift to a workload model and get the support you need. Learners who have completed the assignments also report increased results when meeting with their administrators. Will I earn Continuing Education for participation? Schoolhouse Education, LLC is an AOTA approved provider of continuing education and this course is an approved course. At the completion of the course, you will have the opportunity to demonstrate your learned knowledge through an online quiz. Upon completion of this quiz, you will receive your certificate of completion for 4 hours worth of continuing education. The assignment of AOTA CEUs does not imply endorsement of specific course content, products, or clinical procedures by AOTA. https://static.wixstatic.com/media/undefined Is the A-Z School-Based OT Course for me? The Caseload to Workload Workshop is designed for school-based OT practitioners looking to effectively manage their caseloads and transition to a workload approach. It provides strategies, tools, and resources to help OTs streamline their workload and enhance their impact on student outcomes. If you are tired of working 45, 50, or 60 hours per week, this course is for you. I will help you show your administrators that your program is not sustainable and that something must change. What is the cost to me and can I pay via a purchase order? The total cost of the Make The Shift: Caseload to Workload Workshop is $299. This price includes all recorded sessions, slides handouts, customizable templates that you can use the next day, and lifetime access to the Student Center and Q&A collaboration hour sessions. You may also opt to have your district or employer pay via a purchase order. to submit a purchase order, please email us at Registration@otschoolhouse.com (Registration@otschoolhouse.com) For even more support, you may appreciate the OT Schoolhouse Collaborative where you can access this course and many others. Learn more here. (otschoolhouse.com/collab) What if I don't like the course? Oh no! We don't want that. We offer a 30-day money back guarantee. If you are unhappy with the Caseload to Workload Workshop for any reason, let us know and we will refund your payment within 30 days. We may ask a question or two, but it would only be find out how we can improve the course better for future participants. No hard feelings, I promise! This does not apply to the OT Schoolhouse Collaborative. OT Schoolhouse Collaborative purchases are non-refundable. Will I be taking the course alone? Absolutely not! Everyday, therapists just like you login and learn from this course. As a student of the course, you will have access to all videos as well as a private Learner Center with myself and the other participants. Many therapists just like you have registered for and benefited from this course. Aside from the live videos, what else will I receive? Let’s be honest, the best part of a presentation are the slides, right? Well, you are going to get all of my slides and more! Along with the slides to my presentation, you will also receive several handouts and templates designed for you to customize and use in your practice! Some of the resources included are: • A caseload to workload calculator • Time study spreadsheet with calculations to analyze your time • A report template to help demonstrate your workload to your administrators • And more! You will also be invited to join our private Learner Center where your questions and ideas can be shared and responded to by myself and fellow members of the course. This is a great opportunity to keep the learning going with other therapists dedicated to school-based OT. What equipment/tools will I need to complete the course? You will need a computer or smart device with an internet connection to access the course. Videos cannot be downloaded to your device and must be watched while connected to the internet. All files (slides and resources) may be downloaded and/or copied to your Google Drive or Microsoft Cloud What if I need accommodations or support in accessing the course material? The Caseload to Workload Workshop uses an audiovisual platform. That allows for making the video presentation full-screen on your device (use of a computer recommended) and allows for you to adjust the volume to your desired volume. Likewise, you will have the opportunity to play, pause, and re-listen to the content for clarity if needed. Handouts of the slides are provided to all participants AI generated subtitles for the video content is available, but may not be 100% accurate. If you feel that you might require additional accommodations to access the course, please reach out to info@otschoolhouse.com (info@otschoolhouse.com)prior to registering for the course. For questions about your billing or accessing the course materials, email help@otschoolhouse.com.(help@otschoolhouse.com) If you have a question about how to implement what you learn, we encourage you to ask those in the Learner Center or at the Collaboration Hours with Jayson. Flexible Payment Plan We understand that times are tough right now. While some OTs are secure in their in their positions, we realize this is not the case for everyone. For this reason, we are offering a 2-month payment planfor the course. The payment plan consists of two monthly $150 payments. Whether you have student loans to pay, a car to save up for, or a family to feed, we want you to be able to access this knowledge while being fiscally responsible. You can register for the course now with the 2-month payment plan using the button below. Waitlist Disclosures, Terms & Conditions, Wavier of Liability & Participation Information Disclosures Presenter Disclosure: The speaker, Jayson Davies is the owner of Schoolhouse Education, LLC Sponsor Disclosure: This Course is presented by Schoolhouse Education, LLC Content Disclosure: This learning event does not focus exclusively on any specific product or services. Course Completion Requirements Date and Times or each completed lesson will be recorded and documented. Passing an online exam and completing a course evaluation will be required to earn continuing education credit. To participate in the course, complete the exam and course evaluation, and earn continuing education credit, you must be the original purchaser of the course. Participants must complete the entire course; partial credit is not allowed. Schoolhouse Education, LLC is committed to ensuring accessibility to the widest possible audience. We are continually improving the user experience for everyone. If you have questions, requests, or would like to report an accessibility-related issue, please email accessibility@otschoolhouse.com . We will review your request and respond in a timely manner. Terms and Conditions Schoolhouse Education, LLC will keep a record of your CE courses. This includes all complete, incomplete and pending coursework. When applicable, transcript services may include reporting to professional associations and/or state licensure boards. While the Schoolhouse Education, LLC will make all reasonable efforts to offer CE credit for its courses, it is not responsible for state or national or regulatory current policies or changes in CE requirements that may make courses ineligible for CE credits. Participant Agreement By registering for, or attending any event or activity associated with the A-Z School-Based OT Course, I agree to the following: Professional Development/Information Disclaimer The A-Z School-Based OT Course is a virtual event for professional development, networking, and OT School house business purposes. The material presented is not intended to represent the only or the best methods appropriate for the occupational therapy and/or medical condition or professional development issues being discussed, but rather is intended to present the opinions of the presenters, which may be helpful to other health care professionals at arriving at their own conclusions and consequent application. Attendees participating in this professional development education program do so with full knowledge that they waive any claim they may have against the A-Z School-Based OT Course, Schoolhouse Education, LLC, and OT School House and its staff or representatives for reliance on any information presented during these educational activities. Waiver of Liability Agreement I release the A-Z School-Based OT Course, Schoolhouse Education, LLC, OT School House, and its staff, presenters, and any other individuals or entities associated with 2021 Back To School Conference from any and all liability connected with my participation, as well as from any liability related to changes to the schedule, events or activities. I acknowledge and agree that I am participating on my own choice and assume all risk in connection thereof, and that in the event that a need for emergency medical service arises, I authorize and consent to such services being provided at my own expense. Cancelation Policy In the event that Schoolhouse Education, LLC cancels the event for any reason, participants will be offered the choice of a full refund or, when applicable, a credit toward the rescheduled event. ©2021 Schoolhouse Education, LLC

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Learn more about Jayson Davies and the OT School House! About Jayson & The OT Schoolhouse Jayson Davies M.A. OTR/L Jayson is the host of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast and has been a school-based occupational therapist since 2012. With experience as both a contracted therapist and an "in-house" employee for two distinctly different districts, Jayson has had the opportunity to appreciate the differences between both small-rural and large-suburban districts. In 2017, Jayson founded the OT Schoolhouse website and now supports school-based OT practitioners via courses, conferences, and the OTS Collaborative community. Recently, Jayson has put forth his efforts toward supporting therapists interested in tiered intervention, collaborative programming and managing their workloads. The OT Schoolhouse is a place for school-based OTs and other related service providers to learn more about OT evidence, RTI programs, treatment ideas, and the IEP process. It is our goal to bring you the information you want most in a way that supports your career as a school-based OT practitioner. I look forward to learning, growing, and teaching alongside you through this website, podcast, and community. So please, if you haven't already, click subscribe below so we can stay in contact! Subscribe! The OT Schoolhouse Mission Our mission is to bring school-based OT practitioners together and support them in learning from one another. We do that through synchronous and asynchronous online events. Over 10,000 school-based OT practitioners have benefitted from OT Schoolhouse podcast episodes, courses, conferences, and other virtual events. We are excited to have you here, and we hope you will join us in our growing community of school-based OT practitioners, improving ourselves for the teachers and students we serve.

Get Started on the OT School House by seeing out top visted pages and resources! Welcome to the OT Schoolhouse Hi, My name is Jayson and I as a school-Based OT located in Southern California. I have worked for districts large and small and have had to learn on my own as there was very little mentorship available. As a result of my experiences, I developed the OT Schoolhouse to help you through the same struggles I had, and continue to have. This "Start Here" page serves as a launching pad to help you quickly find the most popular content on this site. That way, you can find what you need and get back to helping your students as quickly as possible. We know they miss you. To get started, be sure to follow us on Instagram and Facebook for therapy activities that will help get you though the school year! Jayson Davies M.A. OTR/L Jayson@OTSchoolHouse.com Jayson has been a school-based occupational therapist since 2012. With experience as both a contracted therapist and an "in-house" employee for two distinctly different districts, Jayson has had the opportunity to appreciate the differences between both small-rural and large-suburban districts. In 2014, Jayson earned his Certification in Sensory Integration and Praxis Tests (SIPT) to better serve his students. Jayson also currently serves on the Occupational Therapy Association of California (OTAC) Political Action Committee where he helps to raise funds to support legislative efforts. Recently, Jayson has put forth his efforts in implementing full classroom and small group collaborative RTI lessons with general and special education teachers. Jayson is excited to help build knowledge among school-based OTs and educators through the OT Schoolhouse blog and podcast. The OT Schoolhouse Mission It can be difficult to get away from work to earn professional development. At the OT Schoolhouse, my mission is to provide valuable, ethical, and obtainable professional development opportunities to school-based and pediatric therapist across the globe through the use of technology. If you or someone you know would like to sponsor this mission, and the OT School House website and podcast, please visit the OTSH Partnership page. Gray-Space Paper To start off with, I'd like to introduce you to our most popular blog post and free download of our Gray-Space Paper. Click the picture to learn more and get your free copy! Your students will love how easy it is to size and space their letters and words using this paper. Want to skip the blog post and just get the paper, subscribe now in the box below so we can get the email process started. I appreciate you joining us! The OT Schoolhouse Podcast Listen in as Jayson discusses all things School-based OT from RTI to assessments & treatments. I also host guest OTs and other special education stakeholders. You can start listening on the podcast page or by subscribing to the show on your favorite podcast streaming app. You can now earn Professional Development by listening as well! Click here for more info! Listen on iTunes Listen on Google Play Listen on Stitcher View All Episodes & Show Notes Here Here are some of the podcast episodes you can now earn professional development for by tuning in. Just click on the episode you would like to learn more about. Continuing Education If you are looking for a comprehensive course on how to be a school-based OT, I highly recommend the A-Z School-Based OT Course. I created this course to help any therapist thinking about transitioning into the schools or for current school-based therapists looking to better understand RTI, the referral process, evaluations, IEPs and the steps needed to ethically graduate students from OT services. If this sounds like a course you would benefit from, use the button below to get a full look at what the course includes. Trust me, it is more than just a course! A-Z SBOT Course Practice Guidelines Interactive Map Does your state have guidelines for School-based OTs? I put together a map to help you find the school-based practice guidelines for your state. Not all states have them. I recommend checking out California's guidelines if your state does not have their own. Click here or on the picture to check it out now! Recent Posts Looking for more information about how to better serve your students. These are some of our more popular posts on the OT Schoolhouse. We are sure you will get the most bang for your buck by checking out these posts first! OTS 196: AI and Clinical Reasoning in School-Based Occupational Therapy Your First 90 Days as a School-Based OT (Checklist Included) OTS 195: Understanding the Why in School-Based OT From a Parent's Perspective Freebies! I have several freebies to give you right now to help you and the students you serve! Subscribe now to get our Gray-space paper featured above along with our caseload management spreadsheet and occupational profile builder for school-based therapists!

A virtual conference for School-Based OTs focusing on collaborating in the schools - August 2022 Conference Login Back To School Conference Turning Knowledge into Practice August 19 -20, 2022 Register Now Hit play to hear about the conference! August 19-20, 2023 Live action-oriented sessions from the comfort of your living room (or office) I am pleased to invite you to the third annual OT Schoolhouse: Back To School Conference - The preferred conference for more than 400 school-based OT practitioners in 2022. At the conference in 2023, we will expand our knowledge in several key areas to support our Students: Tiered Interventions Mental Health Sensory Registration and Supports Best Practices in school-based OT and more And we will do this by hearing from six nationally recognized speakers with years of experience supporting students. The Back To School Conference will be a worldwide gathering of school-based and pediatric occupational therapists who value the importance of supporting children in their least restrictive environment through a collaborative effort. The conference will consist of six live 120-minute presentations with Q+A sessions on August 19 - 20. Replays of all sessions and Q+As will be available to registered participants until December 31, 2023, so you can watch, rewind, and re-watch any of the six sessions. What you will receive when you register: Access to the six virtually live sessions totaling 12 hours of valuable education. A certificate of completion (12 hours) upon watching all sessions and passing a proficiency quiz. Access to replays of all six sessions until Dec. 31, 2023. Access to all resources provided by the speakers. Access to a private community where you can interact with Jayson and others learning right alongside you. A Swag Pack of goodies mailed to you AFTER the conference And surprise extras to make this a memorable event! Don't wait. Register now before the price increases. Register now Why Attend the Back to School Conference? In 2022, the Back To School Conference supported over 425 therapists. It was a great experience than many therapists even said it was the best conference they had ever attended (live or virtual). Here are six reasons why you can expect the Back to School Conference to be the best place to learn as a school-based OT. Earn 12 hours of AOTA-Approved Professional Development Earn 12 hours of professional development focused on a topic you care about in a single weekend! Professional Development is currently pending AOTA approval. Get your questions answered from the speakers The last thing you need is another boring zoom meeting disguised as an opportunity to learn. While virtual, these sessions will be interactive and designed to facilitate conversation. The networking session & community will surely be buzzing! Learn how OTPs can collaborate in schools The theme for the Back to School Conference this year is "Expanding Collaborative Practices in School-Based OT." You can expect every session to challenge you to be a more collaborative practitioner! Get your SWAG on The swag pack is back! Last year, we sent out 200 boxes of swag filled with OT goodies to help you get through the school year. Register by July 1st to secure your swag pack! Learn individually from home, or together as a team Only you know how you learn best! Watch from the comfort of your own home or make a party out of it and watch with a colleague. Therapy teams can register together and save. Email us to learn how! Expert, world-class speakers You deserve the best, from the best! That is why we are recruiting speakers who have walked the walk and have facilitated collaboration within their practice. Live Q+A sessions will also be held to facilitate your retention of knowledge! Conference Objectives Through 6 individual 2-hour sessions, we will cover overarching objectives. Objectives for each individual session can be found in the session descriptions. Conference Objectives Coming Soon Objectives Coming Need professional development that is AOTA approved? Upon completion of the conference, you will receive a certificate of completion to have for your registration and licensure needs. The process for AOTA Approval is currently in process Conference Schedule Conference Schedule The conference will be held on August 19-20 (Sat & Sun) from 7:30 am - 3:30 pm PT Do you live outside of the pacific timezone? We will soon have a tool to confirm what time the conference will be live in your area, and add the event to your calendar if you are ready. *Presentations and times subject to change without notice Presenters Presenters Jayson Davies, M.A., OTR/L OTSchoolhouse.com @OTSchoolhouse Jayson Davies, OTR/L has been a school-based occupational therapist since 2012. With experience as both a contracted therapist and a district employee for three distinctly different districts, Jayson has had the opportunity to appreciate the differences between both small-rural and large-suburban districts. In 2014, Jayson earned his Certification in Sensory Integration and Praxis Tests (SIPT) to better serve his students. Recently, Jayson has put forth his efforts in implementing full classroom and small group collaborative RTI lessons with general and special education teachers. Jayson enjoys helping build knowledge among school-based OTs and educators through the OT Schoolhouse Podcast, website, and online courses. More Presenters will be announced soon! Great Value! This conference is designed for you as a school-based OT and every session has been researched, vetted, and hand-selected by Jayson to be relevant for the school-based OT looking to help students in the least restrictive environment. Each presenter has many years of experience and has demonstrated the ethical decision-making you expect from the OT Schoolhouse! On top of a curated schedule of sessions, you will have the opportunity to earn 12 hours of professional development in just one weekend! Oh, and did I mention the swag bag?!? Check that out below! SWAG PACK Swag Bag Along with access to each session, ALL REGISTERED PARTICIPANTS will receive a Back to School "Swag Pack" For 2023, Swag Packs will be delivered after the conference. *At this time, we cannot guarantee shipping of swag packs beyond the USA Register now! Session Information Transitioning to a Collaborative Approach in the Schools Presenter: Jayson Davies, MA, OTR/L We've all had kids that do great when one-on-one with us in the OT room, but those strategies that we worked on so intently in our OT sessions just don't translate over to the classroom. This causes frustration among us, the teacher, and maybe even the student. In this session, we will review research about collaboration in OT and education so we know where we can make adjustments in our goal and treatment planning. We will also look at specific ways to collaborate so you can have an immediate impact on your students in the 2022-23 school year. Objectives: Identify key research outcomes related to collaborative practices in educational settings. Express the steps to building a collaborative relationship with professionals Identify at least 3 ways in which OT practitioners can collaborate with other professionals in school-based OT Create an action plan to collaborate more in your school-based OT practice. Functional Vestibulo-Ocular Skills in The School Setting Sponsored by LegiLiner Presenter: Karin Hessellund Warner, MOT OTR/L Do you feel comfortable with evaluating and reporting on functional oculomotor skills? This class will provide the necessary knowledge of how the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) impacts functional ocular motor skills in the school setting. Understanding and being able to evaluate the VOR helps to ease report writing and treatment planning when addressing visual deficits. The use of videos, pictures and case studies will help create a well-rounded understanding of the VOR and ocular motility. Clinicians will improve the way they gather and assess for visual information. Objectives: Examine the Vestibular-Ocular Reflex and the impact on eye and head control. Interpret the role of the Cerebellum in Eye Control. Analyze the impact of Visual Deficits in the School Setting. Implement Functional Treatment ideas to address Vestibulo-ocular deficits. Maximizing occupational therapists' role within a multidisciplinary team when delivering sensory interventions in the school setting. Presenter: Genna Espinoza, OTD, OTR/L Occupational Therapists have a distinct role within the multidisciplinary team in the school setting in helping children with sensory processing concerns. You will learn about how sensory processing challenges may influence learning and participation within the school setting. This program will present evidence-based information in providing client-centered support when a child is presenting with sensory processing concerns. We will examine how gathering information through a collaborative approach throughout the occupational therapy school process improves student outcomes. Objectives: Identify the Sensory Systems and the challenges poor processing can cause. Identify how sensory processing challenges may influence the child’s school day. Acknowledge the differences in treatment approaches based on various theories. Express strategies to help gather information for a comprehensive evaluation Identify tactics to enhance your collaboration skills in a multidisciplinary team in the school setting. Occupational Therapy and the Transition Age Student Presenter: Justin Lundstedt, OTR/L It is imperative to understand the importance of occupational therapy and how it coincides with a young adult's transition out of high school. This program will recognize the importance of how the identification of strengths, interests, and goals are so important for high school students yet often when working with students with increased academic needs they get overlooked and the focus becomes on deficits, limitations, and ability to be directed by others. This session will cover how to provide an intervention to students who are working towards the transition out of school. As an OT, it is our job to prepare them for developing the skills necessary to succeed and achieve their self-identified goals. In this manner, we can further their lives and break the barriers related to unemployment, underemployment, and lack of independent living statistics. The program will discuss the importance of our continued role in transition planning as “transition plans” are constructed to look at the whole child, identify strengths and needs, and adjust/set goals accordingly. This is our overall role as OTs, to begin with. In this session we will discuss the transition fro “life skills’ students, “prevocational” students, and “academic / post-secondary school students.” Objectives: Participants will identify an OT’s role for the transitioning student Participants will define the meaning of a transition-age student. Participants will recognize the different pathways OTP’s can focus on student expectations for the transitioning student. OT’s Role in Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Presenter: Kim Wiggins, OTR/L Social and emotional learning (SEL) is essential to human development and helps create a positive learning environment for all students. Many school districts are establishing systemic, schoolwide approaches to SEL. Therefore, it is important for school-based occupational therapy practitioners to understand their role in implementing SEL within therapy sessions or as members of the school team. SEL is required for successful participation in most areas of occupational performance and falls well within the scope of occupational therapy. This webinar will provide you with specific strategies to address SEL within your current role immediately. Objectives: Participants will identify 5 areas of SEL and the role of the OT Participants will delineate OT strategies relevant to SEL that are appropriate at each of the three tiers of intervention. Participants will identify how social emotional learning may be impacted by sensory over- and under-responders responsiveness (CO-OP) Principles for Collaboration Presenter: Lara Barros, OTD, OTR/L Collaboration is key in the enabling of participation and occupation in the school setting. The principles of the Cognitive Orientation to daily Occupational Performance™ (CO-OP) will be used to frame collaborative school-based OT. We will uncover the Goal, Plan, Do, & Check systems that allow us as therapists to support our students and helping them reach their unique goals. Objectives: Participants will identify the global cognitive strategy used by the CO-OP Approach. Participants will identify the principles underlying the CO-OP Approach. Participants will recognize how using the CO-OP principles supports collaboration in the school system. Register now to ensure access to each of the 6 amazing sessions! Secure your Spot! - $299 Audience & Education Level The OT Schoolhouse Back To School Conference is intended for current school-based occupational therapy practitioners. Sessions will contain beginner and intermediate level knowledge and may contain language and practices specific to school-based occupational therapy. There are no prerequisite courses required, but one should have a general understanding of OT in the schools. Conference Theme 2022 Conference Theme Expanding Collaborative Practices in School-Based OT We have all attended a team meeting for a student where no one seems to be on the same page. The teacher is focused on the need to work on math skills, the speech therapist is focused on social communication, and the parent wants to see their child learn to read. In that scenario, offering a handwriting goal may cause more harm than good. That is why at the Back To School Conference, we are focusing on implementing occupational therapy from a collaborative approach. Sessions will focus on how you can work with the parents, teachers, and other providers to improve student outcomes. From goals to therapy, we need to get on the same page! Session Handouts & Replays For each conference session, handouts will be made available to download and print prior to the start of the conference . After registering and 1-week prior to the conference, you will be able to download and print the slide and supplemental materials in the conference Portal. The attendee portal will also host replays of each conference session for 60 days. As a registered attendee of the summit, you will have access to the conference handouts, session video replays, and course commubnity until October 26, 2022. Register now - $299 Payment Plan Flexible Payment Plan We understand that times are tough right now. While some OTs are secure in their positions, we realize this is not the case for everyone. For this reason, we are offering a 2-month payment plan leading up to the conference. The payment plan consists of three monthly $180 payments. While this is slightly more expensive, it gives you the ability to pay over time so you can attend the conference while being fiscally responsible. You can register for the course now with the 2-month payment plan using the button below. The last day to sign up for the course using the 2-month payment plan will be July 27th. Flexi-plan Registration Networking Community Engagement Just because we will be engaging in this summit, does not mean we have to eliminate community engagement. In addition to lively, interactive sessions, there will be designated times for live Q+A sessions with the presenters. Likewise, we will have an online community dedicated to discussions related to the content from our guest speakers. And perhaps the most exciting engagement opportunity will be our Friday night virtual happy hour. Come hang out with Jayson and other school-based OT practitioners. Yeah, the conversation may start off backward and about where you work, but who knows, maybe you will meet your newest OT bestie! Join me and other School-Based OTPs looking to advance their clinical skills This conference is designed for you as a school-based OT. Every speaker and presentation has been researched, vetted, and hand-selected by Jayson to be relevant for the school-based OT looking to help students in the least restrictive environment. Each presenter has years of experience and has demonstrated the ethical decision-making you expect from the OT Schoolhouse! Jayson understands the intricacies of school-based OT and he knows the therapists who can help make your life easier while serving the students and teachers you love to work with. Register now to secure your spot! Register Important Dates Important Dates MAY-AUG Register Via a Purchase Order Be sure to get your purchase orders in before May as many school districts will stop fulfilling orders for the school year Purchase Order Registration Aug 26 Conference Begins Collect your pack of swag and settle in for the opening presentation! Register now! Aug 26 Last Day to Register Final call for registration Don't miss out! Don't Miss Out! Oct 26 Replays Available Until October 26 Get access to the replays until October 26th. That is a full 60 days to watch (or rewatch) all six sessions. Register now! Thank you to our 2022 Sponsors Platinum Level Sponsors Additional Sponsors Conference Attendee Disclaimer/Agreement By registering for, or attending any event or activity associated with the OT Schoolhouse: Back To School Conference, I agree to the following: Professional Development/Information Disclaimer The Back to School Conference is a virtual event for professional development, networking, and OT Schoolhouse business purposes. The material presented is not intended to represent the only or the best methods appropriate for the occupational therapy and/or medical condition or professional development issues being discussed, but rather is intended to present the opinions of the presenters, which may be helpful to other health care professionals at arriving at their own conclusions and consequent application. In order to earn a certificate of completion, attendees will be required to watch all 6 sessions and pass a proficiency quiz with a score of 75% or greater. Financial and Non-financial Disclaimers Speakers at the 2022 Back to School Conference are paid for their professional presentation Speakers may discuss other programs with which they are affiliated and earn a commission and/or other compensation Speakers may be an affiliate and may earn a commission when you register for the Back to School Conference Public Relations Agreement Registration and attendance at, or participation in, Back To School Conference meetings and other activities constitutes an agreement by the registrant for Schoolhouse Education, LLC’s use and distribution (both now and in the future) of the registrant or attendee’s image, voice, and survey responses in photographs, videotapes, electronic/print reproductions, and audiotapes of such events and activities. Waiver of Liability Agreement I release the Back to School Conference, Schoolhouse Education, LLC, OT School House, and its staff, presenters, and any other individuals or entities associated with the Back To School Conference from any and all liability connected with my participation, as well as from any liability related to changes to the schedule, events or activities. I acknowledge and agree that I am participating on my own choice and assume all risk in connection thereof and that in the event that a need for emergency medical service arises, I authorize and consent to such services being provided at my own expense. Attendees participating in this professional development education program do so with full knowledge that they waive any claim they may have against the Back to School Conference, Schoolhouse Education, LLC, and OT Schoolhouse and its staff or representatives for reliance on any information presented during these educational activities. Refund Policy A refund, less $20/Practitioners; $20/Students administrative fee, will be issued if notice of cancellation is received by the Schoolhouse Education, LLC. Refunds will not be processed until after the conference. Request a refund. Cancelation Policy In the event that Schoolhouse Education, LLC cancels the event for any reason, participants will be offered the choice of a full refund or, when applicable, a credit toward the rescheduled event. Interested in Sponsoring the Back To School Conference? Email us! Registration for the B2S Conference closes in DAYS HRS MIN SEC Register now

OTS 196: AI and Clinical Reasoning in School-Based Occupational Therapy Click on your preferred podcast player link to listen wherever you enjoy podcasts . Welcome to the show notes for Episode 196 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast. Artificial intelligence is quickly entering healthcare and education, and occupational therapists are asking an important question: How can we use AI responsibly without losing the clinical reasoning that defines our profession? In this episode, Jayson Davies sits down with OT educator and researcher Tara Mansour to explore practical, ethical ways school-based OT practitioners can begin using AI tools. Tara shares how she teaches future occupational therapists to use AI as a “first draft partner” while still prioritizing evidence-based practice, professional judgment, and student-centered care. They also discuss privacy considerations, prompt strategies, treatment planning ideas, and how AI can support data collection, documentation, and intervention development. If you're curious about how AI might fit into your school-based OT workflow—or concerned about how it could impact clinical reasoning—this episode provides a thoughtful and practical perspective. Tune in to learn how AI can support occupational therapy while keeping the human clinician firmly in the loop. Learning Objectives — Learners will describe appropriate ways AI tools can support school-based OT practice, including treatment planning, documentation drafting, and intervention idea generation. — Learners will explain ethical and privacy considerations when using AI, including FERPA and HIPAA concerns and strategies for de-identifying student information. — Learners will identify the "human-in-the-loop" approach to AI-assisted practice, distinguishing between AI-generated versus AI-assisted work and the role of critical clinical reasoning in evaluating AI outputs. Guest Bio Dr. Tara Mansour, OTD, MS-HPEd, OTR/L, is an Assistant Professor and Academic Fieldwork Coordinator at the MGH Institute of Health Professions with over 23 years of clinical experience. As a PhD candidate in Health Professions Education, she investigates innovative approaches to prepare students for professional practice, with a focus on integrating artificial intelligence into fieldwork education to strengthen learning and critical thinking. Dr. Mansour co-chairs the Generative AI Task Force at MGH IHP, leading initiatives to explore AI-driven innovations in health professions education. She has authored scholarly articles on AI integration in clinical education, including publications in Frontiers of Medicine , Medical Education , and the Journal of Allied Health . Nationally recognized for her contributions, she has presented at AOTA's Education Summit and Academic Leadership Conference and serves on ASAHP's Clinical Education Committee, shaping best practices in clinical training across disciplines. Quotes "AI is really… a first draft partner or an option generator. It is not a decision maker.” — Dr. Tara Mansour "The risk isn't the tool—it's turning off your critical thinking. When used well, AI can actually strengthen reasoning." — Dr. Tara Mansour “Unreflective use weakens reasoning. Over-reliance without thinking weakens reasoning.” — Dr. Tara Mansour “AI probably won't replace us soon, but we need to use AI. to basically enhance OT and to keep it at the forefront of health sciences.” —Jayson Davies Resources 👉 ChatGPT for Educators 👉 Claude 👉 Co Pilot 👉 Google Gemini 👉 Linkedin 👉 Tara’s Research 👉 Pearson Clinical Assessments 👉 American Occupational Therapy Association 👉 AOTA INSPIRE Conference 👉 MGH Institute of Health Professions Episode Transcript Expand to view episode transcript Jayson Davies Welcome back to the OTs schoolhouse podcast, your source for all things school based occupational therapy. I'm Jayson Davies, and today we're diving into a topic that is reshaping our profession, artificial intelligence and occupational therapy. Joining me today is Dr Tara Mansour, assistant professor and academic fieldwork coordinator at the MGH Institute of Health Professions with over 23 years of clinical experience, including extensive work in school based occupational therapy, Tara has become a national leader in integrating AI into health professions education. In this episode, we are tackling some of the questions that you have been asking me, like, Can AI help with IEP goals. How do we ethically use AI in our practice? Will it weaken clinical reasoning for current and or maybe even future occupational therapy practitioners? And most importantly, how can AI give us back the time that matters most so we can work directly with our students, whether you're AI curious or AI cautious, this conversation will give you practical, ethical strategies to make AI work for you, not replace you. Let's get started. 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, CLASI is officially in session. Jayson Davies Tara, welcome to the OT school house podcast. It is a pleasure having you on as you know, I love AI, and it sounds weird to say I love AI, but it is true, and I love it, how it can support us. And I know you have a lot of experience with AI, so I'm excited to dive into this topic with you. How are you doing today? Tara Mansour I'm well, thank you for having me here. I'm excited Absolutely. Jayson Davies And, you know, as we get started, I just kind of want to give you an opportunity just to share a little bit about where you are in the world of occupational therapy, and you can even start to dive into, kind of how you came around into the world of AI, Tara Mansour sure I'd love to. So I've been an occupational therapist for almost 25 years, and I spent a large portion of my clinical career in school based practice. I started my career in inpatient rehab with a specialty in neuro rehabilitation, and then transitioned to school based practice working in an elementary school that housed a medically complex sub separate classroom. Over time in that same public school district, I worked across different elementary schools, the middle school and the high school, really working with a variety of students with different needs. In that setting. Also, I served as a level two fieldwork educator for many students, which led to my transition to academia, where I now serve as the academic fieldwork coordinator and assistant professor at the MGH or Massachusetts General Hospital's Institute of Health Professions. There, my role focuses on preparing future occupational therapists for clinical practice, especially through field work education. Jayson Davies And that is not an easy job. There's a lot of people that you have to coordinate with, the students, the field work educators, the people in your program Tara Mansour there sure are. It is satisfying. I love when our students come back from their level two field work placements and are ready to jump in and ready to make the transition for my students to my future colleagues awesome. Jayson Davies And before we really dive into everything, I kind of want to ask a fun question here, and that is, how is AI been the most helpful for you in this role as a field work coordinator, Tara Mansour from an education perspective, it helps me in developing resources for our students and our field work educators, from learning activities to evaluation tools. It is a great draft partner. You know, we'll talk a little bit more as we move forward about a human in the loop approach, but from composing emails to creating learning activities, I find many, many ways to utilize it within my current practice in education, perfect. Jayson Davies All right, so yeah, now let's kind of get to that point where you started to maybe the first, the first points at which you started to realize that AI could be helpful, and what brought AI onto the radar for you? Tara Mansour So honestly, AI first got on my radar because I have teenagers. They were the ones who introduced me to chat, the chat GPT app on their phones, and at first it was more of a curiosity thing. Coincidentally, around the same time, I was also hearing from field work educators that they wanted to see our students coming up with more creative intervention ideas. Well, I absolutely can appreciate and understand that I was a level two fieldwork educator myself, and very much appreciated a fresh set of eyes and creativity from my perspective now as an academic field work course. Of neater. My concern was different. I was less worried about whether students had creative activity ideas, and more concerned about their clinical reasoning. Were they grading activities appropriately? Could they create a just right challenge? Were their intervention choices evidence based? Could they successfully document the treatment session? I didn't want our students spending an hour and a half scrolling Pinterest or maybe these days Tiktok for treatment ideas. I'd rather they spend that time thinking through the clinical decision making behind the plan, especially because they're new and they don't yet have a deep toolbox to draw from. So that's when the question shifted for me, how can we leverage AI to generate idea options quickly while still teaching clinical judgment, ethics, safety and responsibility? And for me, that really became the entry point for my work with AI and OT education. Jayson Davies All right, perfect. I like that because I think there is a fear. I've done some work, some research, in AI, and some of the things that we hear is that students aren't going to have that clinical ability, that ability to process clinically because of AI. And I'm sure you probably have had this idea and wrestled with this idea as well. So I really want to kind of dive into this. It's not a resource, this program that you've started to put together a little bit and how you are trying to help the students without, you know, giving them this tool that makes it too simple for them, absolutely. Tara Mansour So, you know, AI is really, I frame it as a first draft partner or an option generator. It is not a decision maker. So while AI can indeed suggest things like goal language, intervention ideas, ultimately, as the OT practitioner or student occupational therapist, you are the one evaluating and editing everything clinical reasoning you know, lives in the filtering and the adapting. You know you're asking, does this actually match my client? Is it the right challenge level? Is it appropriate in this environment? Is it evidence based? So while AI might be able to handle some of the repetitive scaffolding pieces, the structure, the wording. Some idea lists the therapist always have has to apply professional judgment. It widens the option set, but the OT still chooses the path. Jayson Davies So I will mostly, you know, frame this all around school based OT, because that's exactly what 99% of the people that are listening to this are so I guess my question is, then, when you're supporting your students or either even other clinicians, how are you suggesting that they prompt? Is it more of because you talked about right finding ideas versus the actual clinical reasoning? Are you suggesting that they prompt in a way that's like, I have this student experiencing this strengths? Are this? What are some ideas? Or do you kind of flip that approach and say, Hey, I have this idea for painting something. How would this apply to my student? Or is it a mix of both, or more than those two? Tara Mansour Yeah, I would say it's really the first but that's just the first part. So I teach them how to enter in case study information while not providing any client identifying data. That's the first part. We do talk about prompt engineering, what makes a good part a prompt and what doesn't make a good prompt. And they get the opportunity to kind of play in that playground a little bit. Ultimately, though, what is generated by AI that is just really the first part of the assessment, because then they need to take what they have found, those intervention ideas. And maybe they scaffold that, or they they reprompt Based on what the output is right to narrow things down. But once they choose three intervention ideas, which is what we do as part of the assignment, then they have to go to the literature, they have to go to their textbooks, they have to go to peer reviewed journal articles, and they need to justify, for me why that intervention is indeed an evidence based choice. They have to go back to what I provide them as the patient's chart, looking at their precautions, and they have to determine why, ot what their final choice of interventions is based on that review. So we're not just teaching them to utilize generative AI for intervention planning ideas, but we're incorporating evidence based practice so they can effectively evaluate what AI is putting out there. Jayson Davies Yeah, that's smart. I think we all. So the term hallucination should have been like the word of the year a year and a half ago or so. It's still it's still happening. I like to think that it's happening less when I'm using it, I'm seeing less completely made up research articles being linked, but it still happens, and obviously the output definitely have to judge it and find out if it's right, just like you have to do honestly with any article, though, like any article we read, we have to go through that process to make sure it's worth reading and worth really taking information from So, yeah, absolutely okay. One thing that you brought up was making sure that your students aren't using identifiable language, right? We have to be HIPAA, compliant, fair, but compliant within the school based realm. What is important to not put into something like chat, GPT? Can we use a first name? Or can we not use a first name? Do we need to use pseudonyms? Should we just erase all information period? What's safe, what isn't? Tara Mansour So I think, you know, some non negotiables, no matter what setting you're in is no identifiable student information ever goes into a public AI tool. So I would not even consider using a first name and not a last name. I would say, you know, make up a name, no dates of birth, no school names, no facility names. You know, I think sometimes even within our communication as practitioners, we think that using initials is non identifying. When, in reality, if somebody was, you know, being, you know, if public records were being utilized, they're going to search for those initials as well. So no initials, no unique facts, and no uploaded reports or IEP documents. Jayson Davies Yeah, yeah. It's funny when I was doing sorry really quickly, when I was doing my initial, like HIPAA review, you know, for myself again, just to kind of go back and look, I forgot that you know if that first name can be attributed to you and where you work, and you only have you know one or two of people with that name on it, well, that is officially identifiable information, and anyone can go on to your LinkedIn page and figure out where you work. And so that's pretty easy. Tara Mansour Yeah, absolutely. And I think that you know, what I teach students and clinicians is to really make sure they're using generalized de identified descriptions. They can they can mention functional skill areas, maybe interest themes, goal categories that should be really more than enough to generate useful ideas without risking privacy. The other thing from my experience is that in the school system, they often have contracts with sites that do indeed allow you to provide identifiable client information. And I've heard some things around Google and public school access that has said it was FERPA compliant. But unless you have that from your district's IT department, I would always default to the side of caution and depersonalizing any added information. Jayson Davies Yeah, absolutely. While you're speaking, I was trying to look up the chat GPT free educator version, because I know they provide chat GPT to free for educators and students, I believe, but I don't know if that free version is HIPAA compliant. I want to say maybe, but definitely do your own research. And it could change, right? They can change anytime. Tara Mansour And I wouldn't go by the the external program telling you that super compliant. I would go to your IT department and make sure that you're following your own institution roles. Jayson Davies Great point, yeah, third party, or even the people that on your side, make sure you're covered from that and not don't always. I mean, we don't trust the AI for the content that they generate all the time, so we should definitely be mindful of what they are saying as well. Good point. Okay, we're gonna go ahead and take our first break, but when I come back, I want to talk to Tara about where she feels that AI can best support school based ot practitioners like us. So stay tuned. Okay, so, so there's a lot of OT practitioners in the research that we've done, they were worried about new students almost being having an over reliance on AI and not having the clinical reasoning skills because they've had chat GPT since, like your teenagers have. So the question is, is, how do we prevent that? How do we ensure that these students that are coming out of OT school aren't just relying on chat GPT, and that if chat GPT were to, you know, die overnight, they would still have that clinical reasoning. Tara Mansour So I would say this is a large concern, and I take that concern very seriously, especially as, you know, faculty in an OT education program, I actually don't think that the tool, it's. Self weakens reasoning. Unreflective use weakens reasoning. Over reliance without thinking weakens reasoning, and that risk exists with many tools that we already use. True from a school based perspective, let's think about the example of weighted vests. Okay, if a clinician reads an article in a peer reviewed journal about weighted vests, and then starts using weighted vests with their students, without collecting data, because the article deemed it effective, yet they proceed without any monitoring, without monitoring any outcomes. The issue is not the vest. The issue is the reasoning process around its use. So did they look at the evidence base broadly? Did they individualize? Are they measuring the students responses? I really think that AI is similar. The risk isn't the tool. It is turning off your critical thinking. I do believe that when used well, AI can actually strengthen reasoning, because it gives you multiple options to compare and critique, and that comparison process in itself is a clinical reasoning exercise. The key is how we teach and we model use AI should really expand their option set, not make their decisions. And clinical reasoning lives in the selection, the adaption, the justification and the outcome tracking, and that part remains fully human. Jayson Davies I want to, I want to press on that. How does, how does Chachi BT expand options? I mean, you mentioned the vestibular or the weighted vest or pressure vest, and I totally understand that, right? We need to make sure that on the back end, we are tracking data and whatnot. But you mentioned that idea of chat GPT opening up the options. What do you mean by that? Tara Mansour So it may give you a variety of interventions, ideas that you may or may not have considered, but again, that human in the loop approach. We're not using chat, GBT as our Google and then just taking what it says. We are saying, okay, these are some good options. Now I need to critically reflect on what it is suggesting and think about is it evidence based? Is this beneficial for my client, is it going to be of interest to my client? So so it expands that as long as you are not you know, what I say to my students is, if you're running late for a field work and you haven't done your treatment planning for your 8am session, you cannot use chat GBT in the five minutes that you're getting off the bus to say, I am working with a patient who had a stroke. What should I do? And then jump in there five minutes later and just translate the output of chat GBT into your treatment session? There is no reflective use in that Jayson Davies good point. Yeah, it's true, and it's interesting, because I think there is kind of this, these tools, I don't think are readily available yet, but eventually, I think that, good or bad, you will be able to do something to that degree. I think because eventually, and it's already happening, AI is being built into our EMRs, and therefore it knows what I did with Johnny yesterday. Knows what I did with Johnny last week, the week before, the week before that. It it has the evaluation in a form that is secure and HIPAA compliant, and it does know a lot about Johnny. And so to what degree should I still or do I still need to reflect upon something if it has all that background data on Johnny tough Tara Mansour question, well, we're not there. We're not there yet. I think you're right. I think that what initially was spoken about when we thought about generative AI were these standalone, large language models, chat, GBT, copilot, Gemini, you name it, but what we're really seeing now in clinical practice, just like you said, is that there are systems, there are AI systems being built in to the EMR. My concern is, less How much does it know about Johnny, and more about how much does it know about Johnny's diagnosis or appropriate interventions? What it's not going to know is Johnny's interests, that Johnny likes cars, but he hates baseball, right? And so you're not always going to be to be able to rely on the suggestions outputted, right? It also depends on what is your system. Where is your system pulling the data from? Is it pulling I would always continue to be extra cautious if data is being pulled from the web, or are you behind a firewall and it's only using the information you've provided it with? So I do think we are a long way away from simply throwing a prompt out there and being able to act on it again. From a school based perspective, it might have wonderful ideas. When students are presenting with certain disabilities or diagnoses, but it still doesn't know their interests and that personalization piece that makes us OTs, yeah. I mean, never say never. But I that wouldn't be a way in the near future I would envision teaching anybody to use the tool, Jayson Davies yeah, yeah. I also know, I mean, how many times have all of us gone into a session with an idea that we thought was great, whether it came from Instagram, Tiktok, our own brain, or chat, GPT, and then we had to go through three different interventions during that session, because students, you know, have days. We have days and and sometimes plan A and B don't work, and so you got to move to Plan C and D. So you've got to have that clinical reasoning skills to do it in the moment, not five minutes or five days before the session actually starts, Tara Mansour absolutely and I think that goes into just old fashioned treatment planning, right? Like, you know, even with with generative AI aside, students have to be able to, you know, be iterative or change their treatment plans. And to be fair, that is a more challenging experience for them, because they don't have the toolbox. They don't have the automaticity yet that those of us with more years of experience have. And so you know that goes back to a whole nother activity that has nothing to do with chat GBT per se, which is making sure our students are completing treatment plans when possible that has a variety of interventions so they're not panicking and freezing in that moment when things ultimately have to Change. Yeah, that's a best practice in field work, education, I would say, versus, you know, generative AI, Jayson Davies yeah, yeah. And that's fair, kind of touching, you know, going specific into school based OT. I often like to break school based ot into a few categories of things that we do. One is that evaluation piece. Then we kind of have the after the advice, after the evaluation. We have to do treatment planning. We actually have to do the treatment itself. And then there's some, you know, administrative side to it. There's some MTSS, do you think that AI can really support all of those areas equally? Do you find it more beneficial for particular areas? Obviously, we've talked about treatment planning a little bit, so little bit so far today, but what areas encompassing school based OT, do you feel like AI can really be supportive? Tara Mansour So, you know, I think, I don't think it's equally across all of the things that you just mentioned. I think that first draft note, writing, goal wording, again, with full human review, can be accelerated with the use of generative AI. I think that accelerated time gives students and clinicians, you know, more time to think deeply about what actually happened in the session or what to do next. I think it's important to realize, especially within the context of school based practice, this kind of technology isn't completely new. In ot we've seen earlier ways of digital assessment technology, right? Many of our evaluations moved from manual scoring to digital platforms years ago. You know, tools like Pearson's digital scoring lets you enter subset scores and generates for you structured summaries and interpretive language. If your district subscribes to that platform, the sensory profile went digital. No more hand scoring grids, right? That was an early automation supporting clinician efficiency, and I think I see AI, you know, as a part of that same evolution with a little bit more flexibility and more interactive. I think it can help with things like drafts of reports, you know, drafts of progress notes, drafts of IEP goals, drafts of present levels of performance. But ultimately, the interpretation and clinical judgment still belongs to the OT. I think the goal is, you know, time saved on mechanics, and it's kind of reinvested, reinvested in, in reasoning, if you will, gotcha. Jayson Davies And, yeah, I completely agree with the time saving thing. I've experienced this before, and I want to hear if you've experienced this, or, or, if you've, you know, worked with some of your students or other clinicians that have experienced this, where you think that AI is actually going to save you time, but then you get playing with it, and you go down a rabbit hole. I mean, we always talk about how many tabs we have open in our, you know, our Google Chrome, but oh my goodness, the chats that I have on the left hand side of my chat, GPT, like it's infinite. I don't know how many are there. So have you experienced that yourself and or from others, Tara Mansour I think, as a new clinician, or being exposed to a new tool that you are not that you are not used to using. So it's always going to be time heavy. In the beginning, the your clinical reasoning is going to be more time heavy. Learning best prompts is going to be time heavy. I don't think that it's one of these things that you introduce and all of a sudden it is, you know, a magic fix. When I was working in school based practice, I did have a student who was struggling with report writing, and a friend of mine, a peer of hers, had this company where you just entered in some of the student information from the evaluation, and it actually generated a whole report for you. Now I didn't love the format of that report, and initially, when practicing to utilize that system myself. It took me longer to write a report than if I just sat there to write the report myself, but over time, it did decrease the amount of time I needed to write the report, and I came to really appreciate that as a resource. Jayson Davies Yeah, yeah, and I agree. I mean, it takes a it takes some time getting used to chat GPT and or if you're going to use Claude, or whichever going to use, it takes some time to get used to it, and again, some time to understand prompting. You talked earlier about how you help with prompt generation for the students that you're working with and helping them understand AI, do you find that there are specific ways, or specific, I guess, templates for prompts that work out well for school based occupational therapy, or just ot in general? Or can you just write in anything? Tara Mansour So I don't, I very intentionally don't create templates as it's different for every student, every client. What you're asking, you know, generative AI to do. What I will say is, I do educate them on a process in generating good, you know, strong prompts. And I I just pulled up my slideshow that I use with them. And what I'm looking at is in generating an effective prompt. This is the outline that I suggest they go through, which is, step one, identify the client population and condition. Step two, specify the occupational performance challenge. Step three, define the intervention focus. So for example, as I bring them through this learning activity, as we are reviewing the case study, I am asking them to determine the frame of reference to their approach. Am I looking for a compensatory, rehabilitative frame approach? Am I looking for a more remediation or biomechanical frame of approach? Then I'm asking them to consider the treatment setting and available resources. Is this inpatient outpatient school based? Where is this session happening? And then they can request a specific response format, give me some intervention ideas. Or they might say, give me some ideas for a 30 minute session. Or they might say, just give me ideas that fit within the biomechanical, you know, frame of reference. And then step six, which is most important, is refine the prompt. So when you get that first round of generated text, what do you like, what don't you like? Do you need to refine your initial prompt? Or can you just dive in deeper with some additional clarifying questions? I like to think of it. This whole approach was built for those people that have experience in doing literature reviews or searching databases for literature, you might put in a few words and get 12,000 responses, and then you're going back and you're saying and this, and that narrows it down, and this, and that narrows it down. So my whole instruction of utilizing generative AI in prompting and follow up prompts really is based on that whole idea of a literature review. Jayson Davies And you bring up that idea of a literature review, and I love that, because one of the biggest problems that I've run into with AI, and we talked a little bit about hallucination making up links and whatnot, is that I don't know what Article, database, chat, GPT or cloud have access to, and what they don't have access to. And so if I'm asking it for evidence or best practices, I am sometimes shocked, because it sometimes has access, complete access to an article, and other times it's only using just the abstract, and I never know what it's actually using, unless I kind of go into or click on the link and try and figure that out. So I guess my question is is, how do we and maybe the answer is, we just have to do it, you know, on our own. How do we know if something is actually evidence based? Raised if it's citing these articles, but we don't know if it has access to it. Does that make sense? Tara Mansour Yeah, absolutely. So I think that you know, remember, some journals are open access and some journals are not open access, right? So, so it can indeed only have access to an abstract, which sometimes will give you enough information that you need, and then other times it doesn't have access to full journal articles. Regardless, you should never trust gender, you know, generative AI's output into quoting the evidence, even if you put into your prompt, find only for me. You know, peer reviewed published articles. I still would not trust the system. I think a great first step is to say, give me the DOI number and follow the link and see if it's actually a DOI, right. And again, you're still never just trusting the information that it told you about the article. But now you have the DOI. Now you have access to the article. Read the article right, or download the article, put it back into the generative AI system and ask for a summary. Even that isn't always right, but now at least you're looking at very specific information that you fit it. Jayson Davies Yeah, interesting that you say, say that I have definitely gotten a quote from chat GPT, clicked on the DOI command, F or whatever search feature, type that quote in, and then you're always like, wait, you told me this was a quote. Why can I not find this three set of words in a row in this article that you said was directly from this article? So yeah, you got to be careful. You mentioned pulling the article and putting it actually into the source or the AI, I am, I have gone back and forth on this all the time, and I don't know where we fall as a profession on this one, and where is the line drawn, because i don't know i i Just troubled with it a little bit. I have done it. I definitely have downloaded an article, put it into chat. GPT, hey, help me summarize this, or what are the key points, or whatnot. But I'm torn on this, and I don't know where the profession stands on this. Have you heard anything? Tara Mansour I haven't. I feel like I have come to my own personal judgments for how I am choosing to utilize it. What I'll say is, if an article is open access, anybody has, yeah, access to it, right? So it's not that you are uploading copyrighted protected information. I will tell you that I have, I have been able to access an article. When I say access, I mean, understand an article more that if I was just reading maybe some of the statistics, language was going over my head, and I was having trouble really engaging in that article. But rather than just pushing it aside, being able to, then again, interact with generative AI to ask it specific questions, right? Not just give me a summary, but the article talks about Cohen box, you know, statistic. What does that mean? What is that measuring that, in my opinion, is a best practice of how we're utilizing it's almost your own personal tutor. You know to go back and just say you're going to rely on something for a generated summary. I agree with you. I have fed it content different across different platforms, actually, and and the different platforms vary about how accurate the quotes are that it gives it back. But even at that, find me a quote. Find the quote right? Like you should never be in a position to just use ever what generative AI outputs and then assuming it, you know, is correct. That goes back to what I said in the beginning about that reflective reasoning. There is always a human in the loop approach. It is never copy and paste. Jayson Davies Yeah, absolutely. All right, we're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, I'm going to ask Tara how she thinks that ot practitioners like us can use AI in our evaluation process. All right, I want to go through a few common tasks that school based ot practitioners would use or would complete throughout the day, and kind of just get some ideas from you about how AI might be used, and you've already mentioned a few, but kind of just task specific here. So for any evaluation, you know, most people already have their kind of set evaluation. They do certain things in order, but how might you begin to incorporate AI into the evaluation process? Tara Mansour So, you know, I'm not sure that I would, from the get go, be incorporating AI into the evaluation process. If I was given a referral and the students challenges, I would still initially, independently identify. By which tests I was going to complete, right? I would not utilize AI per like within the testing, because it is so much more. Testing is so much more than just following the protocol. It is observing their posture. It is absorbing it is observing their pencil grasp. It's observing their behaviors in the environment. I see the possibility of entering some of the data into the system after to help it draft with that being said, Because AI was introduced as I was outside of the clinical career, outside of my clinical practice, I'm not really sure how successful that would be or necessary. I always say that we're paid the big bucks that we are because of our clinical reasoning. So I still do think it is our responsibility to, you know, evaluate that ourselves. With that being said we said earlier. There's systems like Pearson that you're entering that information, and it's generating for you some summaries. Again, you're deciding what you're including and what you're not including. But I'm not sure that I would say in the evaluation part is where I would be utilizing AI. Now, if that was moving forward to the creation of an IEP, maybe entering my de identified evaluation and asking for some goal recommendations in the goal areas that I identify, that might be a nice step. We're always looking to kind of expand our goal bank, if you will, and then utilizing that system before you've even started the treatment to help you develop, you know, data tracking sheets so that once you start your interventions, you're able to track that data to determine if they're, you know, making effective progress. Yeah. Jayson Davies And I think a piece that school based ot practitioners can really use is during their like synthesis process, because I think we often question ourselves if we're thinking the right, you know, recommendations. And I think if we use it like a thinking partner and and talk to it, hey, you know, based upon what this assessment said and my clinical observations, I'm thinking this, you know, tell me where I'm right. Tell me where I'm wrong, tell me where what I'm not even thinking about, and get some ideas that way. Tara Mansour So maybe another way I might think about utilizing it is I've seen OTs in the past write handwriting goals that a student would likely never be able to do because they don't have the reading skills to match the expectations for the written output, right? So we don't necessarily, we're not necessarily masters of our Inter you know, professional colleagues tests that they're doing, but we might say, you know, again, de identified, how do their results on these tests impact their success with handwriting, right? What does develop, you know, what is a reading level of? I'm going to make something up, you know, for mean, oh, that means that they are, you know, at the syllable level, okay, well, then I don't want to write a handwriting goal around writing full words or sentences, because, you know, they're not necessarily able to, you know, if they have such significant challenges with encoding and decoding, yeah, we have to work within those boundaries. Jayson Davies Interesting, I hadn't really thought about that that much, because we often don't understand all the assessment tools that the speech therapist use, or we don't understand the psych assessment tools, or the teacher assessment tools. And that actually came up with me a few about a week ago, my son came home with assessment. He's in preschool right now, and I never heard of it. I don't even remember the name of it, but I was really quickly able just to take a few snapshots of the assessment results. And it's like, oh, this is what this actually means. I was like, Thank you, because there were no keys to what these graphs meant and whatnot on this test. So that can definitely be helpful for us to better understand the student in a way that we couldn't before, because we didn't know what the assessment results that the teacher or psych or SLP were giving us good point exactly. Tara Mansour And it's important that we have that whole picture right when we are creating our goals. Jayson Davies I guess, moving on from the evaluation piece, you've talked about an IEP and how it could be helpful with generating, you know, drafts or ideas for goals, ideas for maybe what the present levels of performance might look like, maybe even accommodations, rather than asking you the specifics of how you might do this, I want to go a different way with this question and ask, have you created, or have you advised others at all to create custom GPT prompts or custom gpts or that kind of help make this a little bit quicker, because. You're doing it so often. Tara Mansour So I will say right now I have two Capstone students working on developing custom gbts, one to support our field work educators, and one, believe it or not, to support their fellow peers through studying for, you know, their own courses I have, you know, I will say that within the conferences I have presented with we started at the level of playing in the sandbox, of utilizing it for things such as, I have a 30 minute session. You know, it is a six year old with this diagnosis, this diagnosis, with these goal areas. I mean, in diagnosis, in school based practice matters less, right, but they it is a six year old with these goal areas. They love trains. This is the format of my typical treatment session. Give me treatment ideas and a timeline, and that is both thrilling and exciting for my audience of practitioners, I think that what you're describing would be like next level, intermediate, advanced, right? I think people have to be comfortable before they can even wrap their head around a custom GBT. I've been playing around with it myself lately. I think there's amazing potential for it, absolutely, but I don't think that is your entry point for practitioners to utilize. Jayson Davies Ai, yeah, we've been playing around with one. I created one specifically to help students or not students. Sorry, I created one specifically to help ot practitioners take their de identified, present levels of performance, their goals for a student, or sorry, their present levels of performance, maybe some accommodations that they have in place, and any other information about the student, of course, de identified, and the tool will then, basically automatically, without Any additional prompting, create smart IEP goals. It will create some treatment ideas based upon those IEP goals. It will create both pull pull out and push in ideas. It also kind of will generate, if you tell it what grade the student is, it'll say, hey, this goal is related to these standards for that grade level, which I think is a piece we sometimes miss a school based ot practitioner. So I think it can be very helpful, but it's, it takes, like you said, a little bit more advanced, and it takes some time to set up in order to actually use it. So, yeah, yeah, all right, we talked a little bit about evaluation piece. IEP, we really started this, this process with talking about treatment planning per se. Where do you feel like the best opportunity for AI use exists for school based ot practitioners? Do you feel like it is that treatment planning piece, something we've already talked about or something that we haven't discussed yet? Tara Mansour I do think it's the treatment planning piece, and I think it's the data collection piece. I will say that you know, learning to take data that is not just a conversation you have with a teacher in the hallway is something that is our speech and language counterparts are so good at, and I don't think that OTs are always great at collecting data. So I think saying these are my goals. This is my timeline. How can I track this is an amazing use to show that you know our role is justified. I just had a student finish level two field work, and she speaks to how amazing it was to personalize sessions for her children, for her students, and how much more motivated they were to participate in the session when she came to the table with pictures, she quickly printed of resources, you know, of their favorite Disney characters or their favorite something. And so I think that the hard, the clinical reasoning part of you know, what level do we want to perform this at? Do we want to be asking them to copy letters? Do we want to be asking them to, you know, write it from memory? Do we want to be asking them to write words or full sentences? But then we can kind of say this person is a reading level of four. Again, they love trains. Give me some words I can ask them to write that have to do with trains that are able to be, you know, encoded by somebody with a reading level of four. And now, in an instant, you potentially can get so much more buy in and ultimately it, you know, the impact of that is not just efficiency, but it really is about, you know, increasing students participation in performance, and that motivation might help your your students, like, become even more engaged. Watched in their sessions. Jayson Davies Yeah, yeah. I've heard the same thing from from therapists as well, really being able to kind of bring the interest of the child into therapy much more easily. I mean, if you wanted to bring bluey into your session five years ago, you had to go back and research Bluey, watch some bluey episodes. Now you can just go on and say, hey, look, this is my treatment plan. Let's, let's implement the bluey version of this treatment plan. And, you know, put a few details, like their reading level or their writing ability and and you could get a lot of pretty ready to go stuff. So yeah, Tara Mansour and look, I'm a theater kid at heart. You want to have a conversation with me about Broadway shows, I know a lot, but if you want to have a conversation with me about how the Patriots did in yesterday's game over my head, but I can do a quick search in a system that looks at the web that if I get it wrong because it's not validated, that's fine, but like, I could easily bond with somebody in the first 30 seconds of building rapport, you know. Think about how many times, you know, our middle school students come into an evaluation session with the hood over their face, and they don't want to shut they don't want to say anything, you know. But if you can do a little bit of work in advance and find out what they're interested in, all of a sudden, you can come to the table with some facts that maybe wow them, or, like, at least engage them, and then all of a sudden, you know, what used to take, you know, a lot of time. You can shorten that rapport, building time. Good point. Jayson Davies Very good point. You mentioned a little bit about the research that you got going on, but I do want to give you an opportunity to share a little bit more about that, because I personally think that, and I think you kind of share this as well, that OTs need to be addressing AI in multiple fronts, otherwise there might be some negative consequences. And so I want to understand what you're working on in terms of AI. You mentioned a few of your your students doing some custom gpts? But what else you got going on? Tara Mansour Sure, so you know again, what was already published was from something that we did in 2024 about this education process. I told you about this learning activity, and we measured for the students, what did they learn? What did they like about use learning to use generative AI? What were the ethical challenges, safety challenges? And so that's something that we did and was already published. I just recently published something else that we need to study a little bit further. It was kind of an opinion piece on how can we use things like voice GBT to train our students with professional behaviors or difficult conversations, or how to explain the role of OT to a patient, to a family member, how to have a difficult conversation with a field work educator and be able to practice in a psychologically safe environment, right? And so again, depends on the prompting, because you're asking it for feedback, but that is one pretty cool way I'm currently having my students utilize it, and something that we need to get a formal study around. One of the bigger projects I'm working on most recently is this idea of using AI for qualitative data analysis of field work educators narrative comments in the field work performance evaluations, where there is so much valuable written feedback that clinical educators or field work educators provide about students strengths, their challenges, their professional behaviors during level two field work, but traditionally, the qualitative analysis of narrative data is incredibly time intensive. You're hand coding comments, you're building theme structures, you're checking reliability, and you know, it limits how large a data set most ot education faculty can realistically analyze. And so what we're studying right now is how AI can assist with this early stage qualitative coding and theme clustering, again, with a human researcher absolutely still in the loop validating and refining the findings. The goal is not to replace your typical qualitative methods, but to scale them in a responsible way so that we can use that information to, you know, adjust our curricula, better support our students and better prepare them for clinical practice. Jayson Davies Yeah, it's it's going to be amazing. The next five to 10 years of research with AI being embedded into every facet of the world, it's going to be interesting. I mean, in OT alone, I can only imagine all the studies that are going to be if not already happening right now. I mean, we've used AI to support some of the research I've done, and I know others are doing the same. I cannot wait to get to an. Inspire in Anaheim and and wherever it's going to be next year, and just see how many, how much research is going to be coming out that is AI supported OT, basically, to a degree. I think it's going to be interesting. I think it's something that we got to do. I've said it several times that like AI will not replace us, and we're very fortunate in OT, by the way, that we have registration, like we're certified, we're licensed, we have some protections, and I think we need to lean on that, but so AI probably won't replace us soon, but we need to use AI to basically enhance OT and to keep it at the forefront of Health Sciences. Tara Mansour So yeah, we do. You know, I've heard some valid concerns, right? Like, if you speak to folks, especially those in outpatient and acute care settings that are dealing with significant challenges in productivity demands, I think there, I've heard the concern, and it's a valid concern. Well, if you make my documentation time even more efficient? Are they going to expect me to see even more patients, right? So that also limits people's interest in adoption. Per se, they're not going to be eliminated. AI is not going to take them to the bathroom or teach them how to shower, right? But how many people you might have to work with could change if things get, you know, potentially more efficient. Jayson Davies Yeah, I mean, I think it's hard, it's gonna be hard to get more efficient, because we already have these high I mean, I'm in the school based role. We don't have this nearly as much, but I hear people in, like, acute rehab. It's like 90% plus efficiency. Like 90% of the time is supposed to be with a client, and I don't know how much more you can really get out of someone, even if documentation gets easier, but I'm sure, yeah, private companies will squeeze when when given the opportunity, so hopefully it occurs in a way that is sustainable, because otherwise, yeah, won't, won't be good. Tara Mansour Well, I think that's where our own research and being on the forefront and being proactive about how we best utilize it in our practice is really important, rather than waiting for someone to tell us how we should be utilizing it in our practice, Jayson Davies I think that is possibly the most important point of this episode, because we really do have to understand it so that we can make recommendations based upon it. Otherwise, someone else is going to make those recommendations, and it's going to be someone who is at the hospital above our head, is not an OT and is worried about profits over patients, and so absolutely got to do that. I was going to ask you, I think I still will ask you this one, it was kind of on the same, same line that we're talking here. And that is, if it's not that, what are you most concerned or fearful about? Ai, is it that, or is Tara Mansour it something else? So what worries me most? I guess, I mean, yeah, while I do recommend the importance about teaching reflection. I think what worries me most is over trust and over automation. People treating AI output as an authority instead of just an input. If we do stop questioning, verifying and reasoning, that is indeed a problem. I'm also concerned about privacy, equity of access, and, you know, tools being used without the proper literacy or guardrails. My hope is that, you know, in OT, we begin to model this balanced path forward of innovation with ethics, efficiency, judgment, and always, always, you know, a human in the loop approach. Jayson Davies Yeah, that's going to be key, especially for us who are so, you know, whole human centric as occupational therapy professionals. And, yeah, we got to, we got to keep that in the loop. Tara, it's been wonderful talking to you. Where Can anyone interested in you and your work learn more about you. Tara Mansour So you know listeners can find my work through my presentations and publications, both in occupational therapy and Health Professions, education, I mean, especially around AI, literacy, clinical education, field work support. I regularly present at OT and health professions education conferences on practical and ethical AI use in both teaching and clinical practice. I'll be at a ot a inspire in California in April, and I'm running a pre conference Institute focused on using generative AI for content analysis, for both educational and clinical applications, it's going to be a very hands on and grounded in real ot workflows, ethics and that human in the loop practice. You can find me on LinkedIn. I've made some wonderful connections for research and collaborations. I with people across the country, so you can find me there. Jayson Davies Absolutely Tara thank you so much. We really appreciate it. We will link to all those different sources, your research articles, as well as your LinkedIn so anyone interested can learn more. And you're going to be in Anaheim for like five, six days. Enjoy that. Have fun. Thank you. Thank you. I'm looking forward to it as well, so we'll see you there. And yeah, Tara Mansour thanks again. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Jayson. Jayson Davies All right, that wraps up episode 196 Thank you, Dr Mansour, for sharing your insights on how AI can support and, of course, not replace our clinical reasoning as school based ot practitioners from treatment planning to data tracking, it is clear that when we use AI thoughtfully, it can help us to free up time for what matters most, meaningful student centered practice, if you're looking for more practical resources, professional development and real time support from a community of school based ot practitioners who get it and are in the thick of things just like you check out the OT schoolhouse collaborative. It's where you'll find mentorship from myself and other school based ot practitioners, access to tools like our ever growing goal bank and documentation templates and a space to connect with other practitioners navigating the same challenge as you are. Head on over to OTSchoolHouse.com slash collab to learn more. Thanks for listening, and I'll catch you in the next episode. 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 OTs schoolhouse.com Until next time class is dismissed. Click on the file below to download the transcript to your device. Thanks for listening to the OT Schoolhouse Podcast. A podcast for school-based OT practitioners, by school-based OT practitioners! Be sure to subscribe to the OT Schoolhouse email list & get access to our free downloads of Gray-Space paper and the Occupational Profile for school-based OTs. Subscribe now! Thanks for visiting the podcast show notes! 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