Search Results

Click on your preferred podcast player link to listen wherever you enjoy podcasts . Welcome to the show notes for Episode 191 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast. In this Episode of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast, Jayson Davies welcomes Dr. Jamie Hunter and Dr. Kaisa Syväoja from The College of St. Scholastica to discuss how OT practitioners can utilize grants to advocate for mental health services in schools. Learn how grants can expand your OT practice beyond traditional tier three services, whether you're looking to fund a sensory room, provide professional development, or implement a school-wide mental health initiative. This conversation demystifies the grant-writing process, offers practical tips for finding and applying for grants at the federal, state, and local levels, and highlights the power of collaboration to sustain impact beyond the grant period—making this a must-listen for OTs ready to expand their role and amplify OT’s value in schools. Listen now to learn the following objectives: Learners will identify how to apply for grants (both small and large) to expand mental health services and other OT initiatives within school settings. Learners will understand how to effectively advocate for occupational therapy's role in supporting mental health at all tiers (especially tiers 1 and 2) within school-based practice. Learners will develop strategies for creating sustainable partnerships and programs that can continue beyond initial grant funding by demonstrating OT's value to school administrators and staff. Guest(s) Bio Jamie Hunter, OTD, OTR/L, AFWC Jamie Hunter is an Assistant Professor, Academic Fieldwork Coordinator, and Co-Director of the Department of Education Mental Health Service Provider Grant at The College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, MN. She has over 27 years of professional experience in school-based practice, pediatrics, leadership, and fieldwork education. Kaisa , OTD, OTR/L Kaisa Syväoja OTD, OTR/L is the current Program Director for the Master's of Occupational Therapy program at The College of St. Scholastica and the co-project director for the Mental Health Service Provider grant funded through the U.S. Department of Education. She has a background working with a variety of practice settings including early intervention and school-based practice. Her recent work has been focused on providing mental health related occupational therapy services within school-based settings . Quotes “It’s opened my eyes to how school-based practitioners can practice. It expanded my practice and just different ways that I see school-based practice and where the future of school-based practice can be.” — Dr. Jamie Hunter “It’s a lot of collaboration and co-teaching with counselors, teachers, and really focusing on the prevention and promotion aspect of just positive mental health and well-being.” Dr. Jamie Hunter “If you are an idealist and a visionary, find someone who’s a type A analytic.” — Dr. Kaisa Syväoja ”You have to be able to sort of build your project around their timetables. So that's something also to think about, is it's nice to have like a longer range plan, where do you want to go as a district or as an OT? So then when those grants open up, you're able to apply for them.” — Dr. Kaisa Syväoja ”Those businesses in your community, if you see them out there supporting your local school district…that probably means that business is interested in supporting endeavors that might be related to occupational therapy.” — Jayson Davies, M.A.,OTR/L Resources 👉 Every Moment Counts  - Susan Bazyk's program for supporting mental health in schools 👉 Autism Level Up  - Program developed by Jack and Amy 👉 Energy Meter  - Tool developed by Jack and Amy at Autism Level Up 👉 Grants.gov  - Federal government grant resource portal 👉 Mental Health Service Provider Grant  - U.S. Department of Education grant program 👉 The College of St. Scholastica OT Program Episode Transcript Expand to view episode transcript   Jayson Davies     Hey there, and welcome to episode 191 of the OT school house podcast. Thank you so much for being here. I am your host, Jayson Davies, and I'm excited to have you here. So I think I speak for a lot of school based ot practitioners when I say even just the idea of submitting a grant seems too daunting to even consider. Am I right? If I'm not, please reach out, because I want to know what grant you have submitted. But if you do feel that way too, the next 54 minutes or so will definitely help to calm your nerves and also help to see how maybe a small grant can help you to implement a new change in your schools, whether you want to build a sensory room or organize a library of tools that you can share with teachers throughout the year, or maybe you even want to bring on a full time or part time employee to support a program that you designed. This episode will help guide you to do just that. Today, I'm thrilled to welcome Dr Jamie Hunter and Dr Kaiser savoya from the College of St Scholastica. Dr Hunter brings over 27 years of professional experience in school based practice, pediatrics, leadership and fieldwork education, while Dr savoyes serves as the program director for the Masters of OT program and has extensive experience in both early intervention as well as school based practice. Together, the two of them are leading a groundbreaking mental health service provider grant that's transforming how ot practitioners approach mental health in the school setting. And so if you have ever wondered how maybe a grant could support you and the practices that you want to implement at your school site, you are in the right place, we'll explore how to effectively utilize these grants to support your practice, implement mental health initiatives across all of the MTSS tiers, and also create meaningful partnerships within your district. So let's go ahead and dive in.    Amazing Narrator     Hello and welcome to the OT schoolhouse podcast, your source for school based occupational therapy tips, interviews and professional development now to get the conversation started, here is your host. Jayson Davies, class is officially in session.    Jayson Davies     Jamie Kaiser, welcome to the OT school house podcast. It is such a pleasure to have you here, and you know we're going to be talking about grant writing within school based OT or not, particularly the writing process, but the actual using of grants to help school based occupational therapy practitioners. And I'm excited to have you here to talk about that, to get started. I would love to let you both share a little bit about where you are in your ot career, kind of how you got here, and why supporting grants or helping school based ot practitioners get grants is so impactful for you, Jamie, would you like to kick us off?    Jamie Hunter     Sure, absolutely. Thank you, Jayson for inviting us to speak today. I am Jamie hunter. I am school based practitioner by heart. I think I practiced for 23 years in a school district in Wisconsin, prior to shifting to academia, I am now currently the academic field work coordinator for the occupational therapy program at the College of St Scholastica in Duluth, Minnesota. I work alongside kaisa as co director of our mental health service provider grant, and it has been an absolute whirlwind, you know, over the last few years for us to be able to grow and develop programming we are supporting area school districts. And so it has just been It's opened my eyes to how school based practitioners can practice it is has expanded my practice and and just different ways that I see school based practice and where the future of school based practice can be.    Jayson Davies     Love that I appreciate you sharing how school based OT is kind of been supported by your expansion beyond just school based OT, and you know how grant writing can really support you. So kaiza, what about you? I'd love for you to share a little bit about your background and your your passion for grants and school based occupational therapy.    Kaisa Syvaoja     Yeah, thank you, and thank you for having us today. This is a topic that we love to talk about. We spend a lot of time talking about it, so we're happy to be here. My name is kaisi suvoya. I am the Master's Occupational Therapy Program Director at The College of St Scholastica, and like Jamie said, I'm also the CO Project Director for a mental health service provider grant when we embarked on this journey. And Jamie puts it very eloquently, like it has been a whirlwind of a journey, but it's been really exciting. We launched this particular grant initiative being one of the first ot programs to be able to be awarded this particular grant. And that has really. Shown us what OTs can do and how we can practice at the top of our licensure in so many different ways. I too came from school based practice. I worked in rural practice settings, so I've worked in a lot of different settings. But prior to coming to academia full time, I had been in rural school districts. I had a really big caseload birth to 21 and I think that this particular grant showcases all that OTs are actually able to do within those spaces, and a lot of it is advocacy. It's advocacy that we see on the ground with these particular grants, and it's also advocacy for all OTs to say, like, yes, you you have the capacity to be able to do this. And I think that's been the beauty of this particular grant, perfect.    Jayson Davies     You know, why don't we just actually go right into the grant that you both have? Kind of are working with that mental health service provider grant and share a little bit about what it entails. I know nothing about grant writing or about grants or very little, and I'm sure most of the people listening similar. So just share with us, kind of what the goal and what it looked like to potentially even get it, and what it's allowing you to do. Yeah.    Kaisa Syvaoja     So this was a depart federal us, Department of Education grant. So at the federal level, which has its own nuances. So if you're looking at for somebody, that's brand new, if you're looking at grants, there's federal grants, state grants, and then grants that are from outside of governmental organizations. So when you're dealing with a federal grant, there's a level of structure that goes into both the application and applying for it, as well as the day to day operations and the management of grants. So this particular grant was a mental health service provider grant that was really focused on training, so working with professions that are considered mental health within scope, which occupational therapists are within mental health. We know this as OTs. We've done a lot of advocacy in those areas, and so this particular grant was really intended to train individuals to be able to go into school settings and be able to provide some of those supports, to kid OTs, to school personnel to really address some of the mental health needs that our young people are experiencing today. This particular grant came from the bipartisan safer homes act. So it was something that came through Congress as a grant for expense. So that was sort of a little bit of the general context to that particular grant.    Jayson Davies     Gotcha, and you mentioned that it allows for training. Is this training occupational therapy students? Is it training ot practitioners that are already practicing, what does that what does that    Kaisa Syvaoja     look like? So our particular grant right now has been working with Level Two fieldwork students. So ot students obviously pre licensure and going out into area schools and completing one of their level two rotations through the school districts, with the primary emphasis on mental health and how ot can work within those school settings to support the mental health of kid OTs from an occupational therapy lens, wow.    Jamie Hunter     And I think if I can jump in and just add a few additional details when I think about the vision of what it was expanding and helping to fill the gap of mental health services. We're partnering with four area school districts to be able to provide additional supports. Many of them were in rural areas or areas where they just didn't have the services to be able to support needs of students. We're not only doing the training with this next generation of OT practitioners that could potentially be school based practitioners in the future or pediatric mental health practitioners in the future, but also being able to provide training to the staff, the teachers, the administrators, paraprofessionals, anyone that is working alongside our students. It's a lot of collaboration and co teaching with counselors teachers, and really focusing on the prevention and promotion aspect of just positive mental health and well being so that's kind of a nutshell of the beginning of our project.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, I love it. And, you know, we as as ot practitioners, we often reference like the 17 year research gap, how it takes 17 years from research to get into practice. And, and, yeah, you're potentially working primarily with the level two students. But how? Much of that knowledge is then going back to like what you mentioned, Jamie, the rest of the staff there, and it sounds like you might even be working directly with the staff a little bit education. But even more importantly, the OT practitioners that are supervising those fieldwork students. I'm sure they're learning a lot more because, I mean, I speak with ot practitioners, you know, every week, if not every day, and I often get I don't know how to support mental health on campus. I don't understand what that actually means. I don't understand what it looks like. You know, is that SEL or what is it? And so it's great that we are now supporting those students, and this grant is allowing you to do this, but in turn, those students are going to kind of spread the word and support others, which is fantastic, congratulations.    Jamie Hunter     Yeah, and our students enter additional training before they start their rotation, we built out training modules that really focus on understanding school based practice. What is multi tiered system of support. What is individual education plans? What is special education? What is all of those components? How do we begin teaching them additional avenues to explore pediatric mental health? What are the supports that they need to be able to be functional in those settings? And we relied on every moments counts. Susan basics, her, her work, that, that she has done, to develop that every moments count, programming autism level up. We referenced that and gave additional training for our students to be able to use the edge the energy meter that Jack and Amy, Amy, Amy, yes, that Jack and Amy have developed so definitely giving the students a forefront of learning before they even hit the ground, running at at the sites that they're Going to and the school districts that they're helping.    Jayson Davies     I love that, because those are not cheap programs for new practitioners to get access to, to learn from Amy and Jack and Sue basic and the entire team over at every moment counts. So that's awesome. Kaiser, did you want to add?    Kaisa Syvaoja     Yeah, I was going to say that that's a really critical element to what we've been doing is because what, what our students are doing, is a little bit unique in the sense that we don't have a lot of OT practitioners in the school settings that are doing this, in practice, in in a large scale. I think all of us as OTs do this, right? It's, it's foundational to who we are as providers, but we don't necessarily have that Avenue at the district level to be able to do this in a larger scale. And so a lot of the practitioners and providers right now are looking at it from approaching it from that tier three aspect, which I think is really important, right? We have a lot of kiddos at that tier three level that need additional mental health supports. What we are doing is focusing a lot more on that tier one and tier two, so preventative, and also those students that are more at risk. And I think that that's been really, a really great thing from a ot advocacy lens, because we are able to showcase at the district level. This is what you can use your OTs, and this is sort of your your return on that investment. But also that's been something that we've had to be really mindful of when we work with our level two students to say, you know, you're going to be walking into spaces that are going to look different. You're going to have to apply your ot critical thinking skills in a little bit different way, and so we've had to do a lot of that early training for them in order to be successful. And I think our students have really walked away with a lot of benefit from that.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, you know, I have so many follow up questions I just want to and we can touch on this maybe in a moment, but both of you have really mentioned that rural component, and how there aren't a lot of practitioners in the area using mental health, and this is just going to overflow. But before I do that, I want to kind of direct follow to that question, because I know with if you get a grant, you've got to kind of measure this, just like an IEP goal, you've got to measure in order to get potential future funding and whatnot. And so are you? I'm sure there's multiple ways you're taking data, but are the field work level two students then in some way implementing our project in their level two that kind of corresponds with this program?    Kaisa Syvaoja     Yes. Jamie, do you want to take that one?     Jamie Hunter     Yes. So our students absolutely are, they're doing projects. They're, you know, I think this last cohort of students that that we have out currently started doing some research. You know, even in their their coursework before, like, two semesters. Before they actually went out to rotations. And you know, they've done research to be able to develop programming and planning. Some of them were focused around teacher burnout and well being. How do we use cognitive behavioral therapy supports to be able to support the teachers we can't support our kids without identifying that we need to address teachers well being as well. You know our students when we think about application of tier two interventions, being able to develop some cafeteria interventions, some things that are happening at the resource recess level, all of our students, depending on the district needs, are meeting the needs of our clients, which are our districts in a variety of different ways. Some wanted those embedded strategies right in the tier one classrooms and our students have created an intervention menu to be able to push to teachers and say, What things are you needing in your classrooms? Is it movement and mindfulness? Lessons, is it growth mindset? Lessons? Are there ways that we can look at just regulation and CO regulation needs within your classroom? Our students are doing assessment to be able to determine what might be needed in a classroom. When we look at the population level of a classroom, or a whole cohort of sixth grade students, or do they look at more tier two, where it maybe is some smaller groups of students who might be at risk, and the teachers are bringing forward, hey, could we do an anxiety group? Or maybe we've got a tech dependency theme that's happening, and we can help address and provide some lessons. So those are just snippets of some of the projects our students have been working with, and it just depends each district has come forward with different areas of need to be able to support the students they have.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, I am totally resisting the urge to go on a deep dive with you all into MTSS, because I know that's not the topic of this podcast. We have other podcasts that we can save that for. But you mentioned all these wonderful things that are happening. Remind me again, how long have you all been working kind of under this grant?    Kaisa Syvaoja     So we are in our third year, okay? So we've been working with our districts, really, for about two, two and a half years, okay? And we've done a lot of build with that space. This particular grant was a non continued grant, so we'll be ending in December, so we'll we're sort of wrapping up our project as we have initially envisioned it. We've got a lot of things that we've got in the works, as far as how we're continuing this in other capacities, and those partnerships with our districts, because we've done a lot of really good work. The other piece with this too, is with a federal grant, there are specific things that we have to measure. This was a mental health service provider training grant, so we were really looking at like number of students that were trained and practitioners, number of placements, number of like recent hires, those types of things. So they're looking much more at that higher level space, which gave us a lot of opportunity to be able to really directly interact and meet those district needs. And then what we have done from an OT advocacy piece is we have really encouraged and focused on being able to disseminate this information to other ot practitioners, to other people that are going to interface with our districts in various ways, whether that's at the local level or nationally. So we've been a lot of different places, and that's that's been a really, I think a big benefit of this particular grant is we've been able to do that, and obviously having conversations with you that type of thing.    Jayson Davies     Yes, yes. We love conversations about it.    Jamie Hunter     Yeah. Even though it's been a non continuation, it definitely has planted seeds of how, how could this look? How can we continue this with sustainability? Specifically within our four area school districts, there are things that are going to continue that we've been creative to identify. How can we continue this, this work, but then also, at, you know, there is going to be that continued advocacy to to examine, how does this impact where school based practice is going in the future, you know, whether it's impacted individual OTs. And just saying, Hey, I never even thought I would be able to work in this area. Oh, I didn't know that the ESSA laws allowed for ot to work in this space. Yes, there is idea you could allocate funding to be able to support those preventative and promotion levels. So it definitely for me. I came from school based practice where I was mainly tier three. I. With IEPs, and I thought I was siloed in only being able to work with those on my caseload. And it really has opened up the opportunities to to see the possibilities of where I knew that we could work, even though I felt like I had the restrictions of where I could work, if that makes sense, yeah.    Jayson Davies     Oh yeah, absolutely. And, and I the reason I asked how long is because I actually want to look a little retrospective these four districts. Were you working with them actually, before? Did you have students going to those four districts?    Kaisa Syvaoja     No, we weren't currently working with students in this capacity, like we might have had field work placement students, in a general sense, going in, yeah, and doing what we consider that typical OT, but no, we were not doing this particular program or partnership with any of these districts prior.    Jamie Hunter     Yeah, they had gone there for a traditional school based practice, and it opened the door because we had the existing partnerships with these districts, but it allowed for expansion of, how can we really enhance this partnership to be able to support the district beyond just the student learning aspect of a level two student being taken by a ot at the district, perfect.    Jayson Davies     And that's exactly what I wanted to bring up. Is, what did it actually look like for our Level, Level Two students going before this program, right? These students were, you had students five years ago. They were going to school based ot placements, but they weren't going with this knowledge that they're now going in with. It sounds like they get one or two terms of education before they go into their field work on every moment counts, and autism level up and other programs that are fantastic. But have you seen, I guess, a big shift in what you know, your level two fieldwork students from five years ago compared to those that are going in today?    Jamie Hunter     Yeah, I would say yes, we've seen a huge growth with the students capacity for learning while they're on the site, but then also what they can bring as as resources to the districts that they're working in. And so previously, students that would go into school based practice in these four school districts, it was that traditional tier three, you know, caseload that that you see OTs typically working in, you know, and I think even from the our first year of the grant, there we were, what is our phrase, Kaiser, we were saying we were building the plane as we were flying it, right? So here we're building programming. We're building the different interventions. How do we assess at the group level? How do we assess at the population level? We're building things that our students could be using, reflecting now to the students who are out on rotations right now this group of students, we embedded them in research prior to going so here they immerse themselves in in the language of everything school based, all the language you know, it's a foreign language when you're a medical professional and you're going into the educational setting, right? And so it immerse them in that. It immerse them in the evidence based components that are going behind. What is school based practice, and what are the mental health components that are needed? And definitely in addition to those learning modules that we have the students do before they go on site, but then also the programming that our students and our field work educators have built over the last two and a half years. Now we have programming. We have things built so that we can really expand and begin to build those things at the district level. And so it definitely has made a huge difference, and students are feeling more confident in in that advocacy and being able to build programming for our districts.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, yeah. And on the flip side of it, because you mentioned right having that opportunity to collaborate, I'm sure you're also getting feedback from people at the district, whether it be teachers, other service providers, hopefully even administration. What has that looked like? Like? Are people like, Oh, I understand ot now? Or are they like, Oh, I'm surprised. I didn't know that ot could support mental health. Or, I guess, what are you hearing when? When other both OTs, but also non ot practitioners?    Kaisa Syvaoja     So all of the above you can probably imagine. You know, a lot of that goes back to the advocacy piece. So, you know, like when we first started those conversations, we got a lot of, oh, I didn't realize that ot could do that. Or some hesitancy is that, you know, is that a direction we want to go? You know, we sort of got the system and process, so there was a little bit of that as we have built the relationships. And I think as you are able to see. What your OTs in those schools are able to do to support the whole school, that conversation has really shifted to, you know, what else are you able to do? How can you expand these types of things? They start to come and see you as more of a partner in whatever those initiatives are at that district level. So I think a lot of that just comes back to continually being present and advocating for for us as as a profession, and then advocating for those kiddos too.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, yeah. Love it awesome. I just love how you know, it starts with just the fieldwork students, but then it expands so much beyond the fieldwork students and like, what I mean to extent you call that, like, grassroots advocacy, right? Like you just start with the smallest number of people that you can and just grow from there. And that's awesome. Kudos to y'all. All right, we have spent a lot of time really talking about the program, what it has looked for the two of you, and for the students and and for the schools that you work with, but now that we got everyone excited about what they can do if they get a grant, let's talk about grants. And first of all, is this something that is too overwhelming for a school based occupational therapy practitioner? Obviously, the grant that you got, the two of you got, is a little different, right? You were getting a grant to educate others so that they could make progress. But is getting a grant, whether it be federal or others, I don't even know what exists out there, feasible for school based ot practitioners that are, you know, working a 3540 hour week, absolutely.    Kaisa Syvaoja     I mean, will it be work? Yes, but I think that there's a lot of payoffs for that, you know, whether that's getting a smaller grant, and there are a lot of smaller grants out there, especially if you're looking at maybe just a school level or at the district level, and you're not trying to do, like, what we're doing, where we've got really big partnerships and placements and stipends related to placements, and, you know, that type of aspect, and you're really just looking at the implementation of an initiative like this, you can certainly find smaller grants that are going to support that, that are going to support some of those startup development costs, getting diversifying your assessments, and, you know, resources that You have at at the school level, and then also being able to provide some potential offset to your increased workload, or shift in that workload. I think that that's a big area that people need to be thinking about, if you're looking at it more from that practitioner level, is the school districts, especially if you're coming from a district that is short OTs, they're not going to want to pull you, even if you are really skilled and wonderful and can do all these wonderful things. And so being able to have some dollar amount, to be able to offset that, is going to be incentive to your districts, and it's going to help you get your program launched. There's a number of non government grants, but then at state levels, there's a number of states we're in Minnesota, so I pay attention to Minnesota, Wisconsin pretty frequently. But you know, there are state level grants that do come through. The big thing with applying for a grant, whether this is at the small level or the larger level, is really think what your project. Think through what your project is. Think through what are all the different elements of it. Have a really clear vision of what that is. And for OTs, that can be really hard, because we're good at everything. We can do lots of things. So narrowing that down being really concrete with what it is that you are able to offer how many people or kid OTs, or what's that impact look like? You know, how are you serving them? And what are your specific project areas are going to be helpful to somebody that is going to be reviewing that grant that is 99.9% of the time not going to be an OT. So you have to explain what OT is in a way that's tangible, and also not get tangentile in that explanation with really clear. This is my like to say, like the artifact. These are the things in the point that you can that you can see and walk away with,    Jayson Davies     yeah, yeah, absolutely. I want to touch on something you just said. But before I do, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. We'll be right back. All right, we're back. And you mentioned this thing that, how do I phrase this? I thought about grant writing. I've thought about trying to figure out something, maybe even Donors Choose, or whatever that website is called, where other people finance things. But I always, to a degree, almost felt a a little bit selfish or b I didn't know what to actually ask for. And so I love that you brought up some assessments. I also really love that you brought up the idea of potentially compensation to bring on, like another ot practitioner to help out, even if it's a few hours a week. Yeah. Is that something you've seen practitioners do? Like, in I guess do you have to kind of, like, lay it all out on a spreadsheet? Like, I need these assessments. Is going to cost this much. I need a part time. OT, we have a contract company that we work with. It's going to be this much. And is that kind of what it looks like?     Kaisa Syvaoja     Yeah. So you would essentially be creating a budget spreadsheet. And within that budget spreadsheet you're going to have those operational things that you know are tangible things, you know, the assessments, the equipment that you need, the potential, you know, if you had to do any renovations, those kinds of things, right, that have a really easy attached dollar amount. The other part to that budget is your time like you have to see yourself as an entity, or somebody else as like you need to. You need to monetize that time in some way, whether that is yourself to say, Okay, this percentage of my workload is going to be covered through this and put $1 amount to that, and also then for the district, because now they're going to lose that person percentage of your workload for your traditional services that you had been providing that then you're going to need to say, okay, and I'm either going to work overtime, and this is going to be the percentage that The grant is going to pay me for overtime, so you essentially compensate that for yourself, or you're going to bring in somebody else that's going to be able to offset that cost, and you're able to pay for that through a grant source. Obviously, some grants don't allow for personnel, so that would be something you need to look at specific to your grant, but assuming that you have a grant that allows for you to build that budget, and they have, they have guidelines, and you're not just, you know, you don't guess here, um, they'll tell you, I can    Jayson Davies     totally see, sorry, really quickly, I could totally see, like, an OTs will therapist, like, going out, getting this awesome grant for like, $50,000 to help them, like, offset their work, and then being like, how do I give this money to the district? Like, just not understanding all that, but obviously, all the guidelines, or each grant has guidelines. Most of the times it goes through the district in some capacity, correct?    Kaisa Syvaoja     Yes, yeah. And this is where, like, obviously, like, you might have one person writing it, you might have one person envisioning this, but you're not going to probably go rogue and just, you know, create a grant, or apply for a grant and get a grant, and your district's not aware of it. So like, you need to have these conversations at the district level, or if you're in a cooperative, you know, with your cooperative, however you're however you're structured. So yeah, don't go rogue. But within that budget spreadsheet, like you really want to be thinking about, what are those tangible things, and also, what are those personnel aspects? Because that is what's going to make your grant successful. Because you can have all the most brilliant ideas in the world, and you might not have either time to do it, or there's nobody to be able to pay to be able to do this. And when you are looking at shortages of personnel, districts, cooperatives, whoever is paying you and building out that case so that they're going to be really protective of your time in those other spaces too, because they need you to be working with the kid OTs that they currently have. And we know that there's a lot of kiddos that need to be worked with for ot across the board. So these are really, really great opportunities to build my recommendation. If you're a practitioner looking at this, start small. You don't need to do a multi million dollar, massive project with all of these different aspects to it. Think about, what can you do if we're looking at like a tier one approach, and that's your focus. Like, what can you do in that classroom level? What can you do in those between classes times that's going to help with supporting the culture in a positive way at that particular school that you're working with, or that particular classroom that you're working with like these don't need to be huge, massive projects that are really challenging to organize. You can start small and then build that also is helpful. If you're working with a district that maybe is a little bit on the fence, or you've got teachers who don't really understand this, it's a good way for them to be able to see in small snippets what you are able to do and how you can support them, and then you can build from there, and whether that's through additional funding or they reallocate things at the district level, and you've got some release now for that, because now they're allocating dollars coming in from other sources to your salary. You know those are those are ways for them to be able to see it, but those grants are really helpful to be able to launch that, especially with a district that maybe doesn't have the means or resources to be able to do that on their own, or maybe doesn't understand what you are able to do as an OT in those spaces.    Jamie Hunter     And I think, yeah, I think, you know, like Kaiser said, Don't go rogue. It is you have a team. You know, many times you're working alongside counselors or teachers who have passion and have, you know, similar ideas. Start having conversations about, hey, I have this idea of how we could grow programming. I saw this grant right? How do you work collaboratively as a team? It may be something that you need to bring to administration and get that buy in too, right? And maybe, then, whether you're at a bigger district where maybe you might have some people who have been had experience writing grants, you know, that was my first taste. Is I partnered with a teacher and we wrote a grant for a sensory room, you know. So I think it's very feasible to be able to write those grants. But you know, having other eyes on it is another supportive measure. And and showing your district administration, hey, this is what ot can do. And how can we showcase this through grant writing? And here is the idea that we have to bring to the district to enhance what's already happening and and build from there. So yeah, definitely start small, but don't do it by yourself.    Kaisa Syvaoja     My big advice to this is, if you are an idealist and a visionary, find someone who's a type A analytic to read through and clean your proposal.    Jayson Davies     Yes, yes, I am the first and definitely need a lot of help with the person, people who implement so I totally understand that statement. I had a question, and you made me laugh, and I forgot about it. But no, the question is, is ot practitioners, we often go to our administrators in times of need, and the sense of I'm burnt out, I need more support to help me get through my already high case load. And we sometimes forget that when we go to our administrators, I find when we go to our administrators, we go with problems, and we don't often go with solutions. And I feel like this can kind of help us to go with a solution. Yes, it takes a little bit more work. Don't get me wrong, it does take hours beyond seeing kids, assessing kids going to IEPs, to sort this all out. But long term, it can support us. Is that kind of how the two of you see it?    Kaisa Syvaoja     Yeah, absolutely. You know it's, it's definitely some work on the front end and and I don't think it's a quick fix. So if you are a practitioner who is burnt out, this is not going to be just like the next day. Things are all wonderful. But the work that we have particularly been doing through the grant, and if you can get a grant to support this is sort of twofold, like you're able to do more at that tier one and tier two level, which, in theory, and we've seen, I think, good, good anecdotes to that this actually works. But you know, when you're working with tier one and tier two, you're preventing potentially more involved tier three needs, which, if you're a burnt out practitioner, can also be helpful, because maybe you're not working with them at a high intensity in a tier three IEP capacity, and you're maybe working preventatively with some of these kiddos so that you don't have as large of a tier three caseload. So that's where a benefit is. Obviously, that's not immediate. I think the other thing to just in context and have people think about is like, this will take time for you to learn and to get a system and process like we've been doing this now for a couple of years with our students. We've learned a lot along the way. Definitely, the way we're doing it now is not how we started, and if we could go back, it would probably be a lot easier. But, you know, those that first time that you're trying something new, it's going to take more cognitive load and also planning and work on your part, so you're putting more time in early, yeah, with the return hopefully later on, yeah, in different ones.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, absolutely. And Jamie, if I can come back to you, because you mentioned how you actually worked with the teacher to develop a sensory room on campus, I would love to just kind of get a quick overview of kind of how that got initiated and the steps that you kind of took to make that happen. Yeah.    Jamie Hunter     So in practice, when I was working for our school district, I was working with an autism teacher, a teacher that's specialized in in that area. At the high school, we did not have a resource room. We did not have a place that that students could go to decompress, to take a break, to get some of those sensory needs met. And so we had a local grant that the teacher was like, Hey, do you want to see if we can apply for this grant together and see if we can get funding to be able. To get the equipment that we need. The district was on board to say, hey, we'd provide a classroom space for you. We'd allocate that, but we just don't have the money to be able to buy the equipment that we would need to be able to support that. And so the grant was written to be able to get equipment. So we were able to get swings, we were able to get scooters. We were able to put mats in the room. We had lower lights, you know, all of those sensory based tools that that students may need, depending on on what where they were at with their regulation for that moment of time. And so it definitely was a great opportunity for us to apply for the grant. We received it again, those same factors that Kaiser shared before, we had to itemize everything that we wanted on our wish list. What would this money go towards? How would we spend it? We had to give like we were going through catalogs and absolutely writing down every single thing that we could potentially put in for the funding, and then we had to document that on the tail end side when we did receive the grant, to be able to spend the funding down.    Jayson Davies     So so just to demystify a little bit more, here you thank you for kind of sharing that last step that you really had to do, or several the steps that you had to do at the end of your answer. If, how long did it take from the moment that you guys, like, had this idea to actually being done with the process? Not like, how many hours it took you? But was this a week long project? Was it a years long project, months?    Jamie Hunter     So kaisa asked, Hey, do you want to do this grant?    Jayson Davies     I'm just talking about the small one. Not the not the big one, but like the small one, the small one that we're talking about right here, the sensory room, right?    Jamie Hunter     So the small grant that we did, gosh, you know, I think it was a meeting. We we met. We talked about, what does this look like? You know, I think we met a couple times. We had a shared document that we were growing and developing. The application process, I took over kind of looking, because OTs, we look at those sensory catalogs and equipment and things like that. A lot I took on that aspect of diving into what things would we want to go in there, how much money would each of those things cost? The teacher kind of took on more of the responses to, what are the questions? Why do we need this? What is the need? So we kind of tasked it out that way when we were applying for for the grant, you know. So, I mean, definitely it took some time and investment, you know, definitely a few meetings looking at that deadline, you know, are we meeting that deadline of when it needs to be applied and submitted? You know? So, and then on the tail end, once we did receive the grant, then it took a little bit more time again, going through the orders working with the district, because it had to come through the district where all the funding went, and, you know, the processes to get it all ordered and set up, and then the training, yeah. So then, after that fact, we had to do training to whoever was using that room so that we knew that the equipment and everything was going to be used appropriately. So definitely, when you're thinking about, what is your product, what are those outcomes? What are the components that you might need to invest in to make sure it's a successful run?     Kaisa Syvaoja     Can I jump in real quick just on some logistics for grants? Having some ideas in your head is a really great thing. You can write them down on paper. Obviously you're going to tailor your project specific to the funding requirements in the source. So you might have a big project that you have to make a little bit more tangible to that particular grant. So, you know, have that in the back of your mind. The other thing with grants, typically, they operate on cycles. So usually, you know, there might be a heads up for a grant, like, Hey, this is going to post, or we anticipate it's going to post at a certain time. But grants typically aren't just continually available. I mean, smaller maybe non governmental grants, you might have just a pool of money that's available and they do it on a rolling basis, but usually you're going to get a grant window time. So between, you know this date and this date, you can put in an application. And so you have to be able to sort of build your project around their timetables. So that's something also to think about, is it's nice to have, like, a longer range plan. Where do you want to go as a district or as an OT? So then when those grants open up, you're able to apply for them. Yeah?    Jayson Davies     Is the easiest way to find grants. Just kind of go on google search California education grants and kind of obviously type a little bit more details than that. I'm assuming every state's different and all that. But is that kind of the starting point?    Kaisa Syvaoja     Um, yeah. So. There's a couple of good places at the state level, like looking at your state websites are going to be probably your best options. And there's there's grants specific to individual elements or aspects of that state government structure. So you can apply to be on listserv and get email notifications when grants get posted at the state level. I do that for Minnesota, and that's across, I    Jayson Davies     think, like the Department of Education,    Kaisa Syvaoja     Department of Education, but it's really through, like, there's your state government, and it posed pretty much all grants, at least ours does within that that spectrum, as far as what you're wanting to sign up for. So that's one grants.gov is going to be your go to for federal grants. And that system, you know, once you're in it, it's a little bit clunky. You can sift and filter through and just look at forecasted ones or ones that are open. You can look at certain funding sources, so if it's us, you know, Department of Education, or an NIH grant, or something along those lines. It lets you sift through that way that's going to cover your governmental grants, non governmental your we have foundation level for, like, local areas, whether that's a city level or, like a couple of counties, that's usually a good place to start, because they might be pooling a number of people, or just reaching out to those foundations and organizations is also helpful to just say, Hey, we've got this project. We're looking at some funding sources, you know, what might be some local, you know, area dollars that might might be interesting to look at, and they're usually pretty useful.    Jamie Hunter     I think the local one, like, like I spoke to about funding equipment for the sensory room at the high school, right? That was a foundation locally. It was through a hospital, you know. So looking at your local organizations, sometimes those retail organizations that are local to you might put out small grant funds that that you can apply for funding. We've had some of our students apply for those at a retailer, and they've gotten $500 for equipment to help at middle school recess. Kind of you know, where they have some more equipment available for for students. So definitely different ways that you can look at exploring those funding options.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, that's a that's a good idea, like, because I know recently in our community, I think it's smart, and final, has been just kind of out there in the community. Really like doing things for our schools, and I almost see that as like a way to also potentially find they might not have a specific, quote, unquote grant writing or grant a program. But those businesses in your community, if you see them out there, supporting your local school district, if you see them out there, you know, maybe your city just opened up a new playground and it was provided by or sponsored by this business. Well, that probably means that business is interested in supporting, you know, endeavors that might be related to occupational therapy, and so reach out to that company, and maybe it's not a formalized grant or something, but they might be able to support you in some way. So great idea.    Kaisa Syvaoja     One of my best advices is go with a project. Don't necessarily go and ask for the money. Just go and say, Hey, I've got this idea. I'd love to be able to talk to you about it. You're not asking for anything. You're just having a conversation. So you know, starting there for those smaller partnerships and conversations, that works really well, then you can go back and ask later, or they might offer something.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, yeah. You never know. You never know. I would be remiss if I didn't ask this question, is chat GPT helpful in any of this?    Kaisa Syvaoja     Well, we didn't use chat GPT when we developed our grant. That was still a little bit before chat GPT was very well versed. Yeah, I think that there are some benefits, you know, being able to put in, like, if you're brand new to building spreadsheet related stuff, don't really know what you should be including help with definition of terms, that type of thing. I think AI can be a really useful tool to sort of help structure that narrative or pull out aspects of that document. Maybe as far as developing and building I don't think that any of our AI sources are that adept at the nuance of OT especially if you're wanting to build a innovative and new project. I think that AI generative AI is really good with things that it already knows a lot of what you are wanting to do, hopefully and be innovative and creative. Hopefully, AI doesn't have a really great idea looks like. So you're going to have to build that aspect of the narrative for sure. But I think it can help with some of the nuts and bolts, maybe of some of those grant writing resources.    Jamie Hunter     And I think if you. Have that idea and you're like, okay, am I addressing this question to the detail that they're wanting? You could run it through an AR generator, you know, is it more clear? Is this? Can this be more clear and concise? Is this, you know, am I addressing all the components that is in this application and have it be like a second set of eyes to just say, is there anything else that I could expand on? Is that a way that you could use that tool? But again, I think you still need to have those ideas. You have to have the build of it and use it as a supplementary support. It's not going to generate everything that you're going to need?    Kaisa Syvaoja     Yeah, and I review grants. We still have humans reviewing grants, at least at this point. I think it'll be interesting. The next couple of years, are we going to see generative AI doing screenings for those initial grants? So that might be something interesting to pay attention to. Like, are they screening out certain things. If you don't have certain words in that initial application, to my knowledge, that's not something that's happening at this point, but that might be a way of also pulling in generative AI for the future to say, Hey, do I have all the key words and target things that this particular grant might be looking at, so that you are at the top? But when somebody is reviewing a grant, they want to hear your story. They want to hear what's what's really exciting about what you're doing, how it's going to impact your local community, or whoever it is that you're working with, like that's what they want to see. So you have to be able to showcase that.    Jayson Davies     I love that. That's a great I think that's kind of a great wrap up here. I was going to ask you both for one more tip, but I feel like you all have given so many great tips throughout this entire episode. So unless there is one more thing that you kind of have on the tip of your tongue and you really want to share, I wanted to ask if is LinkedIn the best place for someone to find you, potentially, if they have a question, either specifically about the program you're working on, maybe a quick grant question, or maybe they're local to you, just want to you. Just want to support you. Is that the best place for people to find you?    Kaisa Syvaoja     Yeah, this is crazy. You can certainly reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm pretty active there. Love to connect with anybody and everybody.    Jamie Hunter     Yes, I would say the same. You know, I guess the only other thing that I think about is that, can this be done without grant funding? I think another advocacy piece is thinking about your ot practice and what things you may want to expand in your practice. There is always partnerships. You have local ot programs in your state. Are there ways that you can collaborate to help build some ideas and programming and just being able to expand where we are with school based practice.    Jayson Davies     Absolutely, that is a great wrap up. Kaiza Jamie, thank you so much for coming on this show, sharing so much about your grant that you received, and congratulations on getting this all like you're at the finish line now. Congratulations on that. That is amazing, but also here to support others who might want to do something similar with grant. We really appreciate your time, your energy and, of course, your knowledge.    Kaisa Syvaoja     Thanks for having us.     Jamie Hunter     Thank you, Jayson.    Jayson Davies     Thank you. All right, and that wraps up episode 191 of the OT school house podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in all the way to the end. I want to, of course, extend a heartfelt thank you to Dr Jamie Hunter and Dr Kaiser Savoia for sharing their incredible insights on how ot practitioners like us can use these grants to advocate for mental health within our school sites, as we've learned today, grant writing doesn't have to be super intimidating, and whether you're looking to fund a sensory room or provide professional development or implement A school wide Mental Health Initiative, there are resources available to you to help expand your practice and better serve your students. If today's conversation inspired you to think differently about your ot practice, or want to do more within your ot practice, I encourage you to join us over inside the OT school house collaborative. This is where you'll find additional resources, professional development opportunities and direct mentorship from myself and other school based ot practitioners to implement what you've learned today. Together, we can elevate school based ot practice and make a lasting impact on our students and, of course, our school communities to learn more about that head on over to OTSchoolHouse.com , slash collab and join our growing community of innovative school based ot practitioners, until next time. This is Jayson. Thanks so much for joining us, and remember the small steps that you take today will lead to big changes in your practice tomorrow. I'll see you next time.    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 otschoolhouse.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! If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Google Podcast , Spotify , or wherever you listen to podcasts. Click here to view more episodes of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast

Click on your preferred podcast player link to listen wherever you enjoy podcasts . Welcome to the show notes for Episode 190 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast. Get ready to blast off into a powerful new way of understanding sensory processing in schools. In this episode, Danielle Pluth and Ruth Isaac—Canadian occupational therapists and creators of the Good Sense OT Rocket Ship —share the innovative visual framework that’s transforming how OTs assess, communicate, and support student participation. The Rocket Ship helps therapists differentiate sensory-based behaviors from other performance factors , guiding you from foundational sensory regulation all the way up through sensory-motor, reflexes, perceptual motor skills, interoception, and cognitive functions at the top of the “rocket.” This structure gives OTPs a clear map for identifying root causes of behavior and choosing targeted, meaningful school-based strategies that go far beyond “wiggle cushions and chewelry.” Whether you’re brand-new to sensory integration or have years of experience, this conversation will deepen your clinical reasoning, strengthen your confidence, and help you clearly communicate sensory needs to teachers, parents, and IEP teams. If you’ve been searching for a practical, visually powerful way to explain sensory processing to your teams and build stronger intervention plans, the Good Sense Rocket Ship may be exactly what you’ve been missing. Listen now to learn the following objectives: Understand the Good Sense Rocketship Framework and its application in addressing sensory-related behaviors in school-based OT practice. Learn strategies to identify and assess sensory processing challenges and their impact on students' functional performance. Explore effective interventions to support regulation, sensory-motor development, and collaboration with educators and parents. Guest(s) Bio Danielle Pluth is an OT in Medicine Hat, Alberta Canada. She graduated from the University of Alberta in 2002. She worked in various areas before starting her business Advance OT where her team provides OT services in local schools, community and their sensory clinic. Danielle has done extensive post graduate education in the area of sensory and OT. In addition, she completed her SIPT certification in 2016. Danielle has created a universal sensory program for teachers and parents that has been used throughout schools in her division since 2008 called Good Sense for Teachers and Parents. Ruth Isaac is an OT who has worked in pediatrics for 20 years. She studied at the University of Manitoba and has been working exclusively in pediatrics since 2005. She has worked with Danielle at Advance OT since 2008. Ruth has also done extensive post graduate education in the area of sensory and OT. In addition she complete her SIPT training in 2012 and completed the University of Southern California's Sensory Integration Certification program (OT610)in 2017. Ruth has created a universal fine motor program for teachers and parents that has also been used throughout schools in her division since 2007 called Fine Fun for Teachers and Parents. In 2021, Danielle and Ruth created Good Sense for OTs to fill the gap to help all OTs feel confident in using a sensory processing lens for OT services in the school and clinic setting. She is passionate about educating as many OTs as possible in this area to help change kid's lives. Quotes ”The first layer was looking at regulation, being out of that just right state. Thinking about how sensory is coming out as an output in motor sort of a way. And it's a foundation as well. And it can also impact regulation. -Ruth Isaac “Often we see behavior being that tip of the iceberg. And we want to have a lens or a way to look at what's going on below the surface.” -Ruth Isaac "The semicircular canals are going to tell me is my head up, is it down, is it spinning around, and that information is going to feed the muscles around my eyes for eye coordination." -Danielle Pluth “Connect the dots and make it super easy for someone to understand, why I'm working on sensory regulation and how that is impacting daily living activities or academic learning and hitting all the other sections in between.” -Jayson Davies Resources 👉 Good Sense Rocketship Framework 👉 Instagram Episode Transcript Expand to view episode transcript Jayson Davies     Hey there school based ot practitioners. This is Jayson, and you're listening to Episode 190 of the OT school house podcast. Thanks so much for clicking play on this episode, and I hope it provides you with precisely the sensory information that you need in this moment today, I'm thrilled to welcome Danielle pluth And Ruth Isaac, the creators of the good sense ot framework, this pair of OT practitioners based in Canada have developed an incredible visual tool called the good sense rocket ship that will make it super easy for you to understand and address all the sensory processing concerns that you may see in your school practice. If you've ever struggled to explain the connection between sensory challenges and classroom behaviors, or if you found yourself handing out fidgets without a clear framework for why you're doing that, this is the episode for you. Danielle and Ruth will break down their comprehensive approach that goes far beyond wiggle cushions and jewelry without explanation to help you confidently assess and address your students sensory needs, you'll learn how to trace behaviors back to their sensory foundations and communicate effectively with teachers and parents using this powerful visual model. Whether you're new to sensory integration or an experienced practitioner, you'll gain practical strategies to elevate your practice immediately. Stay tuned as we blast off with the good sense rocket ship framework.    Amazing Narrator     Hello and welcome to the OT school house podcast, your source for school based occupational therapy, tips, interviews and professional development. Now to get the conversation started, here is your host, Jayson Davies, class is officially in session.    Jayson Davies     Danielle and Ruth, welcome to the OT school house podcast. There's two of you here today, so I'm going to do my best to prompt you. So Danielle, how are you doing this afternoon?    Danielle Pluth     Oh, I'm doing well. Thank you. Yeah, it's beautiful here.    Jayson Davies     So yeah. And Ruth, how about you? How are you doing?     Ruth Isaac     Doing good. I'm excited to be here and chat with you.    Jayson Davies     Yes, and this is a special occasion, because it's happened a few times, but this is one of the times that we are speaking to an occupational therapist combo here that are not in the United States. So why don't you go ahead one of you share a little bit about where you are and kind of the setting that you're in.    Danielle Pluth     Sure, we are in medicine, Hat, Alberta, Canada. We work within we have contracts with the school divisions here, and we also have a clinic, so we see children privately within the clinic and also in the community and in their homes. So our city is about 60,000 people or so, and we're in all the school divisions here.    Ruth Isaac     One of one of our school districts is a lot of driving. I drive two hours to get to one of my schools and two hours to get back. That's the farthest one.    Danielle Pluth     Yeah. So it's fairly large region of southeastern Alberta, wow.    Jayson Davies     So that is a very large area to have to cover really quickly, because I think you are a little familiar with school based ot in the States, at least from you know, just, I know you haven't practiced here, but you've heard about it. If you kind of had to quickly explain to someone just the differences, like, how do you describe it as being similar or different to school based ot where we follow, or in the states where we follow, idea, we have a lot like, we have our own caseload and whatnot. Is it similar to that in Alberta, or is it a little different?    Danielle Pluth     I think so. I mean, we have, they're called ISPs, that we follow like so documents that the teachers will write that have the functional goals and whatnot in there. A lot of our recommendations are in there, along with speech and physio. We have kind of a set amount of time per school division, and then we have a lot of freedom to determine how we do our service delivery with regards to OT and OT assistant. What I've heard from the States, it sounds like you guys are a bit, maybe a bit more restricted with you have to really say how much time you're spending per child per week. Those kinds of things. We don't have those kinds of restrictions, so we can kind of flow a bit more within our service delivery, from Universal to groups to direct one to one. We probably can't do as much direct one to one as we sometimes hear that you can do down in the States. But even that, I don't know for sure, we tend to be more of a consultative model. Our ot assistance would do more of maybe, like direct like treatment groups and stuff like that that we've oversee. I think.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, yeah. I think that kind of is a good, good idea. It gives people a good sense of what's going on. So today we're here to talk about the good sense program that you two have developed and put together and are now even providing training for and I had the pleasure of sitting in on one of your webinars a few months ago, and just so excited to have you all here, because I was like, Oh, this is awesome. I want to bring it to everyone here on the OT school house podcast. Yeah. But before we dive into kind of the the nitty gritty of it and talk about. This really cool, good sense rocket ship you have here, I want to ask you, like, what inspired you to develop this program? What was the problem that you saw, and what was the problem that you aim to solve?    Ruth Isaac     Well, we've been working for a little while. It's probably over 20 years ago, and we never really okay, it's hard to admit, but we never really knew exactly like, the theory that we were using. We were just, like, eclectic. We're just doing a little bit of everything. And I think we've all been at that place at 1.0 yeah, where you're trying a little of this, and you're trying a little of that, and you're trying a little of this. And we just realized that we needed more of some structure to help guide and support us as we were doing our treatment and as we worked at mentoring more people in our community here, or our group of therapists.    Danielle Pluth     Yeah, I think we've come a long ways. Like in the early 2000s sensory theory was pretty new in Canada, and it was pretty kind of ooga booga To be honest, like people didn't really so, yeah, it was kind of new, and initially, like, a lot of our referrals were for like, wiggle cushions and fidgets and like things that eventually you're like, wait a minute, I think I can do more as an OT and we really didn't get much training on sensory theory in school. So both Ruth and I went down to the states, and we did all of our SIP training, and Ruth did the OT 610 so all that extra stuff that we brought back here, we started developing universal programming for the schools, because we're like, you know what? You guys can trial legal cushions and fidgets. So we developed a good sense, actually, for teachers, program that is a step by step program to help them implement strategies in the classroom. And then what was happening is our education kind of just really took off, and as we would get new therapists in, they just wouldn't be at the same level that we needed them to be. And what the schools were now expecting us to know, because we are supposed to be the sensory experts, right? So I kind of progressed where, you know, we needed, like, an in between. We can't send everybody away all the time.    Ruth Isaac     To all the different therapy, like, yeah, like, trainings, right? Not everybody    Danielle Pluth     can do all, yeah, we've done so many. I mean, when, when you have like, 15 years, we're worth a post grad education, right? So just needing to pull that together, and we decided to come up with our own sort of training model. And then it just kind of grew and grew where we ended up developing a framework, and that framework now, you know, it's what we use every day when we're working, and it's what we train our staff in. And then we decided, you know, let's try to make an online course, because it looked like it'd be so easy, but, and we just, we're very passionate about sensory, so we wanted to bring that to everyone out there who's interested, right? To have a way to use leaders really feel sensory is really occupational, like, based in an occupational therapist invented it. So we want, we want to own sensory and we want to make sure OTs are trained to be able to run with it right out of university. Because a lot of schools don't teach, even teach the theory, let alone how to then functionally use it out when you're working.    Ruth Isaac     So yeah, and I think that our different areas where we work are looking to us to be the experts, and so we want to be at the table. We want to be having these conversations, and we want to be showing what we can do as occupational therapists. And we don't want to be this, that the other thing and just trying different things. We want to have a structure and a way of approaching how we're providing service.    Jayson Davies     Awesome and that kind of I have two follow ups here, but I'll start with this one. As you mentioned, you in the system that you're in, you work both in a clinic and also from a school perspective, as you were developing good sense, did you find that it catered more to one versus the other? Does it fit for both? Kind of how did that develop?    Danielle Pluth     It fits for both? Yeah, yeah. It's the foundation of how we do OT services here. So we developed the good sense rocket ship framework, and that's specifically looking at the child from a sensory theory, sensory lens. But we are also using it within like a PEO model, where we're still looking at the environment around the child and the tasks themselves. So we can use it in the school, and we can use it in the clinic, in the schools. The other thing about it is, as you use it for your clinical reasoning, for how you're assessing and then coming up with your intervention strategies, you can decide where on the rocket you kind of want to start, and are you going to take more of a bottom up approach or a top down depending on. Environment around the child. So if you're in a more consultative model, you might do more of a top down approach to help children in those areas to optimally function within their let's say, their classroom, whereas if I'm seeing them in the clinic, I might be able to do more of a bottom up approach, because I can go a bit more with actual treatment and intervention to make you know, impact some of their functioning within that that theory as well, if that makes sense. And we also look, even within the school, how much can we do some bottom up as well? I think what it helps the most is to help you to know where are my biggest priorities, and how am I going to intervene? So I know for sure. Am I doing a top down? Am I doing a bottom up? And who around the child is going to do what? So we might have an OT assistant or an educational assistant doing some of the bottom up stuff, and we might be doing more of the top down or vice versa, just depending on who's available. So it helps that whole thought process, no matter where you are, even if you're in the clinic, it might be, what can parents be doing to help support the child as well?    Jayson Davies     Awesome, perfect. And then the other follow up that I had here was because it's really hard these days to talk about sensory without talking behavior, and so I wanted to get kind of your take on as you were developing this, like, how was that conversation in your own mind? Because I'm sure you anticipated people asking you about sensory and behavior. I'm sure you've been asked about sensory behavior and behavior plenty of times. So how did that kind of work its way into the good sense program? And how do you share that with people?    Ruth Isaac     I think that often we see behavior being that tip of the iceberg, right? And we want to have a lens or a way to look at what's going on below the surface. Sometimes, maybe we've seen where people will say, OTs behavior, and then we don't get involved. And when we're like, oh, somebody else has to deal with that. That's not something that we can deal with. And we feel pretty strongly that actually using a sensory frame of reference can be a great way to help navigate and support a child who's having difficulties and having different behaviors. And there might be different reasons as to why you might be seeing those behaviors. If we're thinking about the good sense rocket ship, those behaviors are things that are at the very top right and and we're looking at what else could be going on there that could be impacting.    Danielle Pluth     Yeah, like, if they are over responsive to noise or touch or movement at the bottom of the rocket ship, that could be impacting their behavior, they're going into fight or flight, or they're going into shutdown. You can have kids who have poor postural control in the middle part of the rocket that can impact their breathing and their regulation that way they might have a startle reflex that's impacting like so they're, yeah, I think we, we really feel like it's our job as occupational therapists to own sensory and to use our lens to bring to the table what might be going on for the child as for that piece of the pie, right? There could be other reasons why they're having behaviors other pieces of the pie, but I think it's super important that we bring that full assessment piece there to show you know because, and if they are struggling with those areas, we definitely want to figure out how to help them with those areas. And maybe it's not going to solve everything, but it's going to solve or help that piece of the pie.    Ruth Isaac     Because there's no, there's so many, there's so many reasons that could be going on. That's why that tip of the iceberg.     Danielle Pluth     Yeah, we are also really lucky with the division that we're working in that, you know, like 20 years ago, them seeing, wanting to have a more proactive approach, and being really supportive with us, getting sensory strategies universally in place. And we've seen a huge shift within our division with having universal strategies in the classroom for all kids, having hallway sensory stuff in place for some kids, and then we have sensory rooms for a few kids who need that even extra input. So we've been able to see over the years how much this approach can impact those behaviors overall. So to us, it's just, it's for sure, it's so obvious you absolutely have to Yeah, yeah, awesome. Take a look at that part for every child that we work with.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, yeah. And I love, I mean, I remember sitting here and watching the presentation you all, you both gave. And I remember sitting here you talked about evaluation, Danielle, I believe. And I was sitting here like, just thinking about how this is so helpful. Like every ot can just print this out and kind of fill this out as part of their, you know, part of their evaluation, part of their occupational therapy profile, like this can really help you to better understand a student. We're going to dive into the rocket ship here in just a moment, but first we're going to take a quick break, and we'll be right back all right, and we are back here with Danielle and Ruth and. We're going to dive into the good sense ot rocket ship. But before we do, I want to let you all know that Danielle and Ruth have been very kind and are providing a way for you to get the good sense ot rocket ship PDF. So be sure to check out the show notes. You'll find a link there. You'll head over to their actual their website, where you'll be able to get that resource for yourself. So let's go ahead and dive in to the rocket ship here, and I'll let one of you take the lead here and share with us, kind of where we start.    Ruth Isaac     So if you imagine in your brain, because it's a podcast, if you imagine how a rocket ship looks, it's just a fun visual way to show how things build on top of each other, a little reminder that there are things around a rocket ship, if you imagine being in space, there's other things that could be impacting, like fuel or asteroids or things like that, and that might be like sleep or nutrition or home life and all of those pieces that, of course, are going to impact.    Jayson Davies     I just have to say, really quickly, I'm sorry to cut you off, Ruth, but I love that you just like, work the combo model in here, like that is awesome. I love it.    Ruth Isaac     There we go. But, but, like, the rocket ship itself is looking at the sensory but, of course, there's other things going on around there, right? And so when you're looking at that, Danielle kind of talked about starting at the top or starting at the bottom for the point of now we'll start at the bottom and we'll work our way up.    Danielle Pluth     Okay? And I think we mentioned earlier too. So the good sense rocket ship is a framework to look at the child that you're working at with within their environment, and then the tasks as well.    Ruth Isaac     So excellent. So at the bottom of the rocket ship, that's where we're thinking about sensory regulation. So this is where we're looking at visual, auditory, tactile, vestibular, taste and smell, proprioception, overuse, and how that might impact your ability to be in a just right state.    Danielle Pluth     Yeah, and when we're looking at this. We're looking at how, yeah, how does this area impact this child? And in our course, we go in a lot more detail with regards to looking at, like, what would a profile of this child be, what's the neurology, what's the assessments that you would do, and then what's the interventions and recommendations? But what we like about this is, as you're doing your assessment, you can start kind of plotting on there how this child is impacted from a sensory lens, and we have down the side of it, fight or flight, too fast, just right, calm, freeze, kind of all down there as well.    Jayson Davies     Yeah. Quick question on that actually, really, if I may, obviously, I have it right in front of me, and hopefully everyone's going to your website so they can get it too. You talked about how you have the visual, auditory, vestibular probe, tag, taste and smell here. Do you tend to get this data by talking to the student, talking to the parents, the teacher? Do you tend to use something like the SPM sensory profile? Obviously, you both have extensive experience, and I'm sure you can get a lot just from observation. But what are some of the different ways that you use to get this data?    Danielle Pluth     So yeah, we like to use the sensory processing measure. Sometimes we'll use the sensory profile, and so we'll get a background, basically sensory history from the parents and also the teacher. And what's kind of unique about our good sense rocket ship is we've put on there the areas that we feel can put you into fight or flight or so we have like, over responsive to touch. You can see on our rocket ship we have that higher up as a thing that could send a child into that fight or flight. We don't. What's different about our approach is we don't say you can be over responsive and under responsive to touch. So you're not going to see touch below the just right state on our rocket this might be confusing until people actually look at the rocket ship, but you'll see on there that we have under responsive to vestibular as something that can cause you to be under the just right state. So our approach is a little bit unique that way. And what it does is, when you're then mapping it out, it really helps clarify from a sensory lens what's actually impacting regulation. So you'll never hear us say they scored out, over and under in every single area, and it's all definite difference. We can't figure out how sensory is impacting them at all. You'll never hear us say that, because we can clearly map it out as to what's what they're actually over responsive to, versus under responsive. And we have it that if you're under responsive to touch, we have that higher up in the rocket ship into sensory motor.    Ruth Isaac     So we're jumping up, yeah.    Danielle Pluth     But I think it's a thing to really clarify, like that's something that a lot of OTs we see struggling with, and that our framework will help you to not struggle with, yeah.    Jayson Davies     And so as you move up into that next level, you do have sensory motor and under under sensory motor. You've got vestibular probe, tactile bilateral coordination, ocular motor and postural control listed. So I'll let you all share a little bit.     Ruth Isaac     So there, as you've moved up in the rocket ship that are the good sense rocket ship, excuse me, there is your sensory motor output. We're taking in that sensory information, we're processing it, and then that can impact our output. And there's a difference here, right the first layer was looking at regulation being out of that just right state. Now we're thinking about how sensory is coming out as an output in motor, sort of a way, and it's a foundation as well, and it can also impact regulation. And there's an example that we talked about earlier, is if you have poor postural control, that actually might be impacting your regulation overall. You might look super wiggly and having a hard time focusing, but it might actually be more related to the sensory motor versus the sensory regulation.     Danielle Pluth     Yeah. So helping you to come up with those kinds of hypothesis. And for a long time, I really, I mean, maybe it's obvious to everyone else, I really struggled with how sensory, sensory regulation, sensory motor were related. And now I feel like I've such a clear picture of how they fit.    Jayson Davies     Danielle, you are definitely not alone in that. Trust me, there are many OTs listening right now that totally feel what you just said right now. Like, that is hard. And then you start talking about praxis, and it's like, the same thing, right? Like, Praxis versus executive functioning and stuff like that. Like, yeah, the sensory world is confusing until you get the education.    Danielle Pluth     Yeah, yeah. And I think, and then having that, that framework right to see that, you know, Praxis is higher, even higher up. And you know, and you need to have your intact proprioceptive and vestibular and tactile motor systems to then have good praxis, good motor planning. And so, you know, if you're jumping, you know, if you find out that your child struggling with motor planning, you have to look lower down to see what's going on in that framework before you can address it. Yeah, so then it just becomes way less overwhelming, because you can figure out where to start and what you're looking at.    Jayson Davies     All right, so I just got an idea, because so many people reach out to me and they're like, the teacher thinks they know everything about sensory. The ABA therapist thinks they know everything about sensory. The admin thinks they know everything about sensory. If that's the case, send them the last two minutes of this podcast and let them see if they still know everything about sensory. I'm just gonna    Danielle Pluth     say that right now. Oh yeah, very complex, but yeah, sorry, keep going.     Jayson Davies     Yeah. No, it is complex. You're right, and we're gonna start moving into what I think makes the good sense rocket ship very unique here, because in a lot of sensory courses that I've taken, they talk about regulation, they talk about sensory motor talk about modulation a little bit, but the next four phases of the good sense rocket ship are often not really addressed in sensory courses here. So the next level up on my screen, it's yellow. So if you have the color version, it's yellow. It's sensory reflexes. And I really like that you have built this in there. So I'll let you talk about that.     Ruth Isaac     Yeah. So on this level, now we are looking at the sensory reflexes, and we're looking at some of the commonly seen reflexes in the classroom, right? So the moral, the tonic lab, atnr, stnr, the spinal glont. There's more, but these are the main ones that we see functionally in the classroom. And we just see how there's an impact there on the higher levels of the rocket ship, and these are impacted by the lower parts of the rocket ship. So again, I know that with reflexes, we need to be careful, right? Because we don't want to just address reflexes. We need to have a functional output for it. But if we seeing a reflex, what else is going on below it that could be causing that? Right? All of those reflexes are based on some of the way that we process the sensory motor and potentially some of the sensory regulation as well. So it's building up as we go up the rocket ship.     Danielle Pluth     So yeah, when you're looking at reflexes, we want to make sure our staff are also looking at that underlying sensory motor systems that play into that. And reflexes is kind of one of those controversial areas in the OT world, but we've seen differences when we address them so clinically, we see that it helps children. So that's why we've added it into our into our rocket ship.    Jayson Davies     And I want to go back Ruth that you were talking about, why you put the sensory reflexes there, kind of in the middle of the rocket ship, because I have very little training in reflexes, and it was kind of my perception and the limited experiences that I have that it could potentially be at the bottom of the rocket ship. And I don't know if this is you kind of alluded to, and I would just want to let you kind of reiterate that a little bit, why it's kind of at the middle as opposed to somewhere else.    Danielle Pluth     Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question, because I think, yeah, some people will think that's the first thing to get integrated. But as a baby, as you're developing the vestibular system and the proprioceptive and touch system that that sensory motor level, that's how you are then integrating those reflexes. So they're foundational to the integration of the reflexes, and that's why we have it higher up, because most often, if you do have a reflex that's not integrated, it's because you have a delay underneath in that sensory motor system, in the vestibular or the probe or the tactile. So we want to make sure therapists aren't just jumping right to that reflexes. We want to make sure they're digging deeper to see what's going on underlying.     Ruth Isaac     Exactly, digging deeper.     Jayson Davies     Yeah, I think that's important. Because, like, you kind of said, I think a lot of the trainings, especially if it's not from an OT perspective, a lot of the popular professional development courses out there about reflexes, often call that the base level, and they don't necessarily look deeper.    Danielle Pluth     No, no, and they kind of, like, sell it as like, oh, you test the reflex this way, and then this is the exact exercise you do without you really clinically reasoning through why you're doing what you're doing. So I think it's important to understand that's how we've decided that it fits best, and, and that's Yeah, and we want to make sure that we're addressing those underlying things, yeah.    Ruth Isaac     Yeah. And I think that's then some of those reflexes also can go all the way down and impact regulation. That's where, like, the moral, that startle reflex, right? Like, oh, what was that? And then OT, we're out of that just right state, and we're into a different dysregulated place. So as we're working up the rocket ship, you can see how, as we're going up, things higher can impact all the way down to the bottom, as well as from the bottom, impacting things moving up.    Danielle Pluth     That's one thing we don't have on there. Is kind of arrows coming down. But that is what happens, like when we were talking about if postural control impacts your regulation, you need a little arrow OOP down to regulation, or if that startle reflex down to regulation. So, great point.    Jayson Davies     Great point. Because when we often think about a lot of the theories that we learn, you know, even in elementary school, a lot of things are used in a pyramid, type of MTSS, right? Is an example, level one, level two, level three. But oftentimes it's the top of the pyramid is impacted by the bottom, not vice versa. But the rocket ship goes both ways.    Danielle Pluth     Exactly, even the way we have the too fast, too slow, just right, shut down, you know, down the side of the rocket ship there. We know that that can be circular. It's just, how do you make a model that you can use? That's, you know, we it's, we couldn't make it in a circle, so we didn't know how.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, totally get it all right. So we covered sensory regulation at the base of the rocket, sensory motor at the next level, and then sensory reflexes. What's next?    Ruth Isaac     Now we're up to the perceptual motor, and this is the area that, like most occupational therapists are super familiar with. This is where fine motor fits in. This is where Praxis is in there. There's other pieces in there as well, but those are the pieces that often we know that really well. Again, what could be going on at that level that could be impacting all the way down to the bottom? So if we've got a kid who's really struggling with fine motor skills, for example, that might be causing all sorts of dysregulation, or the opposite way, it could be going all the way up to the way up to the top and impacting the behaviors, right? We're looking at how it's a moving framework, right, right?    Danielle Pluth     And it helps you to be an advocate for your child, to be able to say, like, yes, you're seeing these behaviors up at the top, because they actually, you know, I've had kids in grade seven and eight or whatever who are scoring first percentile on the berry VMI, and nobody realized they had these extreme fine motor delays that were then actually playing into the behaviors they were seeing in the classroom. So I think that's really important when we're able to show that.    Ruth Isaac     As they're moving up and then higher up, that's where we've thrown in, introception, right? The like being aware of hunger and thirst and pain, temperature, your bowel, your bladder and and a lot of our kids, they don't maybe are not as aware of these, like, not like ear quiet, but like quieter sensations within your body, right? And so because everything else below can be so overwhelming, from regulation, from motor reflexes, from perceptual motor, all of those things could be impacting so they're not really as aware of that interception piece. And then, and then you're up at the top, and there we are at the beginning again, with that cognition, right, academics, behaviors, activities of daily living. This is where our referrals come from, right teachers, parents, they're they see and they know that there's issues up there, and they're saying to us, hey, help what's what's going on, and we're able to look at what more could be going on underneath there.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, I love how you frame that, like that's where the referrals are coming from, because that's truly as like, we get a referral for handwriting. We don't get a referral for proprioception and bilateral. Motor coordination. Like, yeah. All right. All right. So now that we have this rocket ship framework here, for the good sense rocket ship framework, I want to get a sense for how you actually use it during your evaluation, and maybe we'll go into intervention a little bit, but I'm like envisioning printing this out for every single student that I evaluate, and just marking the heck out of it. And I want to know if that's what you all do, or how do you kind of use it in the evaluation process?    Danielle Pluth     Yes, we have kind of an expanded we basically we have a background observation form that's color we really are into this color coding thing. Our background observation form is color coded to match the rocket, and that's where we put so when I go out to see a child, depending on how much time I have for the child, I mean, in an ideal world, I get a sensory processing measure history done on everybody. I then am going to do my clinical observations based on like earn a Blanchet kind of stuff to help look like the sensory motor pieces. I'm going to do some kind of fine motor screen or assessment. I'm going to talk to the teacher. I might do a classroom observation. And again, all of that is going to depend on the severity, the case load and whatnot, for how in depth I go at each level of the rocket. So basically we have, you know, different assessments that we would do, or different observations at each at each level, and then pulling that together, basically that is where you could mark up the rocket to start seeing, where are you seeing all of the different areas of concern that might be impacting the child's function. And then we do have a color coded initial visit summary to then relay that information to the teachers. And if I will pull out the actual rocket to explain my report to them and show them where my thinking is coming from, and my recommendations, then, as well, are also based on all the areas of the rocket. So whether I'm going to start at the top or the bottom, all of that I outline in my visit summary. So that's how I I use it every single day. So yeah, that's always in the back of the now it's pretty much in the back of my mind. I don't necessarily need the print ot right in front of me, but.    Ruth Isaac     The thing that I like about it as well is that you, once you've marked it up, then you can start to see like, Oh man, I'm doing a lot of circling around one specific area that is going to guide me in my report and in my interventions. And then, if you're at a meeting with a parent, you also have that visual right in front of you. You have a teacher, you have that visual right in front of you. I think we talk about having visuals for kids, but I think we as adults need visuals to help guide us as well, right? Yeah, and then that way it can help to focus you. Where am I going to start my intervention? Sometimes that rocket ship for a kid can be completely like circled every area, almost right. Some kids, you start to see a pattern where you're like, oh, okay, well, I'm just gonna really target a certain area. But yeah, I would use this, this handout a lot, obviously, a little shameless plug for our course, would be to come and learn more about all of those pieces.     Danielle Pluth     But yeah, it's definitely used for my assessment, my clinical reasoning, and for my intervention, the whole process, and then communicating it to everybody, yeah, and it helps us to just feel super confident in knowing why I'm recommending what I'm recommending. I can easily trace it all the way back and show you exactly why do I have that kid on a bungee? I can trace it right back to where I am on the rocket. What the neurology is, what assessments I used, and I can lay it all out for you, which is super helpful.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, that's perfect. I love the idea of visualization. I mean, I don't know, in our conference room at many of our schools, we always had the bell chart, like, just so we could kind of show a parent, like, this is the bell chart for the assessment, and where, where the student is on the assessment, mostly used by the psychologist. But, yeah. All right, well, we're going to take one final break, and when we come back, we'll dive into some intervention strategies with Danielle and Ruth. All right, we are back with Danielle and Ruth, and we're going to dive just a little bit into the idea of using the good sense framework and the rocket ship to help you collaborate and educate others when working with a student. And then we're going to talk about some intervention and advocacy pieces as we wrap up. So the question here is, how do you really use the good sense framework, and I can imagine the visuals being helpful to really help parents to understand or to help teachers understand maybe why behavior is impacting sensory or being impacted by sensory, or maybe even how sensory motor is being impacted by another area.    Danielle Pluth     We like to talk. Um, a lot about and train our staff a lot in we call them little elevator pitches. Basically is, how can you quickly summarize what's going on? So a very quick example might be the vestibular system. So being able to say in a meeting like, you know, little Johnny is over responsive to movement, so it's harder for his movement system to get the input that it needs. And the movement systems in our inner ear, and we have like the semicircular canals are going to tell me, is my head up? Is it down? Is it spinning around? And that information is going to feed the muscles around my eyes for eye coordination. It's going to feed my cerebellum for bilateral coordination, for using both my hands to cut and those kinds of things. And it's going to impact the extensor muscles of my neck for that postural control to keep me upright. And so we'll use little spiels like that to then link it to the top of the rocket ship to show functionally, what they're seeing. So just having little spiels for like, all parts of the rocket ship, and then being able to quickly link it so I feel like I can quickly explain, in a pretty succinct way, of how the different areas are impacting the child so.    Ruth Isaac     And it also helps us to think about, are we doing treatment, or are we doing an accommodation? Right? For example, like, if you've got poor postural control, right, first off, accommodation, make sure those feet are flat on the floor, right? Do they have foot support? Something as simple as that, some different seating options, right? All of these things that we know, but it just helps us to say, okay, that's what we're targeting. Is the postural control of the sensory motor, let's say, and we're doing an accommodation teacher. Here's a quick something I want you to use this. This is why, or maybe we are looking at more of an intervention strategy, right? Could we work at something like just keeping it really simple, getting on the floor, doing some tummy time, where that body is in an extended position? Can they hold that position for a little while.    Danielle Pluth     Or we might give specific exercises that will ask them, you know, for six weeks, can you do these once a day? Because we're targeting this area to help that posture control, so that they can now sit at circle time, you know. So just keep bringing it back to here's where we're targeting. Here's what we're using to target that area, and why the functional impact, and so you just get way more buy in then, because people really appreciate knowing the why and the background, and they're just way more willing and excited to do the recommendations, because it just makes more sense to them.    Jayson Davies     I could totally see myself like, I don't know, I don't know if you have this yet, but I would just like, somehow get this on a whiteboard and carry it around, like I'm a coach on a football team, and just like, Hi teacher, look at this. Is the line. This goes here, and then, just like, connect it for them, and connect the dots, and make it super easy for someone to understand. You know, why I'm working on sensory regulation and how that is impacting daily living activities or academic learning, and hitting all the other sections in between, and kind of showing exactly how it how it works. So question here you've talked a little bit about, and this is more from the theory perspective that we talked so far about how you can go up or down the rocket, vice versa, how one part impacts another part, whether it's top to bottom, bottom to top. When it comes to the intervention side, though, how do you start to decide where to start? Do you start down at the bottom with sensory regulation? Do you start with reflexes? Do you start with interoception? I mean, as I kind of just alluded to, you could draw a line all the way down right and hit each part. But then, how do you move from understanding the difficulties to actually deciding where to start?    Danielle Pluth     I think, like you'll notice on our rocket ship, that regulation piece is the biggest chunk, like even size wise, visually, and so typically, that's where we will usually start. Is that regulation piece, we need to make sure kids are regulated before you can even start accessing the higher level of the rocket. So whether you know and you can look at that different ways, you might be looking at that from a universal level, what needs to happen for that child universally? Are there things in the classroom that we can start implementing that can help them do we need to start implementing, you know, heavy work breaks or things like that, and then looking at, maybe for the child specifically, is there different exercises we need to start working on to help them with those overall systems, depending on, again, how much time you have to work with that child, like, if they are tactically defensive, is, do we have time to actually work on that system, or do we need to put accommodations and strategies in place to help them cope and manage with that system, and just knowing that and being able to communicate that to everyone else around them, like, you know, I'm not going to be able to maybe change this child's tactile system at this like the way that they're processing it. That's why we want to make sure we're accommodating. Working for it.    Ruth Isaac     So yeah, and I think it also depends on where you are working right, what your setting is, what you've got. I think having this background helps you to then be creative in where you're using it. And you know your own setting. You know who you have access to, who your extra tools are, if there are extra people, if there are extra resources, what you have available, but at least you have that structured approach, and you're not just grasping at things. It's taking away that guesswork of like, let's try this thing and let's try that thing, and let's try this thing. It's giving you that organization and confidence to then take it to wherever you are using it.     Danielle Pluth     I'm going to know why I want to try different sensory tools and and in saying that too, you know, we might also need to address the fuel to the rocket initially as well. Like, is this child getting any sleep? Are they getting enough nutrition? Some of those things that might be your biggest red flags at the moment that you've got to address first. So it gives you kind of that systematic you could even number on your rocket which ones are your top priorities that you want to intervene with? First, you know, what, what? And also, kind of looking for your biggest bang for your buck. You know, if I have a kid with a startle reflex and dysregulation and postural control issues, what exercises can I give that's going to target kind of more than one area. Is another thing that you can be looking at too.    Jayson Davies     I am totally looking forward to version two of the rocket ship that has like asteroids on the side of the paper. No, but real question though, there's a lot on the good sense rocket ship, right? There's a lot of different areas that we're going to look at. And I know the two of you at this point, you're no longer, I don't know, maybe you do sometimes, but you're not marking it up, like I've talked about, like we've talked about a little bit today, but in your experience with it, do you ever find that one section doesn't have any difficulty, or is it pretty regular that If you're finding some difficulty with cognitive you're also going to find some difficulty in the other aspects as well.    Danielle Pluth     I think, I think what's fun about it, what I enjoy the most is you're building a profile for each child, and so you might be doing a lot of repetitive assessment type work, but in the end, the mapping out looks different for every child. And I think that's what's kind of neat. It keeps you away from getting like I think in the past, I would just get stuck every kid looked the same, you know, you'd kind of just have whereas, I don't know, for this now, I feel like I'm building a profile that's different for every child. And so I would say I've probably hit every area in some kind of combination for kids that I have worked with.    Ruth Isaac     And it's not cookie cutter, and it's not boring. It's, it's, it's individual, and it's and what's, what's that child's needs, and where do they need support? And where is that just who they are, you know? And what are the things that we need to work on and support?    Danielle Pluth     Yeah, and I think too, like, yes, it, the foundation of it is all sensory. But as you get to the top, we have definitely incorporated other areas of OT and even though the like the self care kind of classroom participation area, we look a lot at like kids play skills and developmentally where they're at with their play skills. So using we bring into it different assessment tools that help us figure out those different areas. And so it just keeps it, yeah, very comprehensive and, like, thorough without it being cumbersome. It's not like we're always assessing every single area, but yeah.    Ruth Isaac     and definitely, today we are doing a very fast recap and stronger chip, we could dive in and spend a lot more time talking about each area.    Danielle Pluth     But I think it, yeah, it starts it gives us that framework, and we run with that, with the majority of our kids, and we talk about like we still, we want to get training from all the OT gurus out there, and that's where we end up adding on the asteroids and all that kind of stuff, right? Because there's other thoughts and stuff out there, and we're always bringing it back to see, how does it fit with our model?    Jayson Davies     Yeah, absolutely. And I think we're down to the last two questions here, and I want to go back to, I can't remember. I think it was Danielle who mentioned earlier about, you know, initially having difficulty understanding sensory regulation, sensory motor and and I know you know, both are providing a lot of professional development, both online through this program, but also just, you know, mentorship within the therapist and OTs that you work with. And so I want to ask you, what are maybe one or two of the hang ups that you find that practitioners often get hung up on when it comes to sensory maybe those who haven't gone through the SIP training, maybe those who haven't attended some of the other, you know, big programs, the CLASI or whatnot. What are some of those, those hang ups that you often see?    Danielle Pluth     Well, okay, I have, I guess, two things when it comes to sensory, motor. What has happened is, I'll give exercise. And people think my exercises are to impact regulation, and they'll say, you know, there was no change in him afterwards. And I have to get them to understand that we're working on the underlying motor system, and it will take longer, maybe, to see changes. So helping them to see that my exercises aren't always just for regulation, that sometimes it's for other areas of the rocket. So that's one area, I think, for OTs, what happens is, if they haven't been trained yet in sensory, What scares me is that they then sometimes want to dismiss it as an area, they'll say, oh, you know, everyone thinks everything is sensory, and it's a super key area. And so I do, I don't want people to just dismiss that, because they can then struggle, like we had said earlier, with interpreting the sensory profile, thinking, Oh, it's all definite differences, and not being able to pull it apart and clinically reason it, and then also getting hung up on evidence. So saying, like, oh, you know, somebody wants me to trial a weighted vest or a neoprene vest, or we just don't get hung up. We feel like, yes, definitely we want more research articles for all the sensory tools and all the things that we do. But I don't think we should constantly just be throwing stuff out because we are not a profession that has a super well established research base yet, and so I worry that we, if we just start throwing that stuff out when it can be effective, that we're doing a disservice to the children that we work with. So we very much believe that through having our framework, it gives us a way to properly assess and come up with interventions and then to trial them. And so, you know, so we use weighted vests, we use neoprene vests, we use brushing, we use the astronaut training. We use therapeutic listening. We do all of those things in the schools in a systematic way that has proven to be extremely effective. And I think that it's sad to me when I hear OTs just say, Oh, I'm not using I'm not touching that because, and maybe it's different down in the States, maybe we have more leeway or whatnot, but we have we track it, we document it, and we see impressive outcomes. So.    Ruth Isaac     And we just don't we stop.     Danielle Pluth     Let me say, yeah. And we just really want OTs to experience, I guess what we're experiencing in the schools, we're having a lot of success with a sensory approach. It's, you know, yeah, so I think I might have just gone, I'm not sure if I went way off your question or.    Jayson Davies     No, that was spot on. You gave, you gave several great answers. I really appreciate that. Ruth, did you want to add anything?    Ruth Isaac     Yeah, I think when you were asking about, like, when the confusion, I remember when I first started, there's there's so much terminology in our profession, and there's so many acronyms, and it can be really complex. And I remember something just as simple as somatosensory and thinking that was a whole nother thing, that's just tactile probe, that's all that is, and sometimes just sharing that basic information with people so that they understand, Oh, we're talking about proprioception. We're talking about tactile that's what that is. And then how does that functionally impact? That's the piece that I feel like was just really eye opening, especially when I'm working with new therapists. And I remember myself wondering, what is going on here, how, what is the difference between these things, and how does that impact? And having a bit of that neurology in the background is also super important, so that you understand what's working there and how it's not ooga booga.    Danielle Pluth     It's actually grounded in science Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And I was gonna add one more thing on to what you were saying there. Go ahead. I was also just gonna add in there that we've spent a lot of time going through that vocabulary. So anytime we go to a new course, or we hear new terminology, we're constantly trying to figure out, okay, what do you exactly mean by sensory seeking, for example, or sensory craving, or, you know, and distilling that down to what it is, and then figuring out how it fits in with what we're already thinking. Do we need to change what we're thinking? Or is that different than what we're thinking? Or does it already fit into what we are thinking? It's just semantics, right? So we've have spent a lot of time figuring those kinds of things out.     Ruth Isaac     And still working on it. Like, I feel like it's a never ending thing, right? He is, yeah, like, and thank goodness, because otherwise I think we would be bored. Yes, I don't want to be bored with what I do. I want to keep pushing myself. I want to keep thinking about how this impacts a child's function overall. And I want to share that passion which we have with other people, so that they can see that as well.    Danielle Pluth     And that's the thing. Like within our community, we have built a whole program around OTs using sex. Sensory intervention, like with regards to our universal strategies, our direct one to one, our sensory rooms in the schools. And it's been a lot of fun to see impact across our whole division of, you know, 15 schools or whatnot. And so it's, it's neat, and it's nice to have something that you keep coming back to, that you keep, you know, we can keep training our teachers and parents and whatnot in it, and we're continuing to have success.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, perfect. Yeah, no, I think that's another five minute segment that people can send to their admin teachers and people who think that they're sensory experts or even another therapist, like, there's a lot to do with sensory and it requires training. And, yeah, it requires training.    Ruth Isaac     Ongoing, right? You never, I don't think you're ever done, like we're still learning as we continue on.    Danielle Pluth     And I think that that's the thing. Like, if we can have the OTs well trained in sensory, then you can really see that sensory is not just wiggle cushions and jewelry. That kind of brings us full circle, back to the beginning, right? So some people can think, Oh, if I give you a box of sand, I'm doing sensory intervention. Well, that's a sensory strategy, but that's not the basis of sensory theory, right? So, yeah, I think there. There's so much more to it and that that I know psychology has really gone into sensory but we've like, it's that vestibular probe piece too, that we really bring, as occupational therapists to that whole lens as well, that we can really understand.    Jayson Davies     So, yeah, absolutely. Well. Danielle Ruth, thank you so much for being here and sharing your good sense ot rocket ship and all the theory behind it and how you use it in application that's really amazing. Before you leave, I want to give you both the opportunity to kind of share where people can go to learn more about the good sense rocket ship, the theory that you're putting out there, and learn more about you all.    Danielle Pluth     So if they want to go and get a download of our good sense rocket ship, they can go to advance. Ot.ca , back, slash, sensory. Hyphen. Approach.     Ruth Isaac     And we're also on Instagram.    Danielle Pluth     Yes, you can follow us on Instagram at good, underscore sense, underscore OTs as well for our little video educational clips and bloopers.    Jayson Davies     Bloopers are always fun, awesome. We will be sure to link to both of those resources and all the other resources that we mentioned today. I don't think there are too many, but we'll have those two for sure, and any others that that we, you know, can find to send your way, and we'll put those in the show notes, so it makes it super easy for you to find everybody. I have the rocket ship up right in front of me. I am not lying when I say like I would mark the heck up of out of this thing during all my evaluations. And I think that you will find it very helpful too. So be sure to go get it, and you're going to learn a lot from Danielle and Ruth over however long you follow them on Instagram and are part of their atmosphere. So Danielle Ruth, thanks so much for being here. Really appreciate having you, and can't wait to see asteroids on the rocket ship.    Danielle Pluth     And thank you so much.     Ruth Isaac     Thanks, Jayson.    Jayson Davies     Of course, I want to give Danielle and Ruth A big thank you for joining me today to share the good sense rocket ship framework with you. And of course, I also want to say thank you for listening to this episode. I hope you found value in understanding how this framework can help identify, assess and address sensory challenges that you come across with your students. Be sure to find the good sense rocket ship PDF in our show notes, and be sure to follow Danielle and Ruth on Instagram at good sense OTs to continue learning from their expertise. And as always, if today's episode left you wanting more practical strategies and support for your school based ot practice. I would love to invite you to join us inside the OT school OTs collaborative. It's where hundreds of school based ot practitioners come together for resources, professional development and direct mentorship from me. Within a group setting, you'll find frameworks like the one that we discussed today, plus tools to help you advocate for sensory, informed practices within your schools, head to OTSchoolHouse.com slash collab to learn more and join our community. Also, as a bonus, as a member of the OT schoolhouse collaborative, you can even earn a CU certificate for listening to this episode and many others within the OT school house Podcast Network until next time. Keep making a difference in your students lives through the power of occupational therapy and just have a good time. Don't forget to play. Don't forget to kind of sit down and just be in the moment with your students. Sometimes the best sensory interventions just come out of being present with the students. Take care and we'll see you next time bye, bye.    Amazing Narrator     Thank you for listening to the OT schoolhouse podcast for more ways to help you and your students succeed right now, head on over to OTSchoolHouse.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! If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Google Podcast , Spotify , or wherever you listen to podcasts. Click here to view more episodes of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast

Click on your preferred podcast player link to listen wherever you enjoy podcasts . Welcome to the show notes for Episode 189 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast. Dive into groundbreaking research on the transition from caseload to workload models in school-based OT with Stanbridge University MOT students Jalen, Michelle, Jared, and Ari. Their nationwide survey revealed striking results: practitioners using a workload model reported significantly lower burnout scores compared to those using a caseload model and majority strongly agreeing that the workload approach reduces stress levels. The students' research identified key barriers to making this transition—primarily lack of administrative support and scheduling conflicts—while highlighting successful facilitators including peer support and improved collaboration with teachers. Their findings emphasize the importance of data collection for advocacy, suggesting that tracking time spent on indirect services provides compelling evidence when approaching administrators about workload changes. This episode offers practical insights for school-based OTs feeling overwhelmed, with recommendations to start small by tracking weekly time usage and increasing teacher collaboration. Listen now to discover how transitioning to a workload model can transform your practice, reducing burnout while improving service quality and student outcomes. Listen now to learn the following objectives: Listeners will compare the impact of caseload versus workload models on therapist burnout, stress levels, and job satisfaction. Listeners will identify key barriers and facilitators to transitioning from a caseload to workload approach. Listeners will identify practical strategies for initiating a workload approach. Guest(s) Bio Michelle Aquino is a Master of Occupational Therapy student at Stanbridge University in Irvine, with experience as a Behavior Interventionist in a school-based setting. Working with children with diverse needs has sparked her interest in pediatrics. She is passionate about occupational therapy because it allows her to help children build independence and develop essential skills they need to reach their fullest potential in everyday life. After completing the OT program, she plans to specialize in pediatrics in an outpatient or school-based setting.  Quotes “I’m hopeful for a future where school-based OTs are recognized for the true impact of their work.” — Michelle Aquino “Peer support and collaboration make a huge difference for school-based OTs’ satisfaction.” — Jalen Arcadio “Administrative support is the key to successfully transitioning from caseload to workload.” — Ari Aguilos “Tracking time tells a story administration might not see, and it improves student outcomes.” — Jared Sarmiento Resources 👉 Michelle’s Linkedin 👉 Jalen's Linkedin 👉 Ari’s Linkedin 👉 Jared’s Linkedin 👉 OT Schoolhouse Collaborative 👉 Garfinkel & Seruya Research Episode Transcript Expand to view episode transcript Jayson Davies     Hey there, and welcome to episode 189 of the OT school house podcast. I'm your host, Jayson Davies, and today we have a truly unique episode. Over the last year, I've had the incredible pleasure of advising four master students through their thesis research at stanbridge University. Jalen, Michelle, Jared and Ari together, these four developed their research question, conducted their lit review, formed their hypothesis, developed a survey, and completed their data collection and analysis, all about using a caseload and workload approach. In fact, you may have even helped them with a survey response when I sent that out in an email a few months ago. Now, what makes this especially exciting is watching these students transform from virtually knowing nothing about school based occupational therapy to now deeply understanding the challenges of traditional case load approaches in the schools and maybe why we need to move to a workload approach. Now that they're done with this project, they are currently headed off to their level two fieldworks and are on track to join the OT workforce early next year. Congratulations, guys. I know you're listening to this, and couldn't be more proud of you. Now their research that we are discussing today examines, as I mentioned, caseloads and workloads, and this is a topic that every school based ot practitioner is impacted by every single day. So what we're going to talk about is the transition from one to the other, from a caseload to a workload approach, and how that impacts burnout, effectiveness and even student outcomes. So if you've ever felt overwhelmed by your caseload or struggled with documentation time, or even wondered if there is a better way to structure your services. This episode is essential listening. We'll explore what the research shows about therapist burnout rates, quality of intervention, and even the key barriers and facilitators to making this important transition from a caseload to a workload model. I'm so happy that these four have decided to distribute what they've learned through the OT schoolhouse podcast, and it is truly a pleasure to have them join me for this chat. Let's go ahead and get started.    Amazing Narrator     Hello and welcome to the OT schoolhouse podcast, your source for school based occupational therapy tips, interviews and professional development. Now to get the conversation started, here is your host, Jayson Davies. Class is officially in session.    Jayson Davies     Jalen, Jared, Ari, Michelle, welcome to the OT school house podcast. It is a pleasure to have you here. We've all been working together for about nine months, maybe, gosh, close to a year now, but it's all come to this. We are recording a podcast together. We're going to share what your findings are and kind of the research that you went about to determine a little bit about caseloads and workloads, I don't want to get ahead of myself. I'm going to let you all talk about that, but let's get started. Jalen, how you doing today?    Jalen Arcadio     I'm doing great. Thank you for asking. I hope you guys are all doing well. We're in break, but    Michelle Aquino     living life, you know?    Jayson Davies     Yeah, absolutely. And if I may, what made you decide that you wanted to get into occupational therapy?    Jalen Arcadio     I honestly joined for the sole purpose of knowing that you're helping people always, and it's a great way to expand your compassion and like being just passionate for helping others    Jayson Davies     very cool. And Jared, how you doing?    Jared Sarmiento     Doing good, doing good. Very excited to be here. Awesome.    Jayson Davies     And why don't you share a little bit about the program that you're in and the entire group is in and how you're doing?    Jared Sarmiento     Yes, so we're all masters of occupational therapy students at stanbridge University out in Irvine, what's called, we only got about a little, oh, actually, a little over, oh, under a year now, so, but I stepped into our level two field work very excited about us, kind of get, like, our real first hand experience, and, you know, just the maze, you know, it's come down to this point. A lot of schooling this last full year. Very intense, a lot of work. But, you know, kind of excited to see it come into mutation, whatnot. Kind of get that feel what it feels like to be an OT, you know,    Jayson Davies     it'll be here soon. It'll be here very soon. And Ari, welcome to the podcast. What made you decide to pursue occupational therapy?    Ari Aguilos     Hi, yes, thanks for having me. I'm Ari. I think just like Occupational Therapy and Occupational Science is so valuable. And after shadowing a bunch of different health related fields, I just knew that ot was, for me, fantastic.    Jayson Davies     And Michelle, same question to you.     Michelle Aquino     Hi, I'm Michelle. I think the one thing that really helped me learn that occupational is for me was from watching the school based OTs that I was working under while I was a bi at school district. And I really just sparked a career. Capacity in me.    Jayson Davies     Awesome. And now here you are completing what ultimately is a school based occupational therapy type of project. So awesome. Kind of full circle here. So well, let's go ahead and dive into it. We're talking about cases and workloads within this episode. And I'm going to come over to you, Ari, and I want to ask you that, why do you think that this was important? Why was it important for us to look at cases and workloads, and why was this worth looking into in terms of research?    Ari Aguilos     Yes, ultimately, we had a great opportunity to study the practitioners themselves, and I feel like they're especially during our initial review, we couldn't find any or little to none of research on OTs themselves when it comes to work life balance, when it comes to burnout of the actual practitioners. So what we got to do was answer some of those gaps of knowledge, figure out even more things that could be researched and very generalizable to not just school based OTs, which is a very important role nationwide, but for all, for the all, the whole field of OT awesome.    Jayson Davies     And I kind of want to let anyone respond to this one, because Ari did bring something up, is that sometimes you find research related to other areas, but not what you're looking for. And so for any of you, because all of you had to partake in the lit review, was there something that was there a moment where you remember kind of being frustrated because of the lack of research that you were, you know, looking for, and what you were able to find? And kind of like, that's just what did it feel like? But what were just share that experience, I guess, anyone want to dive into    Jared Sarmiento     that definitely, kind of researching the difference between workload versus caseload was very hard. You know, we had a we'd maybe find like, one or two articles, and then we kind of have to, like, see, like, what they were referencing, just to kind of get like, a better gage when determining the difference. The big difference between workload versus caseload definitely saw a lot for like the realm of for like speech therapy, but it was very limited when it came to the field of occupational therapy and kind of like what the main differences are, especially for school based OTs. It was a lot. It was hard, but kind of have to work with what you get, you know, saying absolutely.    Jayson Davies     And just kind of a quick follow up to that, was it difficult to find research specific to school based as opposed to, more generally, about pediatric therapy as a whole?    Ari Aguilos     Yes, we had some leading sources for our, like, initial research, which we had to follow their sources and dig deeper into that, but it was very limited. And like, we basically had to start from like, we had to understand school based practitioners from from, like, as students, we don't know what their life is like, so we had to, essentially, like, understand that first before even developing our research. So I think we had an extra challenge when it came to even beginning to research and finding that there wasn't a lot out    Jayson Davies     there. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And as you pointed out, right? You're you're all current occupational therapy students. It's not like you've been in the field. It's not like you've even determined exactly what field within occupational therapy you want to go into. And so I know Michelle mentioned, right? She's worked in a school based setting, not as an OT, but for the rest of you, I don't think you really even had an understanding of school basis, so you kind of had to learn that part before you could even do the literature review process itself. And I know that was a learning process as well. All right. Jared, for listeners who may not be as familiar, briefly explain the difference between a case load model and a workload model and why that matters so much.    Jared Sarmiento     Yeah, so for a caseload model, basically the practitioner, their work measure is measured based on the amount of students that they see overall. So for example, they may have 50 students on a caseload, and that kind of determines, like the schedule. They're basically responsible for seeing that at those 50 students within a certain timeframe, whether the week or the month, and then, whereas, for the workload model, it kind of measures the overall work that the practitioner is doing. In total, this can be both direct and indirect services. So both seeing the students you know, doing interventions with them, maybe even doing assessments. And it's kind of like the things outside of just meeting with the students. So for example, documentation, collab, collaborative meetings with the teachers, maybe even the students, families, IEP meetings. And for the workload model, it kind of distributes their time accordingly, rather than just by the measure of how many kids they see. And it kind of matters. It's very. Strong because, you know, a lot of schools traditionally are utilizing just seeing a practitioners work overall, by the amount of students that they oversee, but what they're not accounting for is the hours and time that practitioners have to put on or just outside of everything, kind of like those indirect services, and it kind of leads to a lot of burnout inconsistent, inconsistent types or service deliveries, and ultimately unrealistic expectations.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, and I think that kind of like summarizes the lit review. You guys broke down the lit review into a few different themes. And I think that kind of is the overarching themes from the lit review. So once you kind of had a little bit of background within the realm of school based ot looking at the research, kind of what's already out there. Jaylen, I want to come to you, because once you have that information, what was the way to move forward, what was the main purpose of the study, and what were you trying to or hoping to discover about school based ot practitioners within a workload approach.    Jalen Arcadio     So yeah, like what Jared was saying, we wanted to expand on the school based OTs and how they were experiencing a workload model. But with that, we had to do a survey with Google, Google Sheets. We conducted a state like a nationwide survey to see the transition from caseload to a workload model, and we just wanted to discover and understand their experience and real world impact, like a burnout and work life balance interprofessional collaboration And just the quality that the students were receiving from the OTs, awesome.    Jayson Davies     And then there was also a second kind of theme that we wanted to discover too. And we split that survey up a little bit, but I want to give you that opportunity to kind of like to address the second part of the research. What was that second part that we really wanted to understand when it came to therapists who maybe had made the transition from a case of Joe workload approach,    Jalen Arcadio     we wanted to see, like, how effective it really was. So we wanted to see what types of experiences they were dealing with in terms of, like advocating for this specific case our workload model and how they wanted to be a front line for the students, because at the end of the day, they weren't getting the support from their peers, and it from the survey that we got. It was mostly just their ot peers who were also just supporting them.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, and we'll get more into all the details, because ot peers were important, a few other players I know we'll be addressing in just a little bit. Ari, I'd love to give you a chance to kind of dive a little bit more into how we designed the research, how we how we built that Google form up to get the data that we wanted. Go ahead. Yeah.    Ari Aguilos     So for the Google Sheets survey, we knew that Google Sheets is really accessible, so we knew we automatically just wanted to do Google Sheets now we would do email snowballing, but for the actual content of the survey, we had developed aims such as, like, if they have experienced the caseload, what's their experience with a work, or if they experience a workload, and what's their experience with it? And then the second part was, were they there at their site when they transitioned from a caseload to a workload approach, and what was that experience like? So with that like, we got to do, like a qualitative like we did, Likert scale questions mostly, and then open ended questions, basically aiming to explore those themes. Yeah.    Jayson Davies     And really briefly, can you just share what the criteria was to be a participant, or the criteria to not be a participant. Was, you don't need to read a verbatim but just in general,    Ari Aguilos     yes, essentially, our inclusion criteria was you had to be a school based occupational therapist currently working, and you had to have some experience with the workload model. And opposite to that, the exclusion criteria is if you were retired, s, B, OT,    Jayson Davies     All right, awesome. So we understand we use a Google survey. We had some electric questions, we had some open responses, and then we had school based ot practitioners, non retired who had some workload experience. Now, Google Surveys are great in the sense that they give you these nice clean graphs for the questions that create nice, clean graphs, you know, the yes or no questions, the Likert scale, but when you have open ended questions, that gets a little complicated. So as you all were planning to have these open ended questions, and knowing that we were going to aim for, you know, 100 a few 100 different responses. Is, what was the plan for actually analyzing that data?    Ari Aguilos     I can take that question, so when it came to the open ended questions, and knowing that we would have to sift through a lot of responses, we basically, as a group, wanted to use artificial intelligence AI to do the to use it as an organizational tool to do the initial coding phase and to basically speed up the process of doing the thematic analysis and coding. And it really allowed us to organize the themes faster, kind of, yeah, can I leave it there?    Jayson Davies     You can continue on. So what were the benefits of AI, and how did you use it as a tool to support you?    Ari Aguilos     Well, the benefits of AI is that it was it's really simple to use. I feel like past research tools that we've used in practice, like deduce it was very convoluted. Takes a lot of time versus the versus the model that we used. It was able to be replicated. It's able to be like the output was way faster for us as a group to what's the word I'm looking for, essentially, like    Jayson Davies     to sift through and then determine if it's accurate. Yes. Okay, and you mentioned using AI. What specifically did you use AI? Because some people might listen to this and say, Oh, you just went on to Gemini, or you just went on to chat GBT and and dropped your spreadsheet into there and got some responses. Was it that simple? Or did you do some research into how to use AI to do this?    Ari Aguilos     Yes, we definitely did some research on how to use AI as a tool so that it didn't replace us as researchers. We wanted to essentially figure out, how would it replace the coding phase, just the coding phase. So that way, once we get all our responses, we basically looked for we did like our own research, and looked for like what researchers are currently using AI to do in their research, and we basically replicated what they did. So then that means that they use a specific, a specific tool that can be accessed afterwards. It means that you can double, you can double check, like if the responses are true to what the AI is outputting. It's essentially like, again, not replacing the researchers, but using it as a tool for us, just speeding up the process. And, yeah, we found a few articles that, like Cambridge was playing around with, like, certain AI models, and that's we use that as a guideline, essentially in our research,    Jayson Davies     awesome, and obviously it helps save time with that theme development. This will be an open question for anyone, did the AI at all make things more difficult? Did you get ever get frustrated with the AI at all? Or was it pretty straightforward?    Michelle Aquino     I feel that overall, it was a pretty straightforward process. I feel like it it got us to really think about what to really focus on and what to eliminate.    Jayson Davies     Okay, and was it able to provide you? Obviously, it provided themes, but was it able to help you better understand the, I guess, to a degree, the voice of the therapist? Did it just provide you? Hey, these are the overarching themes, or did it help to provide you additional information to support your research project?    Ari Aguilos     I would say the original quotes from the responses are always like the best and painted the best picture of what they are experiencing. And AI, honestly, just put it into it helped us put it into other words, but it necessarily didn't capture like what they originally said. So that was a limitation. I would say that AI, we would, we would always look out for    Jayson Davies     awesome Ari. I do want to give you one more thing to kind of discuss, and that is the second half of the survey. A little bit. What was that? How did we filter people and how to what was the purpose of the second half of the survey?    Ari Aguilos     The second half of the survey was to get the experience of transitioning to a workload model, because it's an emerging model, not of not a lot of school based occupation yoga therapists have experienced it. So we wanted to see the ones that have experienced it. What facilitators led to that change. So was it administration support? Was it team collaboration? And through a series of Likert scale questions and open ended questions, we were able to get more insight into that experience, just that, like transitioning part or if they were there. Four after the transition of going from a caseload to a workload approach.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, and Jared, I want to come to you really quickly, because we had this actually became something of a we got a little confused at times during writing this thesis about the number of people that we actually had partake in our project, and we were hoping to get somewhere around 300 because of this, like 1% number of school based ot practitioners that we think are represented, but we ended up having two people, 200 I believe it was kind of click over to the survey, and then significantly less actually take the survey. So I want to give you a moment to kind of address that, yeah.    Jared Sarmiento     So kind of like you said, So we initially, you know, we're aiming for 300 hoping, like that was going to be our set number. When we got 200 responses, we're like, okay, like this is pointing in a good direction. And then once we excluded those who said that they had no experience with the workload approach, it only brought it down to like, 114 and then by that time, we're just like, Oh, man. Like, so it kind of showed us like, wow. Like, there's really not a lot of school based therapists out there who really have true experience with the workload approach. And then even just when it went down to have you made that transition, it cut the number in half again. So I think it was only like, what it was only was, only between 75 to 80. So it kind of left like little room. I mean, it helped understand a good perspective. But, you know, we want, we were hoping that we would have a big, big number, so we understood, like, you know, what is working for people to make that effective transition from a case load to a workload approach. So at that point we're kind of like, man, like, it was very eye opening, I would say, very humbling, you know, that way. And it kind of gave us more of that purpose to, like, really produce a really good paper so we could help future school based OTs for the future and whatnot.    Jayson Davies     And based upon that big gap, you know, the 200 104 200 114 that can continue on, and then even the 75 or so that went on to the second half of the survey, based upon that, have, have any of you given any thought to like, if we redid it, would we do it a little bit differently? Or do you feel like we got what we're aiming for?    Jared Sarmiento     Um, personally, I feel like at the end of the day, we kind of got what we were aiming for. I mean, yeah, we would like to obviously see more get, kind of get more perspectives, but that kind of just attributes and shows like how emerging this model is and how there has to be further on research to really, kind of like, understand and helping making the making, help people make that successful transition. You know, it kind of just adds to, like, what we talk about, the literature and the background. It's just, it's very new, but, you know, hoping that it could be the start for kind of, like a big movement, for people to really make that effective change and whatnot.    Jayson Davies     Perfectly Wrapped up. All right, we're going to take a quick break, and we when we come back, we're going to discuss the key findings of the research, as well as how we can translate this research into practice. So stay tuned. All right, we are back, and we are going to start things off with Michelle right now and Michelle, what were some of the biggest takeaways or themes that started to emerge from both the qualitative and quantitative data?    Michelle Aquino     Hi, yes. So for the biggest takeaways and themes that we've noticed throughout our data was there were a lot of barriers when it came to transitioning from a caseload to a workload. A lot of the staff and administration had a lot of trouble trying to change into the workload model. They're pretty resistant with how they wanted to change. They were so used to the caseload model that they didn't really see how a workload model could improve their their overall satisfaction.    Jayson Davies     Okay, so difficulty transitioning from caseload to workload. What were some of the others?    Michelle Aquino     Another other findings was a lot of the therapists noticed that they had a better satisfaction when it came to transitioning to a workload. It they felt a lot more balanced. They felt like they could increase more quality of care. And it was also like very satisfactory towards the clients as well.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, I remember seeing the chart that you all put together when you came back for one of our one of our sessions, and it was like we had asked, I think it was a four point Likert scale, maybe five point Likert scale. And those who felt effective, basically on a caseload model, were like, at a two, two and a half. And those who felt effective on a workload model was closer to four. I mean, that's a pretty significant jump of just feeling effective like, you know, it sucks to work in a job and not feel like you're effective like, just no one likes that feeling. So that's a really cool insight, that just simply switching from a caseload to a workload model can make someone feel more effective. What about collaboration? Do we have any results related to like being able to work alongside teacher, peers and others?    Michelle Aquino     We did have some, some results on that as well for collaboration, from transitioning from a caseload to workload, the collaboration was a lot more improved. It felt like it was better for the OTs to feel like they had time to actually work with the students rather than just doing it and like it was. It didn't really matter what they did, they just like it felt a lot more like they had time to actually focus on the child itself.     Jayson Davies     Gotcha, Jared, we also wanted to look a little bit about burnout and stress. How did the workload approach impact burnout and stress compared to a traditional caseload model? Yeah.    Jared Sarmiento     So we kind of first started off by asking the and the question to the practitioner, like, what type of service delivery model are you using currently in this point in time? And then we followed up with the Likert scale question of how much burnout they feel overall. A score of one meant that they felt little to no burnout, while a max score of five reported reports feelings of high burnout. And you know, based on the 114 participants, those who are currently using a case load model reported an average score of four out of five on the burnout scale, while those who are using a workload service delivery model, or from the past reported an average score of 2.1 so you kind of see like that really big difference in how, how a workload model can lead to less burnout, less job satisfaction overall. And then we also kind of did a follow up question of comparing stress levels between using a workload versus a case load model. Score of one would mean that the practitioner is disagreeing the workload model doesn't play a factor into stress, while score of five reports that they agree highly that the workload model reduces stress, and at least 60% of the practitioners who answer that question reported a score of four or five indicating that they strongly agree that A workload model definitely plays a major factor in reducing stress levels for them.    Jayson Davies     Absolutely, all right. And Jalen, coming to you with this question, Michelle spoke a little bit to the idea that it was hard to transition from a caseload to a workload model. But what were some of the specific barriers that we found when asking therapists about the difficulties shifting?    Jalen Arcadio     The common barriers we really face were like that we were seeing were lack of administrative support, the scheduling conflicts, team collaboration, and I feel like that that's what separated a lot of the workload model to the caseload, was the amount of support from their peers, like I said earlier today. And it's just one of those where if that district or school doesn't see the vision, then it's it's hard to kind of manage and like, go through.     Jayson Davies     Yeah, one question I was really happy that you all added to the survey was that we didn't just look at the barriers, but we also asked them about the facilitators. Like, what was it that actually made it easier to transition from a caseload to a workload approach? And Jaylen, if you want to start in, if anyone wants to add, what were some of the what were some of the comments that ot practitioners who had succeeded moving to a workload approach, what were, what were their thoughts of what helped them?    Jalen Arcadio     What helped them that I was like seeing and from reading, from the surveys, was the amount of peer support that that's what I was reading. They were saying a bunch of things like, Oh yeah, I tried pushing for it, but some of my peers was seeing like that type of idea, so that they were trying to help push that back too. It was just like the upper administrative that just doesn't see it. And that's what kind of like led them to either staying to the caseload and not transitioning.     Jayson Davies     So it really took the OT practitioners to work as a team all get on board before the administrators would get on board to a degree. Does that sound about right?     Jalen Arcadio     Yeah, and it's also like quality, like if the students aren't getting the. Same treatment anymore are the same quality because their OTs are dealing with scheduling conflicts, or they're just too busy prioritizing one student and they have to go to the next one and have that cut short. It's just poor quality at that point, and it's leading to the rest of the barriers, like burnout and all that.    Jayson Davies     Was, and I don't know the answer to this one, but was there any responses that anyone recalls where it was actually everyone thought something was broken in relationship to the impact that therapists were having on students that ultimately led to administration and the OT team deciding, hey, we need to change something because OTs not working. Maybe if we use a workload approach, services will be more impactful and more effective. Does anyone recall saying that?    Ari Aguilos     Yeah, I can answer that. So when we asked them what was successful in transitioning, about 20% 23% said that it was administrative support that essentially supported their transition. So like with that, that means that OTs were like initiated, but the administration helped support that change, and from there, they also rated that their perceived client satisfaction improved, or like their perceived like outcomes improved.    Jayson Davies     So yeah, no, I completely hear that. And that's like, what's awesome that we're able to say that there is improvement beyond or once you move to the workload approach, I guess kind of the question is, and I don't know if there was actually data, and this isn't something that we've talked about in one of our meetings before, but I don't know that we had any particular maybe we can go back and look at the data another time, but I don't know if we had, like, Just even one occupational therapist or one participant say, we took data and we found out that our OT services weren't effective, and so we knew that there needed to be a change and like because ultimately, that's what I would love to see. I would love to see an OT department at a school look internally and say, hey, you know what, only 20% or 25% of our kids are meeting their goals, something's got to change. We need to improve ourselves and make a decision based upon that, how they want to improve, because ultimately, things don't typically change unless there is a reason to change. And we've seen with the Surya and Garfinkel research in the past that ot practitioners tend to prefer the case or the workload model versus the caseload model. Our data is basically showing that the same type of things right and that a workload model can be more efficient and less burnout, less stressful than a caseload model. But I feel like administrators really to get on board. And I don't know if any of you heard how OTs got their administrators on board, but I feel like to get administrators on board, they really need something to be they need to see something broken, data to say something broken in order to make that transition. I don't know if anyone has comments based upon what I was just saying.    Ari Aguilos     Other than that, we agree that there's a lot of systemic change that needs to be made.    Jayson Davies     Was that was that addressed? Was systemic change a term used in our survey responses, or something similar?     Ari Aguilos     It was something similar. It was what we found like in our lit review, but that wasn't the focus of the survey.    Jayson Davies     Yeah. Okay, we'll move on here. All right, so we've got our key results right. We know that we need support. We know that we need to work as a team. We know that ot practitioners feel the benefits of using a workload model as opposed to a caseload model. But we also know from that gap, you know, 200 people who wanted to take the survey, versus only 114 who had the workload experience to actually take the survey. That that this large gap of people that aren't using a workload model. So Michelle for school based ot practitioners listening right now and they feel overwhelmed by their caseload, what's one small step that they can take toward transitioning to that workload approach?     Michelle Aquino     Yes, so I feel like my for my recommendation by starting small, such as, like, tracking how you're spending your week, trying to make time to collaborate with the teachers making that time into your schedule, I feel like that's a step that could could help you transition to a workload model. Just by that small step of like, trying to track your time and how you're using your time can really help a lot.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, absolutely, as we were just kind of talking about, you've got to have some sort of data to show your administrator that things aren't worth. In, and one thing to track is your time. Some ot practitioners, very few. We track individual student goals, but we don't track our ability support our to support our entire, our entire client caseload. You know, we're not looking at, you know, I have 50 kids, and 85% of them met their goals. That sounds pretty good. But maybe that's another thing that we can look at, is overall goal attainment scaling for our entire program, not just, not just an individual student by student basis. And Ari, what role we talked a little bit about administrators, but what role did administrators play in successful transitions? And how can ot practitioners advocate more effectively to their leadership, to adopt this approach.     Ari Aguilos     So it seemed that administrative support was like one of the leading reasons why there was a successful transition. I would say what that means for those that haven't experienced the workload approach. I feel like, unfortunately, it's up to the school based ot to like, have that open communication, have that if you're able to express your needs, express like, like you said, the data that the system that they're currently using isn't effective towards the students. Ultimately, you want to advocate for the student and their outcomes. So when it comes to speaking to administration, you want to have that information, have that information forward approach when it comes to advocating for yourself and the student.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, absolutely. And Jared, how can workload data, like time studies, documentation of indirect services, things like that, how can they help us to make the case for better staffing and for student outcomes?    Jared Sarmiento     Yes, I can say it's definitely, you know, tracking, workload data tracking, it could definitely be like a power tool, like we said, to like, advocate for themselves and kind of like what they need in order to be successful as a practitioner. You know, by tracking their time and trying to gage of like, how long their indirect services take, it definitely tells a story that the administrative side might not be able to see. You know, if the practitioner goes to the administration and goes, I'm overwhelmed, that's going to be different than them telling them, than the practitioner telling them, oh, I spend 12 hours a week in meetings. I spend 10 hours a week in documentation. Maybe I spend three hours a week also in maybe driving back and forth between, you know, different students or whatnot. You know, overall, that tells a very different narrative, and it kind of kind of leaves room for the administration to kind of get that different perspective, like, Okay, this is what the practitioner needs in order to be successful. Maybe that could be more staff and overall, like that can lead to just better student outcomes, you know?    Jayson Davies     Yeah, yeah, absolutely. As we start to wrap up here, I'm going to ask each of you two questions. I want to I want to hear from, from each of you. The first is looking back as researchers. What's one thing that this study taught each of you about the future of school based OT and what gives you hope for the profession moving forward? I'll go ahead and throw this over to Jared.    Jared Sarmiento     I would say this project Well, overall, it took it taught me a lot, or kind of just taught me, like, the basis of, like, what school based ot really is, because I've heard about occupational therapists being in schools, but I never understood, like, you know, is it them doing their own one on one sessions? Are they in the classroom? So it kind of gave me a better sense of, like, what their goal is, especially in terms of making them successful for their academic career. And I think that biggest thing, like say, like, I'm hopeful for the future school based OTs, kind of like them being recognized, of the impact that they're making for these students to know, I think that's like the biggest thing that's kind of undervalued, and more, the more people I told about my topic or our topic of our thesis, and they went, wow. They're like, Yeah, you know. And there's some people I even met. They're like, you know, I worked with the their a school based ot when I was in school, and if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't have been successful. And I was like, wow. Like, kind of just to understand how big, kind of, like we said that, how big of an impact that they can truly make in terms of student success, you know, their ability, also maybe even their confidence.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, yeah. It's, it's kind of funny you say that because, you know, not everyone goes bragging that they got school based occupational therapy services or school based speech services or anything like that, but we do have an impact on on a substantial amount of the population. Absolutely. Michelle, what about you? What's one thing that this study kind of taught you, especially since you have a little bit of experience within the school realm, what did it teach you about school based? OT, in the future of school based.    Michelle Aquino     for this research, I feel like it taught me a lot. Lot about the differences between how to approach your workload in a more balanced way. Before this, I had no idea that a caseload versus a workload was a thing. I was I was really confused. I remember when I was working with the school based OTs. I did remember them talking about how they would feel so burnt out about having to drive from one school to another. And I feel like for the future of OTs and school based, I feel like there's a more balanced approach uphold and it will be a lot easier to to work under.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, absolutely. And Jaylen, what about you? What's, what's one thing that you know you learned throughout this research about school based occupational therapy?    Jalen Arcadio     To be honest, though, I I didn't have any clue on school based ot to get this whole thing started, like I, I was a coach for a basketball team in high school, and I thought that's those are the extracurriculars, besides teachers and like coaches for sports. But I didn't really understand that there was a whole section for OTs in schools, so that was eye opening for me, and that I learned a lot because I didn't really understand the whole concept until this research.     Jayson Davies     Gotcha. Yeah, yeah, you don't know what you don't know. You don't even know who all is on campus. And a lot of us, we all go through public school about eight, no, not quite 18 years of it, 16, no, not even that. 13 years at least. And we don't even know. Wow, I cannot do math in my head right now. So, yeah, you know you don't know what you don't know. All right, what about you? What's one thing that this study really taught you about school based OT, and maybe the future of school based OT?    Ari Aguilos     I feel like what it taught me is OT. School Based OT is very much in demand in schools, but it's also undervalued a lot of kids, special needs, kids that I've worked with, I see that they would get a lot of value from OT, but even the teachers like they don't necessarily know what OT is. So it makes me hopeful to know that there is a great number of great number of people nationwide that care about school based OTs and that there's a lot of research that can be developed and further looked into, just for everyone in the school system.    Jayson Davies     I felt like that would have been a perfect way to end this podcast, but I have one more question for you all, and that is here. I love that answer, by the way, all right, but if you had unlimited resources available to you now, you just completed this research, you've got information from this research, and you had unlimited resources, time, energy, money, maybe, you know, let's just call it like you're going to go get your PhD in OT, and you're just like, driven by this study and you want to continue this on, what would you want to follow this study up with for another study? What would you want to look into that maybe we weren't able to look into? Or what? What would you want to look into now, knowing what you know about caseloads and workloads, it doesn't have to be a survey. It can be a survey. But maybe you're going into the classrooms. Maybe you're having direct interviews with people. What would you want to do?    Ari Aguilos     I feel like if we had unlimited resources, the ultimate question that we would want to give OTs was, how much is this really costing them, and how much it's really costing administration, as we talk a lot about being information driven, being data driven when it comes to transitioning to from a caseload to a workload, and that, like, ultimately, if we give them the right numbers of saying, like, this is how much it's costing this how much it could save you, I feel like that's a big question that would take a lot of time and money and effort to answer.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, definitely something that the OT practitioners, we often either ignore or don't want to ask, but it's definitely something that administrators, principals, and even at the district level, they're always thinking about money, and so giving them a sense of if it's beneficial financially, could could do wonders. Yeah, Jared, go ahead.    Jared Sarmiento     Oh, yeah. I mean, my answer was pretty much the same. I felt like that was a very common theme that we recognized within our research was, you know, like we said, the hardest, the biggest barrier, was administrative support. But on the other side, for people who had that successful transition, was the facilitator, was the administrative support. So kind of want to understand, like, from the administration side, like, what may prevent you from making that effective transition for the practitioner, you know, like, what's the constraints? Because at the end of the day, there's stuff from a ot side that we don't understand, you know, for them. So it's also, and that's why I talk about kind of like, it has to be a collab. Generation between OT and the administration to kind of find a way that they can like gage and like me in the middle, you know, all right,    Jayson Davies     Michelle, I'm going to come to you in just a second.     Michelle Aquino     I'm going to think back on Jared as well. I feel like there needs to be a lot more research on administrative support. I feel like we didn't really get to see that much while we were collecting data. No, not data itself, but more art research articles on on that topic. So I feel like that would be really important.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, and that was something that I know you all had to do. We talked a little bit about the difficulty finding literature at the beginning, but I know that something I had to tell you all very much upfront was you might have to get outside of the OT literature, and I know you all had to kind of go out into education literature, and you had to go out into like, speech therapy literature to see kind of what they're doing. So yeah, it would be fun to kind of get more insights from the administrators, as I think it was Jared alluded to, like the biggest category for success and the biggest category for failure was administrative support, one way or the other. But what, what constitutes as administrator support for one person might be different for another person. So what? What does administrative support actually look like? All right? And Jaylen, why don't you wrap us up with what, what study you would like to look into with all the information that you now have about our study?    Jalen Arcadio     I'm gonna kind of swerve off to the same section that they've been going off, but I kind of want to see the use of AI in all of this. I kind of want to see the growth of AI being actually used the right way. And this is a great start. If we had unlimited resources, it'd be a great start to try and implement AI into the transition and see how we can show them that it's useful. Because in our research tool, we used it and it was, we used it like properly, and it was a great it shortened a lot of stress and, like, time. So that that was one thing I kind of want to dig deeper on. If there is a tool for all this.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, yeah, and and OT practitioners want a tool that is specific to school based ot from Ai, we've seen that. We've heard that from school based ot practitioners as well, and it's interesting because there's a fear and there's a love for AI, there's a fear for AI, there's ethical concerns related to AI, and we all want to use AI to make our lives easier, but you know, as you mentioned, we need to figure out the right way to do it, and we also need to do it in a way that actually saves us time, not creates more kind of wasteful time spent on trying to use AI when actually it would have been just quicker to write the note on our own, like the way that we usually do it. So, yeah, studying AI and school based ot would be a really, really good one as well. Personally, I would love to kind of dive further into that, that impact on students. You know, I would love to be able to look at maybe a historical review and find 10 therapists to use the caseload model last year and see if their students met their goals, and then two years ahead, if they use a workload approach, or different 10 therapists who are using a workload workload approach and see if their students are meeting their goals. And I don't have the know how to make that possible, but it would be a lot of fun to somehow figure that out, to be able to hopefully maybe show that using a case or using a workload model is not just easier potentially for the therapist, but also more effective for the students that they serve. So yeah, all right. Well, I want to thank you all so much for being here. Jared, Ari, Jaylen, Michelle, thank you all for spending the last nine months or so with me and then this hour or so on the OT school house podcast. Really appreciate it. Congratulations again on wrapping up, and hopefully right around the time this episode is coming out, we get to find out if you'll get to present your information in Anaheim at a ot a best of luck.     Jared Sarmiento     Stay tuned. Thank you. Thank you.     Jalen Arcadio     Thank you.     Michelle Aquino     Thank you so much.    Jayson Davies     And that wraps up episode 189 of the OT school house podcast. I want to extend my sincere thanks to Jalen, Michelle, Jared and Ari for sharing their incredible research on caseload versus workload models, as I mentioned earlier, watching these students grow from having little knowledge of school based ot to conducting meaningful research has been truly rewarding. Their insights into how this transition can help us to reduce burnout, improve service quality and enhance collaboration are truly valuable for our field, and I want to thank them for taking this kind of passion project of mine on Be sure to check out the show notes at OTSchoolHouse.com . Slash episode. 189 where you can view their research poster and dive deeper into their findings. Also, if you're feeling inspired to explore a workload approach in your practice, remember that small steps like tracking your time can make a big difference, and you don't have to make this journey alone. For continued support resources and professional development on topics just like this one, I invite you to join us in the OT squash collaborative. There you'll find a community of school based ot practitioners, as well as our comprehensive caseload to workload workshop designed specifically to support ot practitioners like you make this transition. Additional resources on workload models are also inside of the collaborative, and we would love to have you join, and we would love to support you in your transition from a caseload to a workload model. Head over to OTs schoolhouse.com/collab to learn more about that community and more about the caseload. Course, one more time. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll catch you in the next episode of the OT schoolhouse podcast.    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! If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Google Podcast , Spotify , or wherever you listen to podcasts. Click here to view more episodes of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast

Be sure to scroll down for your free Evaluation Checklist Handout! Ready for a quick game of school-based OT Bingo? Let's see if you get three in a row! Are you frequently: Getting referrals for students who really just needed adapted paper  or a pencil grip. Being invited to IEPs to review OT evaluations   for students you've never even heard of . Realizing the day before a triennial IEP  that you forgot to observe a student in their classroom. BINGO? Trust me, you're not alone. With countless treatment hours, a half dozen open evaluations, and 3-6 IEPs a week, it can feel like we're running on autopilot, juggling too many tasks and reacting to problems instead of preventing them. These moments don't mean you're disorganized. Rather, they show that the system you're working within needs refining. The good news is that by implementing just a few intentional systems can completely change how you manage your workload and collaborate with your school team. By setting up three simple processes ( teacher consultations, referral management, and evaluation procedures ), you can create more time, consistency, and confidence in your daily practice. Let's look at each of these systems and how we can design them to work for us , not against us. System 1: A Teacher Consultation Process (Pre-Referral) Why It Matters Teachers are often the first to notice when students struggle with handwriting, attention, or self-regulation. But without a clear way to reach out and get simple support from you, they may jump straight to an OT referral, even when classroom-based strategies could make a difference. A structured consultation process (MTSS Tier 1)  gives teachers an avenue to access your expertise early on, before a specific student is even named.  These conversations should be about general classroom challenges , not individual students - even when the teacher has 1 or 2 specific children in mind. By keeping the focus on participation, routines, and environmental supports, you're helping teachers apply occupational therapy principles directly into their classrooms. This approach protects student privacy, aligns with FERPA and IDEA, and supports a workload model where OT services reach all students through collaboration, not just those on your caseload. How to Build It Here's what a practical, ethical consultation system can look like: Create a general consultation request form:  A simple Google Form can allow teachers to describe their concern (e.g., "Many students rush through written work") and what they've already tried. Embed consultation into existing meetings:  Join grade-level, PBIS, or Student Support meetings to share quick strategies related to broad classroom challenges. Provide universal resources:  Share quick-reference strategy sheets for common topics such as pencil grasp, posture, attention, or transitions. (Collaborative members can access printable handouts in the OT Schoolhouse Collaborative Resource Library ). Offer brief classroom visits:  Observe general routines (like how the class manages materials or transitions) and recommend task or environmental tweaks that can benefit everyone. Document and follow up:  Keep short notes about what topics were discussed and the supports shared. This documentation helps highlight your workload contributions beyond direct service. Bonus : Record short and simple videos about your most frequently asked question from teachers. Upload them to youtube as “unlisted” so they are not searchable, and then send teachers the direct links. That way you don’t have to repeat yourself every week. The Payoff When consultations focus on classroom concerns instead of individual students, teachers feel supported without needing to file a referral. They are also able to incorporate their newfound knowledge for years to come. Plus, you become a proactive partner rather than a reactive evaluator, and your impact expands across the entire school. For examples of how this proactive approach works, check out our articles on “ Reducing OT Referrals: Using MTSS and RTI-2 to Better Assist You! ” and “ Getting Ahead of Your OT Evals Using Tier 1 Interventions ” Both explore real-world strategies for collaborative support. System 2: A Referral Management Process Why It Matters Even with a strong consultation process, some students will still need a formal evaluation. Unfortunately, referrals often arrive missing crucial information, such as classroom data, previous interventions, or a clear description of how the concern affects participation. A consistent referral management process  ensures that every referral you receive is complete, appropriate, and aligned with educational needs. How to Build It Design a comprehensive referral form:  Include sections for student strengths, targeted concerns, classroom strategies tried, and data on functional impact. Use a combination of checklists and open ended questions for the teacher/IEP team to complete. Require pre-referral documentation:  Encourage teachers to document which strategies they implemented (ideally based on your consultation suggestions). Define clear referral criteria:  Educate staff on what constitutes an appropriate OT referral versus what may be addressed through consultation or Tier 1/2 supports. If possible, attend the IEP meeting when a referral is discussed:  Even if you can’t attend the whole meeting, a short discussion helps clarify concerns before moving to the evaluation stage. Communicate timelines:  Let staff know what happens next and when they can expect feedback. The Payoff This system means you'll spend less time tracking down missing information and more time completing meaningful evaluations. It also helps teachers make informed decisions, reducing unnecessary testing and keeping your workload manageable. 💡 Collaborative members  can access our school-based OT handbook template, which outlines a referral system that schools can use to ensure referrals are relevant, tracked, and acted on. Learn all about the Collaborative here! System 3: An Evaluation Process and Checklist Why It Matters Without a clear structure, evaluations can feel scattered. It's easy to miss a classroom observation or forget to include an activity-level assessment. A well-defined evaluation process  keeps your work consistent, efficient, and student-centered. How to Build It Use a top-down approach:  Start with participation and performance in context before testing isolated skills. Follow a consistent sequence:  Review records → interview teachers and parents → observe in natural settings → assess → analyze → report. Create an evaluation checklist:  Include each step (from prep and interviews to writing and follow-up) to ensure nothing gets missed. Know your tools:  Know the assessment tools you have access to and understand what tools to use for which concerns. Build evaluation time into your schedule:  Build time into your schedule to focus on evaluations. Completing evaluations on the fly has never led to great findings, at least for me. Track your progress:  Use your checklist to monitor completion and stay organized. The Payoff With a structured system, you'll produce thorough, defensible evaluations while saving time. Reports become stronger, recommendations clearer, and you'll feel more confident presenting results at IEPs. Need a checklist to help ensure you complete every evaluation in an organized and top-down manner? Enter your email below and we’ll send it over in just a second. Bringing It All Together - School-based OT Systems Building these three school-based OT systems ( consultation, referral management, and evaluation ) isn't about adding more work. It's about creating clarity and efficiency so your day feels smoother and your impact greater. Sure, they take a little bit of time to set up, but once they are running, you will save countless hours every month! Start with just one system, refine it, then layer in the others. Before long, you'll have a sustainable, organized practice that supports you and  your school community. Systems don't restrict you. They free you to focus on what matters most: helping students participate and thrive. 📬 Want more support like this? Subscribe to the OT Schoolhouse Newsletter  for weekly tips, research updates, and evidence-based strategies for school-based OT practitioners.

Click on your preferred podcast player link to listen wherever you enjoy podcasts . Welcome to the show notes for Episode 188 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast. Everyday Ethics in School-Based OT: Navigating Challenges with Clarity & Confidence equips school-based occupational therapists with the tools to confidently address real-world ethical dilemmas that arise in educational settings. Through case studies, decision-making frameworks, and updated guidance from AOTA, FOTA, and state-level regulations, participants will strengthen their ability to apply ethical principles to complex situations involving service delivery, documentation, advocacy, and the use of emerging tools like AI. This course enhances professional judgment, reduces uncertainty when facing ethical pressures, and promotes alignment with best practices and legal requirements. Ultimately, attendees will leave with actionable strategies to advocate for ethical change within their districts while maintaining student-centered, legally compliant, and neurodiversity-affirming care. Listen now to learn the following objectives: Learners will identify and describe modern ethical dilemmas within the school setting. Learners will apply ethical decision-making frameworks within the school-based setting case study. Learners will identify strategies for ethical advocacy and communication within the school setting. Guest(s) Bio Taylor Poirier OTD, OTR/L, CPRCS Taylor graduated from the University of St. Augustine – Miami in 2022 with her doctorate in occupational therapy. She began her career with a private pediatric company in Tampa, FL, providing services within private schools and through home health. With a passion for primitive reflex integration across the academic age span, she earned her Certified Primitive Reflex Clinical Specialist certification in Fall 2024. She is currently working to expand awareness of the scope of occupational therapy in schools within her local community, pushing the boundaries of traditional intervention approaches. In her free time, Taylor enjoys cooking, exercising, and watercolor painting. Quotes "Making decisions with confidence will always support your professional integrity." —  Dr. Taylor Poirier "Our roles and everyone's roles really in the IEP meeting or related situations is to progress that child forward." —  Dr. Taylor Poirier "If we don't say it, no one else may say it. Advocacy starts with us." —  Jayson Davies, M.A., OTR/L Resources 🎙️ OTS Podcast Episode with Taylor 📝 AOTA Blog Post on Ethics and Best Practices 📘 AOTA 2025 Code of Ethics (Pre-Publication PDF) AOTA OT Practice Framework IDEA Section 504 of Rehabilitation Act Print Tool 🧮 Tools from OT Schoolhouse 🔢 Caseload-to-Workload Calculator (Public) 🔧 Caseload-to-Workload Course (Available inside the OT Schoolhouse Collaborative) OT Schoolhouse Collaborative OTP Lounge  - A forum for asking questions within the OT Schoolhouse community Episode Transcript Expand to view episode transcript Jayson Davies     Hello and welcome to this special edition of the OT school house podcast. This is episode 188 and I'm your host, Jayson Davies. Today we are diving into a topic that affects every decision we make as school based ot practitioners, and that is ethic. In this special episode, we are sharing the live audio content from a course that was recorded inside the OT school house collaborative featuring fellow ot Dr Taylor Poirier. Taylor is also one of our community managers inside of that community, and the information that she shares within this particular course about ethical content within school based ot practitioner is absolutely vital. In fact, it's so vital that many states require a ethics course to be taken by ot practitioners in order to keep their license. In this episode, Taylor brings a fresh perspective on navigating the ethical dilemmas that we face every day in school, from IEP meetings and documentation to emerging technologies like AI in this episode, she'll guide us through practical decision making frameworks that build confidence when facing those challenging situations we all encounter. In case you're wondering, this course is a ot approved for one hour of CEUs, and if you are in a state that requires an ethics course, this can fulfill that need. If you'd like to earn a certificate of completion, access the slides and resources and learn from more than 30 other exclusive school based ot courses. Be sure to join the OT schoolhouse collaborative today at OTSchoolHouse.com , slash collab members also get access to our growing resource library, our goal and treatment bank, as well as live mentorship hours with myself and occasionally with Taylor. Now let's dive into this course with Taylor and learn how to navigate everyday ethics and school based ot with clarity and confidence.    Amazing Narrator     Hello and welcome to the OT school house podcast, your source for school based occupational therapy tips, interviews and professional development. Now to get the conversation started, here is your host, Jayson Davies, class is officially in session,    Jayson Davies     all right, and we are officially live. Taylor, the screen is yours.    Dr. Taylor Poirier OTR/L     Awesome. Thank you so much, Jayson. I am very excited to be here with you guys tonight and those who may be watching the replay later on. I think this is a much needed course, and hopefully it provides some new perspective, and you gain a whole bunch of knowledge from it. So let's go ahead and dive in. So over the course of this evening, this is what we're going to review. We're going to look at ethics. Going to review the code of ethics. We're going to redefine what ethics means. We're going to look at the AI implications and how we can still utilize this amazing tool while remaining ethically compliant. We're going to dive into a decision making framework to build up your confidence in handling those situations as they may arise. We're going to talk about Advocacy and Communication, how you can apply everything that you learn and move it out into a micro and macro level for optimal benefits of your students and those around you. And then lastly, we're going to look at some case studies and apply all of that knowledge our course objectives for the evening, we're going to identify and analyze common ethical dilemmas, hopefully give you some relation to these that you may have already experienced or may you may be experiencing in the future. Help you apply that decision making framework and then actively create strategies to communicate and advocate for those that you serve. So what does the term ethics actually mean if you're anything like me, I remember this from the very first day course of OT school, and they were like, all right, you got to memorize these things. And then it was kind of just onto the other aspects of our job, and now practicing for almost three years. I realized this really plays into our day to day, even maybe session by session. So this is the most updated definition I've received from a ot A, and I have some highlighted things in here, so I'm going to read it, and then we're going to discuss so ethics refers to the obligation of occupational therapy personnel to just demonstrate professional conduct that reflects the fields values when working with clients, families, caregivers, administrators, colleagues, policymakers, payers and other healthcare professionals. It includes applying the A ot a code of ethics to help practitioners face complex ethical problems in practice, research, education and policy. So the big word that really has stuck out to me is the term obligation. It's not as we come across or not my circus, not my monkeys. I'm not going to put my hand in that. It's our duty and our obligation as school based occupational therapists to look at everything through an ethical lens in order to uphold the rights of. Of those that we serve. And not only do we have this obligation, we need to reflect the knowledge and the understanding and really the framework that we work within. We need to reflect that in everything that we do by also upholding our values when working with those across the board. When we're able to do that, we also have the professional integrity we build the rapport, we build the trust, and we really build optimal situations for positive outcomes. And we may think of ethics are in place for just those that we serve, but really they're in place for us. They help guide us. They help produce a framework for us to navigate tough situations. And they're really part of, you know, helping us, even at the macro level, with research, education and policy, policy changes. Now we've redefined ethics. We've looked at the term, what are the code of ethics? From a ot a, these are six, which maybe this is a flashback to grad school, or you've been in touch with it more recently, if you're having to do ethical courses based off your state, but we're going to review them now. So beneficence is promoting the well being of our students. We have justice promoting the fairness and objectivity and all the things that we do for our students. Non maleficence is avoiding harm of our students. And I want you to think of harm not only in the physical sense, but in the emotional and mental veracity, providing accurate and truthful information, whether this is in our assessments, documentation, meetings, collaboration, all of those things, autonomy, which is respecting the right of the individual to self determination, bringing students into What we're doing, having them help themselves with goal creation. You know, what do they love about school? What makes school really tough? How can they feel more successful in school? To help guide some of the documentation and goal writing. And then lastly, is fidelity, which is loyalty and faithfulness to our students, which that's the key component that really helps us build that rapport. If students or children feel comfortable with somebody, they're more likely to, you know, show who they are. They're able to confide in and they're able to feel comfortable enough to have that trial and error that we may need them to as we are building their skills. So in the chat, I'd love to see if or hear if there's any one that jumps out to you, is there one where you're like, oh, wow, like, I'm really doing this actively on a day to day basis, or one where you haven't quite maybe you're not realizing the relevance quite yet. I know for me, I feel like our world's really opening up to our neuro diverse community, and with those, the students with different abilities, and so I feel like a lot of what I'm doing is bringing them into those conversations, having their right for self determination, having their right to advocate for themselves. So autonomy is one that I feel pretty heavily in my practice right now. Do we have any comment? Do we have any flowing in jaysons, or any ones that are sticking out to people I    Jayson Davies     just wrote in there that sometimes within school based OT, veracity sometimes gets tested in the sense that we have limitations put on us by administration and teachers and just the system of school based OT, and so sometimes providing accurate and truthful information, you have to do it in A creative way, because you kind of feel that pull a little bit to go one way versus the way that you want to go sometimes. Yeah, absolutely.     Dr. Taylor Poirier OTR/L     And we'll touch on this a little bit more towards the end, but that really plays into our communication piece and how we effectively communicate more in a strengths based way to really get our point across and help in the best interest of our children. So why? Why is this important to to have at the front of everything that we do? So having ethical awareness, it protects the rights of our students. It also provides or promotes their well being. It helps guide complex school systems like Jayson was saying, some of those, those dual relationships, some of those dynamics can be really difficult to navigate. So having these ethical frameworks of these six, and then the framework for decision making that we'll go over, really help provide context and structure to how we should navigate those things. Having this promotes integrity, which helps build trust with students, families and staff, knowing that you're always upholding these and really the obligation of truth that we have, and this also helps ensures that we're complying with a ot a code of ethics and state laws, everyone's district states, everything has everyone has their own things that may vary. So being aware of this and being informed is the best way to make sure you are always in compliance, so that there isn't a mistake that you may make just out of lack of awareness. So it's always great to be informed in this, and then again, it really supports our professional integrity and the accountability and everything that we do, even those days when we're rushing, always having in mind that we are accountable for every. Action that we make, and there has to be a purpose. And I know there may be a purpose in every action that we have, but documenting in that way, educating in that way, communicating in the way that you may be thinking, so that everyone around you also understands that importance. So when we think of ethical dilemmas, what do we think of after doing some research? These were the top four areas where occupational therapists who were surveyed feel they experience it the most, which is in IEP meetings. Common things that they have a hard time or are really needing to promote is advocacy and the promotion of the job of justice, mandating reporting situations where, you know, trying to avoid harm for the student, and intervening in that way the complexity of relationships, whether that's within school systems, you know, if the families are not, quote, unquote, typical, maybe whoever the situations may involve navigating those in an ethical way, and then also intervention selections, which it did not mention, assessments. But I feel like this can also be extended into that area, making sure that we are selecting assessments and interventions that aren't just out of ease, but are out of necessity and to promote the best optimal outcomes of our students and identify where the support is needed. So everyone's top question, AI is coming in. We know Jayson is a big AI fan and promoter, and he definitely has a lot of insight on this. And something that we want to start bringing awareness to is that AI is an amazing tool, but how can we use this optimally while ensuring ethical compliance in the chat? I'd love if anybody has experience with this already, where they're unsure of when they should have used it if they've already had some issues arise, whether that was themselves or other areas of their practice. I'd love to see and maybe discuss that later on too, about how to navigate some of those situations. So AI is is coming really fast and integrating itself into our practice. It has so many tools in potential to assist or the students that we serve, whether that's progress notes, whether that's intervention ideas, whether that's summaries for notes in general, or progress reports, whatever that's looking like. And while these can be pushed heavily to to save time, maybe expand access, they are always going to carry a risk. Some of the most common concerns that a OTs having as of last year is confidentiality breaches. Data can be getting misused. There's bias or inaccurate recommendations. And something to keep in mind is that AI is such a powerful tool, but it can't outright or out program human experience. I can't out produce our clinical judgment, our education. We can program it as much as possible, but we always need to use it with a critical lens. So a OT, A is emphasizing that we use critical judgment and protection and disclose when AI has been used when necessary. So overall, AI is an optimal tool to use if you conduct critical judgment and reasoning after producing your outcomes. So whether that is, say you're you're wanting to do like a summary note from data for a child that you put in there to add into a progress report, and instead of just copy pasting, putting it into your report and sending it off after you've signed after you've signed it is looking at it, reviewing, making sure everything in there is truthful, making sure everything is grade level appropriate or age appropriate. It has the type of language that you want, that it's including occupational therapy language, and it matches whatever the goals may be on their their IEP.    Jayson Davies     Real quickly. Taylor, I know Chandler, just put into the chat that she's used Gemini at her last travel school placement. Just made sure not to put any personal information for the students into it. I had a question about this. A OT, a document that you're getting some information about AI, because I was unaware that there was really any a ot documents related to AI, and so I was looking at your citations, and it looks like you have something from it's a pre publication. Is that where this is coming from?     Dr. Taylor Poirier OTR/L     Yes, it's kind of like, from what I understand, it's like their version of, almost like a blog post, is where they're kind of having the conversations about it.    Jayson Davies     Okay, so I know obviously a OT, a doesn't update their code of ethics like every year, and I know they go through a large process to update it. So maybe this is a sign of what may be coming then in a future ethics, OT, ethics from a OT, a document. So cool.    Dr. Taylor Poirier OTR/L     Yeah, which is really exciting too, to know that they're evolving with the state of technology and evolving with the state of practice, with school based occupational therapy too. So, okay, so the decision making framework, I know I have come across some ethical dilemmas in my time after three years, and there's been opportunities or moments where I've kind of frozen in a. I'm sure, because I'm like, I know that there's going to be a better way to process this. I need, I know there's kind of some data missing. I'm not sure how to move forward. What really is the optimal outcome. And so this decision making framework is to promote confidence in everyone attending and those watching the replay, to start breaking down these situations, to uphold accurately, promote the justice and everything of that nature. So the three parts are to identify the question or problem at hand. Is any portion of the situation illegal? Does any portion of this harm those involved? Does any part of this go against district or school policy? Once you've identified that clearly you're going to start collecting the facts, you need to collect what is relevant to the situation. What is the objective truth from whoever is in involved in that situation? If there's any additional input making sure that it is objective? Is there too much unknown about the situation? Is it more of kind of a here? He Said, She Said, what's this is what I think is happening, is there not enough information to make a true clinical ethical judgment based off of that. You're either kind of elect more, or you can kind of narrow it down from there. The last step is evaluating alternative action. What are, what is the best step forward that's going to uphold the rights of those at stake, what's going to provide the most optimal outcome for the student or for those involved, and how can you ensure your own professional integrity? With that being said, there is something to be said for being informed, and that making decisions with confidence will always support your professional integrity in these situations, being informed whether that is through courses like this that you do, staying up to date in your own state district and our a, OT, a laws, guidelines, policies, being aware of what ethical dilemmas are facing our society at this time are. We're always evolving so being ensured that we are having an evolving lens of this too and how to apply the six codes of ethics to that. And when you make it with confidence, there's no second guessing of what you did was correct, what you did was important for that child. And something else to remember is that with ethical dilemmas, there may be a side of it that someone does not, quote, unquote, win when it comes to identifying what is best for the student. If that means there's going to be a little bit more education that needs to go into XYZ party, then that's the step that we take. If that means that the student is, you know, the parent is, is not fully on board, or whatever that means, to help educate the rights that are at stake, to educate, the access to the education that they need, and everything in that manner, making decisions with confidence, will always support your professional integrity in those moments. So we've, you know, defined what ethics is. We've gone over what a ot a what the six are. We've looked at the common areas where this happens. We've gone over our decision making framework. Now, how do we apply all of these things and push it out into the world and into our daily practice? That is through Advocacy and Communication. Advocacy is part of the fidelity and justice of this. If we educate or advocate for our student to be involved in a process, if we advocate for them to in IEP meetings, if we advocate for them on even a larger scale, we're able to put forth our reputation of our field, we're able to push forward our values and also uphold their optimal outcomes so that they can grow up being successful and confident. This also promotes fair caseloads and workloads. If you guys haven't already taken advantage of the workload caseload tool that we have available at the OT school house, you should this is a great way to gather data, to promote to your higher ups in order to reduce maybe those, those case loads that may not be unethical at the time, but are unmanageable, therefore they the students. Services are not written appropriately. That service are needing to to be altered, providing that data is always the best way to advocate and communicate for change, and that plays into access to OT services as well. Is, what is? What is our realm of OT? What is it that we're capable of doing? What is it that this population is needing? What is this? What are these classrooms? You know, what do they need to be more successful again, Advocacy and Communication is the best way to do that. And if we you know on the little communication that we may have in passing with teachers or with staff or even with parents, if we can start even on that micro level with them, advocating for the skills that we're addressing for the. The capabilities of their students, no matter what diagnosis or classroom style, anything that they're a part of. Same with educators, if we can educate teachers like, Hey, I know you're talking about sensory for XYZ thing, but this is why, this is it promotes their well being. This is how it helps them. This is what you can do classroom why to help the overall involvement and functionality, and something that we may not think of on the forefront a whole lot is ethics on a macro level with policy change. So we can start by, you know, in our schools, but let's look at our local levels. There are town hall meetings that we can be a part of where they're addressing, maybe special resources, maybe different companies, things of that nature, to help give some insight to those that may have a microscopic view of what the neurodiverse community looks like. And then even at the state level, if they are creating these policies or making cuts or anything of that nature, they may not have the full picture, because that's not their realm. They don't they're not as educated. They don't have the background, they don't have the task analysis, breakdown ability that we have. And so going in and educating, providing the data, what is our what is research showing from a OT, a what is the journal of OT saying, what are, what are the trends that we're seeing? What can we promote to them? What can we advocate and communicate for ethical changes in our states and then at the national level as well? And like we had mentioned kind of all throughout, that is the data collection is key from true, objective information that clear communication of the needs and trying to fill it, and also the collaboration OT is a fairly small realm, and so someone may know someone who went to school with this person, and the connections and the networking is so impactful that when you put me just more than one brain together, the opportunities are endless, and the advocacy and the change that can be made really goes a long way. So with all of that being said, we're going to jump into the kind of the case study portion of this, so those that are close to their phone and are able there will be an ABCD option that I'd love for you to post in the chat, so we can kind of get a consensus and then talk about it. All right, so case study number one, you're in OT obviously everyone in an IEP meeting for Mateo, a six year old student with motor coordination difficulties. Mateo's parents primarily speak Spanish, but the meeting begins without an interpreter present. The administrator suggests that you keep it simple proceed with the meeting to save time, the parents are nodding, but appear hesitant and ask very few questions. So the question at hand, what is the most ethical and legally compliant action in this situation? Answer choices is a, continue the meeting, simplified English, some visual aids. B's request to pause and reschedule the meeting until a qualified interpreter is available. C, have bilingual staff member who's not trained quickly summarize key points, or D, complete the meeting as plans, but send home a translated summary for parents to read. So what I'd like to do is kind of use that framework, and again, I can't see the chat box, but using that framework identifying the problem is that we have that English is not their native language, it's not their first language, and so we're conducting a meeting where they are not able to communicate clearly. They're not able to ask questions for clarification, nor are we able to be receptive to any information that they're sharing. So what do we do next? Well, what are the options? What can we do? Can we do? Can we reschedule someone needs to be present so that we can, you know, be have the true information. So do we have a common answer in the box? Jayson, oh, you're muted.     Jayson Davies     Yep. That helps when I hit the hit the button, yeah. So we got Holly in, and I'm not sure who iPhone is yet, but I think I might know it is and live all saying B request a pause and reschedule the meeting until a qualified interpreter is available. Yeah, I think that's the accurate answer, right? Yep. Now I'm interested to see if that's actually the answer that that most IEPs actually go with, even when we're present, because I know firsthand that that is not always the case.     Dr. Taylor Poirier OTR/L     Right, and that's when that advocacy and the communication piece and being aware that it's not what's best for everybody else to save time, but what is the ethical option so that all parties are understanding and are able to converse appropriately for that child, an idea actually states that information should be provided in the native language to ensure meaningful participation, so upholding our national laws there.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, and Liv in the chat just said she's seen C a lot. We're having a bilingual staff member who's not trained come in and quickly summarize key points. And yep, I have seen that one quite. Often as well. I've had a come up as well, right where we just try to see it simplified. Haven't had D but I'm interested now, because just recently, Apple released their new air pods that can translate in real time. So I'm interested to see what role technology can play in some of this to help out. So, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Chandler says C was done a lot too, bringing in a bilingual staff member, yep, and, but I will say this too. From the flip side, my wife being an administrator in a school she like doesn't like this either, because she is now losing a staff member who is supposed to be helping out, whether it's in a classroom or in the office and whatnot. So Liv brings up the question, you know, how would we approach this with administration? Sounds to me, sound to me, admin and just want to save money. I voiced that I'm not legal. Yeah, and I, I'll let you respond.    Dr. Taylor Poirier OTR/L     Taylor, yeah, I think with administration, because they do see it as like time on the clock, like money is, you know, my time is precious, where the money that it may be spent to kind of have relocated subs, all of those things in those times for meetings, but at the end of the day, we, we don't want to be liable for a lack of information, and parents to agree to something that they're not understanding, because there's already that language barrier in like that OT, in the OT language and common, common language that are used in IEP meetings. So to to just move through the motions, we're also not getting insight from the parent. We're not gaining we're not gaining a reciprocal conversation to identify what's best for that child. And so at the end of the day, that's when you you educate that, okay, these are, this is what my governing national organization, states are within my ability, and therefore I'm going to uphold the ethical importance for the child that I serve, and that doesn't have that I'm not promoting the justice or the fair access to information by, you know, going with anything but the correct answer here. And like I said earlier this, these are moments that are going to be tough conversations, because one party may feel, well, I don't have the time, but at the end of the day, our roles, and everyone's roles, really, in the IEP meeting or related situations, is to progress that child forward and identify the best needs for accessing their education or accessing their individualized education programs.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, and I'll just add too I feel like, Oops, that's not what I meant to do. Teachers have ethical guidelines as well, and I don't know them. I've got the California Teachers Association guidelines up on my screen. I was trying to look at them really quickly. But teachers have guidelines. Administrators have guidelines. Speech and language pathologists have guidelines. And I think a lot of times, we're all sitting in the meeting and we know that b is the right answer, but we're also thinking about our schedule, and we're thinking about how many, you know, we have six people that we had to coordinate to get to this IEP, and no one wants to reschedule. And I get that. But a lot of times when this comes up, from what I've seen is that people are almost waiting for someone to speak up and say, Let's reschedule. And unless someone does, once one person speaks up, everyone kind of goes with it, like, Yeah, that's probably the best idea. Let's reschedule, la, de da, de da, but if no one speaks up, that's when you end up going with C and it's just easier in the moment to find someone else than it is to think about the craziness that is to reschedule. But it only takes one person, I guess. What I'm trying to say is only really takes one person to speak up. And to be honest, every single person there again. I don't have the SLP ethics guidelines, but they probably have something similar. And it just takes one of us to speak up and say something.    Dr. Taylor Poirier OTR/L     Yeah. And it goes into also being informed enough to have the confidence in or in order to make that, you know, maybe controversial statement or non preferred statement in those moments.    Jayson Davies     yeah. And then I mean, sorry, really quickly, is after the fact, right? Then I would have a real conversation with the admin and be like, hey, after, you know, have a successful reschedule. Maybe, like, Hey, I just wanted to check in. Like, do we have any policy about this, or is there something? Because it's one thing you know, when you speak to your national organization. Sometimes that sounds like a little pompous, but if you can speak directly to the district policy or the school's policy, that's even better. But most of us don't know our district or school policy, so we can figure out if our school has a policy, we can put that in place and then maybe advocate for there's so a lot of districts will use, like a telephone, like there's a contracted agency that you can just call in and they'll translate in the moment. And so districts and set something up like that. So yeah, yeah.    Dr. Taylor Poirier OTR/L     Or maybe in order to find if your district has those policies, is, you can use AI to summarize. OTs and I didn't ask the question, yeah, exactly.    Jayson Davies     Pretty darn good now, so.     Dr. Taylor Poirier OTR/L     Yeah, awesome. All right, we'll move on to our.    Jayson Davies     Liv hopefully that helped a little bit. Let us know if you have any follow ups.    Dr. Taylor Poirier OTR/L     Yeah, that was a great question. A great insight, too. All right. Case study number two, Jonah is a fourth grader with an ASD diagnosis. Teacher. Teachers report he often rocks in his chair, hums quietly during independent work and avoids eye contact when spoken to. These behaviors do not disrupt his learning or others in the class, but some staff express concern about social appropriateness. In your assessment, you find Jonah is completing grade level work, using self regulation strategies effectively and participating in group activities when given written instruction and predictable transitions, Jonah says, rocking and humming make him feel calm and focused. What is the most ethical approach? Is it a encourage him to stop rocking and humming, because social norms should take priority over his self regulation. B, document the teacher's concerns and focus interventions on modifying Jonah's behaviors to appear more socially appropriate, even if this increases his stress. C, support Jonah's regulation strategies while educating staff about neuro diversity and the importance of respecting behaviors that are functional or D, ignoring the teachers entirely in focus, only on academic performance, without addressing social or behavioral expectations.    Jayson Davies     So we've got a C in the chat from Holly, and I think C is my response Chandler's response to is C. And yeah, we can have a discussion, because this is a really multifaceted one, and I like to have conversations about this one.    Dr. Taylor Poirier OTR/L     So C is, C is our, our answer, supporting functional self regulation strategies, respects Jonah's autonomy and aligns with ethical principles of beneficence and non non Maleficent feel like I always have a hard time saying that word. And also promotes inclusion, educating staff about neurodiversity helps balance classroom expectations and student centered practices, options A and B, kind of you know, risk harm by suppressing the functional coping strategies may impact the self esteem, the confidence because he was doing so well at school. So then to know what he what tool was being used, decreased his functionality in the room. Can you obviously have mental and emotional impacts. And then D also neglects the the collaborative nature of school based practice. So while we may not agree with the teachers insight or comments, that doesn't mean we should eliminate the opportunity for education and alternative collaboration.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, so I want to kind of go on this one and go a little bit further, because there's two different scenarios where it's similar, but but it changes it up completely. One is when you have parents from the classroom coming in and saying their child is unable to learn because a peer is humming and rocking. And I think that complicates this even more. And yeah, I just opening up a conversation about that a little bit, because every student has the right to learn, and how do we say, well, this kid needs that, that kid needs that. And sometimes they conflict a little bit. This kid needs quiet, but this kid needs the ability to to hum and rock potentially. And I think that opens up some tough conversations. And I, personally, I think the only real answer is to just sit down as an IEP team, or as a grade level team, as a school team, and, you know, problem solve. But yeah, just interested maybe in your thoughts. Taylor.     Dr. Taylor Poirier OTR/L     Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. I also think it opens the door for kind of education to the rest of the class too, not specifically on what that student specifically is doing, but the overarching, you know, action, which is self soothing techniques, coping strategies. Do these other children have strategies if they're suddenly becoming very distracted by what this child's doing? Do they not have a set of their own? Do they not know how to innately find those strategies while they're working in the classroom? Can there be education on the these are things that we can do to help all of our bodies and our brains stay focused to learn. And part of that to them would go back to the IEP meeting and collaborate like if that is not an option or it is a it doesn't produce a different outcome from anyone, whether the student that we're talking about here, Jonah, or the alternative students whose parents are now coming in with potential complaints. What are the actual options for these How much is it impacting the classroom? What are the can any observations be done? Maybe during specific times? Where works getting completed, where maybe those complaints have been coming from, because at the end of the day, you're right. Every student has, you know, the right to to learn and access their education within the rooms. But at the same time, some of those things can be due to not potential, not necessarily ignorance. That's not the right word I would like to use, but the just the lack of awareness of what others may also need to feel successful.     Jayson Davies     Yeah. And then I think the other question that this begs a little bit is, when that type of question about, you know, I want you to work on social appropriateness, comes from a parent, because that is, then, yes, we're thinking about the child, but the parent is, to a degree, part of the child, in this case, right? Like they are part of the client, per se. And yeah, any thoughts you might have, if we're getting a lot of push from a from a parent or from an advocate that, hey, we really want to work on our student not humming while he's doing work. Have you ever had to address the head or any recommendations?    Dr. Taylor Poirier OTR/L     Yeah, so I am actually going through that right now. I have a parent to the languages I want my son trained to engage in a public classroom with no support. Stage two, autistic boy and joyful as can be. He, you know, needing a lot of prompting and things like that. And what the language is looking like with mom right now is I the word training. I said, Okay, what does that mean to you? What does that mean in your own cultural context? What does that mean for you and dad? What does that look like in your home versus school? Because the school environment he's in now is going to look different, if you would love for him to be transferred into a public school setting and thinking helping them understand kind of to this child may not always be a this child is not going to always be a third grader or look like eventually he will grow up and be an 18 year old, you know, young adult and a 30 year old man and The skills that are trained and for a classroom context don't always benefit them in the long run. So trying to really find that middle ground to where you're being respectful of their wishes, but also helping them understand our our knowledge and our context and our understanding of the realm of neurodiversity and what that looks like across the lifespan that's been helpful. We're still in the early stages, but that's been a process that's been helpful thus far, right? Case study number three, you're currently managing a 30 student caseload. Your district recently introduced an AI powered platform that suggests intervention activities and generates progress notes, the AI recommendation seem efficient, but you notice that some suggested strategies may not be developmentally appropriate for certain students. Administrators encourage you to use the AI outputs to save time and meet documentation deadlines. How should you ethically utilize the new AI platform? A critically evaluate the suggestions, use them as a starting point, if appropriate, and ensure all intervention planning and documentation reflects your personal judgment, while maintaining transparency with your team. B, follow the AI generated recommendations exactly as written to same time and meet. Documentation, expectations, meet. Doc, yeah. Documentation, expectations C, ignore the AI tool entirely and continue documenting, manually, avoiding any integration of technology. D, delegate the AI generated recommendations to support staff without reviewing them to streamline productivity.    Jayson Davies     We got some A's in the chat.     Dr. Taylor Poirier OTR/L     Wonderful, everybody. It's answer a so I feel like we have it written like out like this. It seems very apparent, but I feel like in the moment, while you're trying to rush and do things, it can feel maybe that something might get missed. So just really having that clinical judgment always tapped in, really, yeah, do you have any Jayson with all of your AI experience and knowledge and research? Do you have anything specifically on this portion?    Jayson Davies     I mean, I haven't heard of a program that's doing that. I mean, I know we have our goal generator, right, that will spit out some interventions and whatnot, but, I mean, we're very careful to put at the end of each goal right, like that. This is AI generated, and at the end of the day it's it's you that should be debating whether or not these interventions are appropriate for for your student. I can see districts as a lot of I don't know of any one particular district, but we are seeing this within the workforce in general, right? Like the use of AI should save everybody time, therefore, when you should need less employers. But if you're not to this part yet, I would want to say school based ot practitioner, we need to make sure that we're getting on whatever team is considering AI if we're being pushed to do AI. And I think I would kind of do the same thing with a I would push back, I in a very respectful way. I would push back, and if I had to, I would pull evidence from wherever I could to show that to my administrators. I would walk through maybe a case study with my administrator to show them my reasoning for why I disagree with the AI bot, yeah, and just kind of let them know one thing that I was going to bring up, I think was on case study one and but it applies to all three, is that it if we don't bring things up, it's really kind of on us, but if we bring up our concerns to our administrators, we're letting them share the not the blame, but we're letting them share this common experience with us, that it is awkward, that it is unethical, that we do have to be mindful of a OT, a ethics code and NBC, OT, and they probably have to be mindful of their ethics codes whether or not they're thinking about it in the moment. So even if it's even if you don't necessarily do the right thing in the moment, it's okay to come back later and say, You know what, I think I messed up here. I should have done something a little bit differently. I want to talk to my administrator. About it.     Dr. Taylor Poirier OTR/L     Yeah, absolutely. And that goes back into making the informed decision, but also then the obligation that if you realize that that wasn't the most optimal choice, and now you're realizing full circle what could have been done, that is your obligation to then go and share that and have that conversation and advocacy component for sure. All right, our last case study. All right, you're a school based occupational therapist working with Jordan, a 13 year old student with autism and social emotional challenges Jordan shares privately with you that appear in their class has been teasing and bullying them online. Jordan specifically asked that you do not tell anyone as they fear retaliation at the same time you notice that the bullying may also involve other students and could escalate. The school has anti bullying policies and administrators often expect staff to report incidences that could affect the student's safety or the school climate. What is the optimal action to maintain ethical practice? Is it a keep Jordan's disclosure entirely confidential, respecting their request and trusting them to handle the situation themselves? Report the bullying immediately to administrators and parents without consulting Jordan to ensure strict adherence to school policy. See, discuss with Jordan the importance of safety and school policy, collaborate on a plan for reporting and disclose only information to relevant school personnel while minimizing risk of retaliation or D, ignore the disclosure, focusing only on Jordan's ot goals and do not involve the school or parent.    Jayson Davies     I'm going to give a collective C, C says and C has says, OT, and by the way, thanks for joining us and and was iPhone got it now. Thanks for changing your name. Yeah. So C, yep.    Dr. Taylor Poirier OTR/L     So this scenario really highlights ethical tension between confidentiality, student autonomy and the duty to protect them. C really balances the respect for Jordan's privacy and autonomy with the legal with the ethical and legal responsibility to prevent that harm and the harm of others, and involves the collaboration with problem solving, partial disclosure and transparency, where a, you know, risks harm by ignoring the overall danger for Jordan and others. B, could damage that trust, escalate anxiety, and then again, doing harm to our student and D, just overall, neglects both ethical responsibility and the school policy.    Jayson Davies     I think the especially, the key in the key words, in my opinion, in letter C, is that only necessary information is being shared like we and working with, working with Jordan a little bit, letting him know, you know, yes, I need to tell people, but I'm going to limit your exposure as much as I can. I'm only going to share what's what's relevant and important. And, you know, eventually we might have to disclose that it's you, but yeah, relevant information?    Dr. Taylor Poirier OTR/L     Yeah, absolutely. And it maintains that rapport established with that child, especially at 13, that's such a core age where there's so many more things at play other than just their school challenges. There's that social component. There's as their bodies are changing, as their their roles are shifting as they're getting older as well. So having someone that they feel safe and comfortable with, that knows supports them, especially in the school setting, is really important. So that C really encompasses maintaining all of that. All right, so an overview of everything that we've discussed tonight. Truly, it is our obligation to the students to best serve them and their goals through an ethical lens while also advocating and communicating effectively on those it's our job to be aware of ethical decision frameworks very like. The one that we learned tonight to instill confidence informed decision making and overall professional integrity. It's our job to stay up to date on any changing practices, to maintain ethical literacy. And lastly, Advocacy and Communication Always will best serve our populations for optimal success. So as Jayson and I kind of had stated earlier, is that if we don't say it, no one else may say it. So if we are the ones to to step in, it's really our, our best way to to serve them. So if you've kind of, if you've either been a part of this course tonight, or you're watching the replay, and you're like, This is all awesome, but where do I, where do I start to understand these guidelines? Where are these policies coming into play? Where do I? Where do I find this information? The best places to go is look at a ot a website. They have guidelines for the school and EI services. It's always great to go back and reference our practice framework. When we're looking at everything that our job is and what we value. It's really great to reference that and how it applies idea section 504, of Rehabilitation Act, those are all great places just to review and what they encompass, so that we can continue making ethical decision frameworks, and then also looking into your state organizations and your district organizations. What are those policies looking like? What do you need to be aware of? And if someone else in these meetings or situations are not aware. How can you make yourself aware? And those are all great places to start. So that concludes the the end of the presentation. Again, I am the OT School House meeting manager, if I if you haven't already learned, but I'd love to connect further. That is my email, whether that's questions about this, questions about the collaborative or wanting to just connect in general, I'd love to, you know, do that further with everybody, because, again, networking is the best way to get big ideas and push change. So thank you so much for everyone who joined. Anne was watching the replay.    Jayson Davies     All right. Thank you so much for joining us for this ethical journey with Dr Taylor Poirier. If you found this content helpful and want to access the slides, the resources and more content, just like this, I invite you to join us inside the OT school house collaborative. As I mentioned earlier, this episode was actually recorded as part of our live professional development series that happens every month within the collaborative, and we would love to have you join us there as a member, you'll not only get access to this course as well as the certificate of completion since you just took the course, but you'll also get access to over 30 other live and on demand, a OT, a approved courses, our growing resource library, the OT, school, house, goal and treatment Bank and other live mentorship opportunities with myself and others, where we can discuss ethical dilemmas like this one and so much more. School Based ot can be isolating, but it doesn't have to be. Join our community of like minded school based ot practitioners at ot schoolhouse.com/collab we'd love to have you there. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the OT school house podcast. I'll see you next time, as we continue to improve school based ot practice all together.    Amazing Narrator     Thank you for listening to the OT school house 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! If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Google Podcast , Spotify , or wherever you listen to podcasts. Click here to view more episodes of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast

Be sure to scroll down for your free 7 School-Based OT Strategies to Foster Self-Determination Handout! As school-based OT practitioners, we often focus on helping students become more independent in the classroom. But true independence goes beyond completing a task alone. Rather, it's about developing the ability to make choices, set goals, and direct one's own actions . In other words, it's about self-determination . When students are self-determined, they see themselves as capable and in control. They don't just "follow directions," they make decisions, advocate for themselves, and actively shape their learning experiences. These are skills that impact not only academic success but long-term participation in all areas of life. In this article, you'll discover practical strategies, evidence-based assessments, and actionable resources  to help your students develop the skills they need to make meaningful choices, set their own goals, and advocate for themselves both in and beyond the classroom. Today, we're discussing self-determination in school-based OT. Let's do it! What Is Self-Determination? In occupational therapy, self-determination refers to a person's ability to act as a primary agent in their own life to make meaningful choices and pursue goals that reflect personal interests and values. A recent American Journal of Occupational Therapy article (2024)  emphasized that self-determination is not just a desirable outcome but a fundamental element of occupational justice and participation. When students are empowered to make decisions about their learning and participation, they experience greater engagement, satisfaction, and well-being. For students, self-determination manifests as: Making choices about how to engage in learning tasks Setting goals that reflect personal interests and strengths Advocating for needed supports and accommodations Reflecting on performance and adjusting strategies By supporting these abilities, OT practitioners align with both IDEA's focus on preparing students for further education, employment, and independent living  and the OT profession's core commitment to autonomy and participation. Where Self-Determination Fits into Occupational Therapy Self-determination has always been part of occupational therapy's DNA. Our profession is built around enabling people to make choices and participate meaningfully in everyday life. The Model of Human Occupation (MOHO)  provides a strong foundation for understanding how self-determination develops, and how OTs can advocate for their role in supporting it within schools. MOHO views occupational participation as an interaction among four subsystems: volition, habituation, performance capacity, and environment. Volition: A student's motivation, interests, values, and sense of personal causation (essentially their "why"). Self-determination starts here. Habituation: The routines and roles that help structure actions over time. When students help shape their own routines, they build self-regulation and consistency. Performance capacity: The physical and cognitive skills required to act on choices. Supporting skill development ensures that students' intentions can become actions. Environment: The social, physical, and institutional context that either enables or restricts choice and participation. By framing self-determination through MOHO, we can articulate to teams that we don't just help students perform tasks. We also help them take ownership of those tasks. Assessing Self-Determination in School-Based OT Assessing self-determination helps identify both student abilities  and environmental supports or barriers. The following formal and informal tools can guide this process. Formal Assessments AIR Self-Determination Assessment (Zarrow Center, OU) The AIR-SDS is one of the most user-friendly, school-focused tools available. It includes versions for students, teachers, and parents  and takes about 20 to 30 minutes to complete. The assessment measures two components: Capacity: The student's knowledge, skills, and perceptions related to choice-making and goal-setting. Opportunity: The degree to which the environment provides chances for those skills to be used. Results can highlight, for example, a student who wants to make choices but isn't given the opportunity to do so. This information directly informs OT goals and classroom recommendations. ARC Self-Determination Scale The ARC scale is best for middle and high school students, especially those with disabilities. It examines autonomy, self-regulation, psychological empowerment, and self-realization. It's relatively quick (20 to 30 minutes) and helps OTs understand how students view their own ability to control and direct actions. This forms a foundation for transition planning and self-advocacy skill building. Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM) While not designed exclusively for self-determination, the COPM beautifully supports it through its client-centered goal-setting process. Through a semi-structured interview, students identify activities that matter most to them, then rate their performance and satisfaction on a 1 to 10 scale. For school-based OT, this might look like asking: "What's one thing at school you'd like to do better or feel more confident doing?" When students set and track their own goals, they begin exercising agency, which is the cornerstone of self-determination. Informal Assessments Informal tools can provide equally valuable insights, especially when connected to the reason for the referral. Observations:  Note whether the student initiates activity, asks for help, or avoids challenges. For example, if a referral says "student has difficulty starting independent tasks," observation may reveal that the issue isn't initiation but fear of failure or lack of control. Both are volitional concerns related to self-determination. Student Interviews:  Ask open-ended questions such as "What makes a good day at school for you?" or "When do you get to make choices in class?" These questions help identify motivation and barriers from the student's perspective. Teacher and Family Questionnaires:  Gain insights into whether students are given meaningful choices or opportunities for input. This context helps OTs advocate for environmental supports that enable autonomy. When used together, these informal tools help you move from "This student doesn't stay on task" to "This student lacks opportunities for meaningful choice and self-direction in their learning routines." 7 School-Based OT Strategies to Foster Self-Determination Handout Strategies to Promote Self-Determination in School-Based OT The following evidence-based strategies embed self-determination into everyday OT practice. Each strategy includes why it matters, what it looks like in SBOT, and an example. 1. Begin With Student-Selected Goals Why it matters:  Choice and ownership increase motivation (volition). In practice:  Use visual choice boards, simple surveys, or COPM interviews to help students select or phrase their own goals. Example:  A student says, "I want to be able to pack my backpack without help." The OT then scaffolds motor, sequencing, and self-monitoring skills to help the child meet that self-chosen goal. 2. Embed Meaningful Occupations That Reflect Interests Why it matters:  Tasks tied to personal interests enhance engagement and persistence. In practice:  Integrate class-relevant but personally meaningful tasks such as writing about favorite hobbies or managing classroom jobs. Example:  A student interested in art designs a class poster to work on fine-motor and visual-motor integration. The student gains both skill and confidence while experiencing authentic choice. 3. Provide Authentic Choices and Control Why it matters:  Real choices build autonomy and reinforce a sense of agency. In practice:  Embed decision points such as materials, sequence, or timing. Gradually move from guided to independent decision-making. Example:  You ask, "Would you like to start with keyboarding or handwriting today?" Later, you fade the prompt so the student plans their own sequence. Over time, this develops natural self-regulation. 4. Teach Reflective Problem-Solving Why it matters:  Self-determination includes reflection and self-regulation. In practice:  Use a consistent visual process like Goal–Plan–Do–Check. Encourage students to identify what worked, what didn't, and what to try next. Example:  A student who struggles with transitions creates their own "Plan-Do-Check" card and rates how smooth each transition feels daily. Over time, reflection fosters self-awareness and adaptive coping. 5. Model and Coach Self-Advocacy Why it matters:  Students who can express their needs participate more fully in education and life decisions. In practice:  Role-play communication and self-advocacy scenarios. Teach "I" statements and encourage participation in IEP discussions. Example:  A fifth grader practices saying, "I need a break to reset so I can focus again." The teacher agrees to a visual signal system, allowing the student to independently request breaks. 6. Modify the Environment to Support Agency Why it matters:  Even motivated students can't self-direct if their environment lacks supportive routines or flexibility. In practice:  Collaborate with teachers to design environments that promote independence. This includes offering choices within tasks, clear visuals, and structured routines. Example:  In a writing station, provide multiple seating options and materials so students can choose what helps them focus best. 7. Embed Reflection Into Progress Monitoring and IEPs Why it matters:  Reflection promotes accountability and ownership of learning. In practice:  Involve students in reviewing their data and progress. Use visuals or self-rating scales to help them describe growth. Example:  Before an IEP meeting, a student reviews their progress chart and chooses one success to share. Including their voice in documentation reinforces empowerment. Tools and Resources to Support Self-Determination These tools and programs can help OT practitioners integrate self-determination into practice: I'm Determined Project : Created by the Virginia Department of Education, this free resource offers student-driven goal templates, one-pagers, self-advocacy lessons, and IEP participation guides. Excellent for teachers, families, and OTs to use collaboratively. Zarrow Center for Learning Enrichment (OU) : Home to the AIR Self-Determination Assessment, the Zarrow Center offers research-backed curricula, training modules, and resources for transition planning. Self-Determination.org : Provides free tools, scales, and professional development on self-determination and autonomy for students with disabilities. COPM Resources : Official COPM guidance, downloadable forms, and training videos for using the measure to promote student goal setting. Transition Coalition : Offers professional development and self-determination training modules ideal for OT collaboration with special educators. Why OT Practitioners Must Support Self-Determination Supporting self-determination is not an optional extra. It's central to the mission of school-based OT. Recent findings, including Inclusion and Self-Determination for Secondary Students with Disabilities: The Effects of Interventions and Classroom Placement (2024) , show that interventions fostering student choice, reflection, and self-advocacy lead to improved engagement, academic performance, and postsecondary readiness. By helping students choose, act, reflect, and advocate, OT practitioners not only enhance classroom participation but also equip students with the confidence and competence to navigate life's broader occupations. Self-determination connects directly to our domain by supporting volition, building skills for self-directed performance, and shaping environments that promote access and equity. As educational systems emphasize student-led learning and agency, OTs have a critical voice in showing how occupation-based approaches bring those goals to life. Bringing It All Together Self-determination is not an “extra” skill — it’s a core foundation of participation, learning, and long-term success. By using models like MOHO , incorporating reflection and choice into daily sessions, and leveraging tools like the AIR Self-Determination Assessment  and the I’m Determined Project , we can help students learn to direct their own learning, problem-solve challenges, and advocate for themselves with confidence. When we prioritize self-determination, we empower students to become active agents in their education, and (more importantly) in their lives beyond school. Ready to empower your students through occupation-based practice? Join over 14,000 school-based OT practitioners receiving weekly insights, strategies, and evidence-based tools. 👉 Subscribe to the OT Schoolhouse Newsletter Additional References American Journal of Occupational Therapy. (2024). The Crucial Need for Occupational Therapy to Prioritize Self-Determination . American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 79(1). American Occupational Therapy Association. (2020). Occupational Therapy Practice Framework: Domain and Process (4th ed.) . American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 74(Supplement_2). Kielhofner, G. (2008). Model of Human Occupation: Theory and Application (4th ed.) . Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Inclusion and Self-Determination for Secondary Students with Disabilities: The Effects of Interventions and Classroom Placement  (2024). American Association of Special Education Professionals. University of Oklahoma Zarrow Center for Learning Enrichment. (n.d.). AIR Self-Determination Assessment. Retrieved from https://www.ou.edu/education/zarrow/resources/assessments

Click on your preferred podcast player link to listen wherever you enjoy podcasts . Welcome to the show notes for Episode 186 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast. OTs hold the key to school-wide success by grounding self-regulation in sensory-motor regulation—not just in emotions. In this episode, Sherry Shellenberger and Jennie Largent show how the Alert Program provides a foundational layer many SEL programs miss, share practical strategies for piloting change, and explain how to talk with administrators to secure support and funding. Tune in to learn clear steps to expand OT impact from individual support to whole-school change. Listen now to learn the following objectives: Identify and effectively communicate the value of sensory-motor self-regulation approaches to administrators and decision-makers by collecting meaningful data through pilot programs and by developing stakeholder-specific documentation. Identify opportunities to integrate self-regulation programs, such as The Alert Program for Self-Regulation, with existing SEL programs, and discover the foundational role of sensory-motor regulation in supporting emotional regulation. Identify strategies to be effective change agents within school settings by collaborating with colleagues, applying evidence-based practices, and establishing systems that demonstrate the unique value of the occupational therapy approach to self-regulation; discover approaches to sustain and scale impact. Guest(s) Bio Sherry Shellenberger is the co-author of the Alert Program® and an occupational therapist with 45 years of experience. Sherry brings a passionate vision for improving the school experience for children through collaboration among all educational team members, including families.  She is joined by Jennie Largent, training coordinator for the Alert Program® and a seasoned organizational leader with over 20 years of business and change management experience. Jennie champions the power of self-regulation not only in schools - but across all environments and industries. Quotes "Your communications and your reporting have to be able to speak on your behalf when you're not there." - Jennie Len Largent, SPHR “100% increase in teacher confidence in understanding how to manage information with the alert program and what that meant for behavior." - Sherry Shellenberger, OTR/L "When you're thinking about each individual student, I think it is hard to make larger statements... But at the same time, that's kind of what a principal wants to hear." - Jayson Davies, M.A., OTR/L "OTs are taught to zoom in. We're taught to look at the granular... When you're getting top-down directives and pushback... that takes tough skin." - Jennie Largent, SPHR "Sensory-motor self-regulation and emotional regulation are hugely intertwined... But if we leave out the sensory motor supports and just go to the idea of identifying emotions, I feel like we've done a disservice." -  Sherry Shellenberger, OTR/L Resources 👉 Alert Program website   👉 Alert Program® New Zealand Education Case Study   👉  Alert Program® Online Course   👉 Your Best Self Online Course   👉 Leaders Guide Second Edition 👉  Alert Program® Research and Literature 👉 SEL READINESS GAP: Why Emotional Growth Needs a Sensory Foundation – Part 1   👉  Contact Us Episode Transcript Expand to view episode transcript   Jayson Davies     Hey there, and welcome back to the OTSchoolHouse podcast. It's Jayson Davies here as always, and today on episode 186 I'm joined by two incredible experts in self regulation, Sherry Shellenberger, co author of the Alert program, and occupational therapist with 45 years of experience, along with her colleague, Jennie Largent, who is the training coordinator for the Alert program and an organizational leader with extensive business and change management expertise. I want to highlight that change management piece, because that's exactly what we are going to be discussing today, except within the world of school based OTs therapy. So today we're not here just to talk about the Alert program. Instead, we're diving into why ot practitioners are uniquely positioned to become powerful agents of change within school systems, and how to effectively communicate the value of self regulation to administrators, decision makers, teachers, all of those people who have the ability to make our lives easier if they better understand where we're coming from today, Sherry and Jennie are sharing practical strategies for gathering meaningful data, implementing successful pilot programs and bridging the gap between existing SEL programs and comprehensive self regulation approaches. You'll gain concrete tools for demonstrating the unique value of occupational therapy's approach and expand your impact beyond individual interventions to school wide implementation, something I know many of you want to do, so stay tuned as we dive into this conversation to provide you with a roadmap to become a more efficient Change Agent within your school community.    Amazing Narrator     Hello and welcome to the OTSchoolHouse podcast, your source for school based occupational therapy tips, interviews and professional development. Now, to get the conversation started, here is your host, Jayson Davies, class is officially in session.    Jayson Davies     Sherry Jennie, welcome to the OTSchoolHouse podcast. It's great to have you. It's great to be talking about the Alert program with you, but also talking about how the Alert program and self regulation program that this is can help cause change or help ot practitioners create change within the school setting. So I'm happy to have you here. Sherry, how are you doing today?    Sherry Shellenberger     I am well, Jayson, thanks so much for having me back. It must mean that I didn't mess up too badly the first time since it's now over a couple years ago, but it's nice to be here, and I love talking about school. OT it is near and dear to my heart.    Jayson Davies     Absolutely I've got it up here is episode 119 back on March 6, 2023 so gosh, yeah, it's been a minute, but happy to have you back and and talk more. And Sherry, we have talked to you before, but Jennie, we have not talked to you before. I would love to let you say hey, hello, but also share a little bit about your role within the Alert program. Yeah.    Jennie Largent     Thank you so much, Jayson. I'm really happy to be here with both of you. And my name is Jennie Largent and my background is in HR consulting, and I, where I focus on workplace training and organizational change management, so where Sherry brings in the OT expertise about the Alert program, and is the founder, I help leaders implement and, you know, just essentially apply it to their situation.    Jayson Davies     Awesome. And I love when OTs team up with other people. Like, isn't that great? Like being able to do more with ot by teaming up with someone else, that's awesome? Yeah, yeah,    Sherry Shellenberger     well, and it's, I think it's crucial at this time. We'll get into it later, but I mean, all of us, demands are rising. Our time is feeling strange, so it's a great time to look at, wow. What can we do to keep the good content and the good fun of all the work that we do in the schools. I like to I might have joked with you about this before, Jayson, but like my first introduction, my first job as an OT entry level OT, I'm going out into the world. I'm going to make change by golly. And my first job, it was in the schools, and I get out to the school this very first day of the school year. And I said, you know, can I use the room and data? Because I was an itinerant therapist, as many of the people on the podcast will be familiar with. And they said, Oh no, we had to cancel everything today because we're having a yo yo assembly. So lest we take ourselves too seriously, the work we do is serious. And then there's the gist of or the details that come with working in the school. So a little bit humbling and a little bit just that's what the schools are like. You have to be able to pivot and change and and find new ways to do the important work that we do.    Jayson Davies     Absolutely that's fun, and that kind of leads right into something that I wanted to start with today, because I was, you know, digging around the Alert program website planning for this episode, and I came across something that is definitely a little bit older, but still a lot of fun. And. Super relevant to today. And this is a poster that you all have available there called the top 10 Reasons OTs work in school. And so Sherry, I wanted to give you a moment just to talk about that. You don't need to cover all 10, but be    Sherry Shellenberger     I think I'll rip through a couple that are that are my favorite and and I was telling Jayson before we got on the podcast. The reason we developed this was we were put into Mary Sue and I were put in as speakers, into a very late time slot on a very long day of learning for a lot of people, OTs serious content, and we're like, what can we do? And a big part of what we both believe in is that while the learning that we do is serious. It doesn't have to be done seriously. And that humor can help us lock in a lot, or does for me, anyway, a lot of memory, extra memory, which I can certainly use. So anyway, yes, top 10 Reasons OTs work in the schools. Number 10 was you get to sit and work in those tiny little chairs. Let's see the massive number nine, the massive exposure to runny noses, chicken pox, colds and flu, and then number eight, there's always a pencil sharpener handy. Seven was the staggering weightlifting and motor planning opportunities offered by dragging large equipment in and out of schools and the let's see the cafeteria food, because ketchup is our favorite vegetable, that was number and then number three, at least 50% of the time the student you need to test, whose IEP is scheduled for that afternoon is absent. And then let's see, I will say the number one reason I skipped a bunch. As you can tell to the uninformed observer, it doesn't look like work.    Jayson Davies     Oh gosh, you know, hold on, hold on. We got to talk about that, because that is absolutely true, but I also feel like it is 100% a problem.    Sherry Shellenberger     Yes, exactly. Because when we're good at what we do, it looks smooth, right? When we watch professional athletes do their deal and we see how wonderfully talented they are, we also have a recognition of like, whoa. There's no way I could do that, right? But when we look at what we do as therapists. Oh, my goodness. Mary Sue actually had the wonderful compliment one time one of the little guys that she was working with in one of our schools said to her, so what do you do for work? Because while he did not understand exactly, he knew that we came we played all these great games. We cared about how he was doing in school. He had no idea this was, like, really a job, you know? And so that's very funny, because I thank you for the appreciation on our number one.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, no, it's true. It's like, sometimes I, some of you who listen, you might know this, but like, one of my ambitions is to start a nonprofit simply with a sole purpose of advertising occupational therapy, like simply advertising occupational therapy, and that's part of the reason why, because people see what we do. They see us, and they could see us 18 times, and yet they still ask us that question, what do you do? And that's to me a little, I don't want to say it, but, like, it's almost embarrassing to a degree, and it kind of sucks. I also,    Jennie Largent     and I also see how, you know, people like OTs are getting hired by these, you know, administrators and people that don't just don't have that it's not anybody's fault, it's not their role, but they don't have that knowledge of what the intention behind what what the OTs are doing. So, so even the people that are signing off on these programs, hiring these, you know, leaders, they just don't see what the full value of the leaders are in the reason behind what they're doing. They know that they need them, right? They know that they need them. They know that they can't, you know, replace them with somebody else. But the full insight into what you know, or they would be occupational therapists if they knew that, right?    Jayson Davies     Yeah, that's funny. Don't think about it from that way, but that's why we have you here, Jennie, to be the HR consultant and HR leader here to kind of have that outside perspective a little bit. And I think this is kind of a perfect sight way, because I wanted to give you both kind of this opportunity to share a little bit about, I mean, it's kind of a perfect sight way that we didn't plan. But like, the problem with school based ot currently, and what some of the expectations and some of the challenges that school based ot practitioners are facing right now,    Sherry Shellenberger     absolutely and first of all, hats off to everybody that is in the systems now, because we need you there, and it's important. It's important work. So I totally get it. And again, demands rising support, somewhat bottoming out here and there. OTs. On on all things related to educational systems. And I think that this is where I just see us as OTs, possessing such an incredibly unique knowledge of self regulation that affects everything that affects our function across the board. And so I guess for me, that's the part that, as we receive people's comments, feedback on the courses, all that kind of good stuff, and the biggest thing I hear is that it's kind of like when long ago, now I'm going to date myself, but first, when I was first going through ot school, there was not information on how to start your own practice if that was something you were going to want to do. I started out in the school systems, but eventually having my own business, and there wasn't that information. We have to seek it out from other professionals. This is not dissing on ot education in any way. I'm not saying that, but I'm saying I feel like the same thing is going on right now that we are in systems that are so diverse and have so many needs, and we don't have training, or I sure didn't, about how to make those kind of system wide changes. How do we go to our bosses and explain what we do and why we may need more funding or more staffing or all those things? So Jennie, I'll have you take it from there, because that's really so much change agent work that I've been excited to do with you that were that we have available to support OTs in the    Jennie Largent     schools, right the course itself, you know, Alert program itself, teaches the framework and gets you really thinking about self regulation The right way, but that's just kind of part of the the ingredients, you know, I've seen, you know, as I've been working with, with Sherry And team, is that, you know, these occupational therapists are being asked to, okay, hey, I want you to come in, create a plan, identify, you know, the solution, the vendors, the whatever the Training is going to look like, and then at the same time, almost in the same breath, they're being requested to prove its ROI, to prove how it's affecting and, you know, changing the bottom line there. So this so from from a communications perspective, a tracking perspective, just just an organizational perspective that can feel very overwhelming. You know, I can feel very informed and very confident and about a topic, but once you tell me, oh, I need to create a whole plan, communicate the whole plan to everybody and then prove that it works, it can make you feel kind of a little bit under pressure. And so we continue to see that. And so that's where this blend of, you know, the OT education world, in the school world, with a little bit of the communications and in the reporting best practices that we've learned from business, kind of merge.     Jayson Davies     Gotcha., Jennie, that's perfect. You know, you use terms like ROI, you use terms like the data. And in my now dozen plus years within school based ot data, like was a thing that was obviously a part of IEPs, you know, a decade ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, even. But I feel like within the last 10 years, like data is the forefront of the conversation. It's not kind of like, oh, well, you're going to do this, you're going to do that. How are you going to track data? Okay, cool. It's more like, what's the data behind your present level of performance? What's the data behind this goal? What's the data leading to this goal? What's the data for every single piece? And that is tricky. We're going to get into that in just a moment. But first, here's a word from the supporters of the OT school house. All right, Jennie, I want to dive right back in where we left off with that. And that is some of that data. And Sherry, of course, you know this too. What is that challenge that ot practitioners, you know, mostly school that's that's who's here listening today the school based ot practitioners, what challenges are they facing with data? And you mentioned how hard it can be to kind of build the plane, fly the plane, learn how to do everything with the plane, all at the same time. So I guess I don't know you kind of started to talk about the problem and how you feel about that, but I want to give you a little bit more time to talk    Jennie Largent     about that. Yeah, I would just say that. You know, a lot of times people just don't know where to start with a blank page. And yes, they have their own tools and their own, you know, methods of tracking, but when you have the you kind of have to have the end in mind at the beginning, right, like, what? What report does your boss, your boss and your boss's boss and your boss's boss's boss, you know, need to see to make sure that we're being responsible specifically with our funding, right? That everybody you know is looking for, okay, how are we going to how are we going to fund our next, our next plan and and you know, they don't want to lose that, you know. And when what you I'm sure everybody on this that's listening understands and appreciates. OTs, all of the red tape that goes into that. So you know, what we're doing is we're trying to give that that instead of a blank page, it's okay. You've got this framework that already has been proven that works, that's evidence based, that is baked into the OT world. But then also, let's just use some good basic reporting and communications tips to be able to round that out. And really it just gives them, you know, an OT a place to start. Now, granted, every situation is different, so customization is needed, but that's where I'm able to kind of help, you know, see where those changes need to be made, regardless if they're part of a communicated plan, or if it's something that's more on that data side,    Jayson Davies     yeah, yeah. And Sherry, so I want to lead you in here, because I'm pretty sure just like me, you know, as a business owner, as someone who is constantly talking with ot practitioners, you've probably heard hundreds of times people say, I love the Alert program. It's a great program. I see the benefit of it. How the heck do I get help to get my school on board? And I think that's kind of where we're leading here. So I'd love to hear you know, whether it's a story or kind of what your take on that, how you've helped, or what you've told people, what they should    Sherry Shellenberger     do. Yeah, thank you for that, because it is true that, um, in a way, if I guess I would say this as an OT, if research was my big bent, or proving something was my big bent, I probably wouldn't have started my career in the schools or done that right. But and, and I think as OTs again, coming back to that number one reason, to the untrained observer, it doesn't look like work, is that we have our clinical reasoning in mind. We know why we're doing what we're doing. Explaining that to others is often a huge difference, and it's a bit it's a different skill set, right? And so the cool thing is that now, after this many years of working with the Alert program and having the great amount of literature that we have in all these different settings, most of them being schools or school age folks, in terms of the real peer reviewed, you know, hard driving evidence kind of stuff. Those are on the website. It's just a free page, and you just go look up literature and research on the alert program. I know Jennie and you were going to put that in our notes for the podcast show. I'm really proud of that, because that's where what we see is all these great different ways that some of these systems have measured that kind of a thing. And I don't know, Jennie, do you want to give the example of we had a request from another country? I won't even say where, where the therapist contacted you and said, We're I'm training, we're training our OTs. That's an important part. We as a group. We need to know about the content of the Alert program. But then they're asking me for more information about how I'm going to prove that it was working, or whatever. Do you want to speak to that a little? Jennie, I don't know.    Jennie Largent     Yeah. I just, I just, I think that everybody is, you know, having to prove that what we're doing and what we're investing in time and money is working. It's just, I think that that's just the age we're in. And I think that, you know, businesses have been having to do this for quite some time, where it's all been, you know about, Okay, show me the bottom number, the black and white change. You know, I'm assuming that sometimes that's probably difficult to do in the world of OT, but they're being pushed. We're being pushed to do so and so, you know, I don't know if that's really a perfect answer to your question, but that's just my take well,    Sherry Shellenberger     and I would say too, that while it's important that we prove and articulate what we're doing, we don't want to go down a business only road either, right? I mean, that's the point of why we're in this profession, where, when we do the cool thing to me about self regulation, concentrating on the nervous system, using the Alert program is we do that foundational framework approach, and then we're not really sure where we're going to see the changes. The changes might be that the child is able to take in, all take in, and demonstrate all this knowledge that they weren't able to before. It might be that they're just not having a ton, a ton of behavioral outbursts, that that has decreased, and that they're understanding how to take care of themselves in order to help to prevent some of that like so. So there's a part where we need to measure and there's also a part of when you get in and you work on the brain and the nervous system, we don't really always know where that change is going to show up. We just know it does.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, yeah, okay, I want to talk about what I think is not necessarily a problem, but it's what we're seeing in those schools currently, and we're seeing a focus on social, emotional learning content. We. You are seeing a little bit more focus on physical education, but not nearly as much. Obviously, math, reading, like, those are the things that I see districts putting energy into, mostly the SEL writing and reading. But it's interesting because SEL, I don't know anyone want to share when they when they started to see SEL programs come into place like I don't think they were really in place when I started 12 years ago.    Sherry Shellenberger     I don't know, no, no. I mean, in a way, and Jenny, you might be able to speak to this better, because Jenny's done so much of the good research on it. But I think that really in the funding opened up because we knew this was a problem, right? I mean, and I think that my impression, and I could be totally wrong, is that after covid and all the studies of how devastating missing so much school and social time was for so many children, that I think that's where, in my mind, kind of some of the floodgates of the funding opened up. So I may be wrong on that, Jenny, you want to correct me if I am there,    Jennie Largent     yeah, no, I It looks like it really started getting popularized about 10 years ago, but I think you're right. Is that, you know, once we all went through that kind of traumatic experience globally, you know, that's where I think it pushed it a little bit further, where people just knew, and also the lines of education in the curriculum, I think just they kind of bled a little bit more, right? Everything kind of got a little blurry, and I see that there's a lot of, I mean, there's so much good that goes on with SEL because we're bringing attention to things that historically were not brought into the school system that is wonderful. The thing that we just are trying to help people realize is before you start taking a child and saying, Okay, let's talk about your emotions, and start labeling those emotions, which can sometimes be emotions can be labeled as good or bad or different. You know, different alert levels being considered good or bad, that's where you start getting into tricky stuff. And we're saying, Hold on. Before you go there, let's make sure that we're addressing the body mind connection, just as science tells us we need to do.    Sherry Shellenberger     You know, the Alert program really focuses on those lower brain structures. And how do we use I really feel like in the in the New Leaders Guide I call I've just, I just called it sensory motor self regulation. It is different than emotional regulation. Sensory motors self regulation and emotional regulation are hugely intertwined and wonderfully interconnected and interactive with each other. But if we leave out the sensory motor supports and just go to the idea of identifying emotions, I feel like we've done a disservice to all the programs we're running in that sense.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, I think that's great, the way that you both answer that, and it leads to this question, and I kind of set you up for this one, but like, we have these SEO programs about 10 years, I think I kind of agree with Jennie and share you with you on that it's been about 10 years that I feel like they've started to have these programs really embedded. And from an OT perspective in the schools, my thought was always awesome. Love. It great. It's there. But what the heck happened to self regulation? We've got, you know, the Alert program. We've got zones of regulation. We've got interoception with Kelly Mahler's work, and we now have autism level up doing a lot of work with this. And it's like, Wait, how do we just focus in on social, emotional learning, but then leave out self regulation, sensory processing, all that fun stuff. And so I guess that kind of leads to the second part of this episode, if not already, third part, I don't know. I'm not giving track, but like, I guess, like, what are we to do about that? Like, should we be trying to learn the SEL program and support the SEL program. Should we be trying to tell our districts? You know what? Hey, it's great you're doing SEL, but there's more. What are you seeing ot practitioners do? What are you advocating for? I know this is a really big question, but I want to get started down that route.    Jennie Largent     If I could just get to take a go first. I just think that it's an incremental, it's an incremental process, you know, and and really self regulation, this body, you know, my mind connection, that we're talking about it, that just goes alongside everything else. So it's not one is better than the other. You know, you can have your SEL program and it be very focused on, you know, whatever the progression in that field is, you can, you can, you know, still have that program. But what we're asking for you to do is, before you roll that out, to just consider this other aspect. Because this is where, if you start with the self regulation the body and a sensory motor self regulation, then your SEL program is going to be much stronger.    Sherry Shellenberger     And I think that that is, in my mind, the strength of the Alert program. I like I give the example, because so many people are familiar with the whole title of the program, which had we had business people involved earlier on, would not have been this lengthy. But the title of the like, the Leaders Guide is, how does your engine run? The leader's guide for the alarm program for self regulation, right? But so like, could you get more lengthy? Oh, my but how does your engine run? Is a question, but the point is that we're giving the information on that before we start asking questions. And that was a common misconception when we originally were training about the alert, right? It's still true now, but fewer people seem to be as surprised by that. But what I think that has gotten confusing is that the self regulation concept made so much sense to our super cerebral people, our social workers, our psychologists, our counselors, all those folks, especially school counselors, right that they decided that self regulation meant emotions, and it's so much bigger than that. That's what we know about the brain and the nervous system. We know that self regulation occurs all throughout the brain stem the nervous system. The brain stem up into the court cortical areas, whereas those folks because cortical areas is what their training is in. I'm not dissing on anyone here, of course, but I give the example in the book, and I'm actually in the second revision here of the leader's guide, is that sticking with the engine analogy, if you took your car into the mechanic and you said, I'm having trouble with my speedometer, you would not the mechanic, who was a good mechanic, would not go ahead and check your oil pressure. So in this analogy, if we say the speedometer is actual arousal level of the nervous system and the oil pressure is the emotional regulation part, they're different. They're separate. They're separate systems, and we want to be neurologically precise as OTs to be able to help people understand that, that I think too much emphasis became happy. My opinion is that self regulation became interchangeable terminology wise, with emotional regulation, and I see them as very separate and emotional regulation as a part of self regulation.    Jayson Davies     Okay, I'm gonna push a little bit further on that, because we often talk within the same vein, SEL self regulation and behavior. And a lot of times we I see the SEL programs being implemented because schools are trying to make an impact on behavior, right? And I think the same often goes for self regulation. So going back to your analogy, if we take our car to the shop and we say we're having a problem with behavior, whatever that might be, the car just randomly doing whatever the heck at once, then we have to know whether or not to look at SEO. We have to know whether or not to look at self regulation. We've got to know whether or not to look at interoception, per se. So I don't even know how I'm going with this question, to be honest. But like, how do we know? Or how do we start to figure out where we should be looking if we just know that behavior is the problem.    Sherry Shellenberger     Well, I would say, now this is just me and Jennie, I'm happy to have you chime in, and I'm just talking off the top of my head, in a way, but from a lot of years of experience, I didn't get these wrinkles for nothing here. And so I would say that we should be and obviously we need to do assessments and decide certain pieces of that. That's not my huge area of expertise. There are plenty of people who have made wonderful assessments. But the other piece is, why don't we do it all to support the individual? Do the emotional regulation supports, do the sensory motor supports, and that, and the chances of that happening and in creating positivity in the in the area of behavior are huge that one of the reasons we actually even started the Alert program was that Mary Sue and I would see that teachers were so frustrated with the amount of time they spent managing behavior in their classrooms, and they didn't even know that the sensory motor piece and that arousal alert level piece, if you will, all those of you work in schools understand why. Would call it the Alert program, and not the arousal program, is that that is so basic and it may underlie what's going on. It's not always the reason for behavior. No. No way would we say, oh, One is and one emotional regulation, or sense of emotional self regulation, is or isn't. But I think that, and in your analogy, Jayson, is you would kind of look at, how do we tune up all the systems and see if the car starts working okay, right? And, and I feel like that as OTs, we may not have been able to be quite as strong in helping people to understand sensory, motor self regulation, and it's important, and its support for those very foundational things long ago, and I know I referenced this in the Alert program online course, but there was a study that was done with math Okay, and how people, how children, learned about math, and there were manipulatives for the math. And what they found is that if there that there was better success in the math program with the minute, with the kids who use the manipulatives. So why would we take out one part or another part and not use all of it? Have the manipulatives available, and then they do better in math. The kids who, for whom it's helpful use it, the kids for whom it's not, don't. Hopefully kids don't throw it across the room. That's what the teachers are afraid of, right? You know? So, so I guess I'm saying, I think that it's like that whole body thing, right? None of us want to just because we're having a problem in one area of our body. Forget that, of course, we have this incredibly intertwined structure of muscles and fascia and nerves and all that good stuff. So I guess I see it as a whole support and that we'll have that'll I like. I just feel it definitely improves effectiveness by supporting it all. I took a long time there.    Jayson Davies     Jennie, one thing, really, and I'll come to you, Jennie, but I want to, I don't know if it was while we were while we've been recording, or right before we were recording, one of you said, what's great about the Alert program is that it's comprehensive, that it can be used independently, but it's also variable to the extent that it can be incorporated within other programs or added to other programs. And I kind of that's what I kind of heard you say in a longer way, Sherry,    Sherry Shellenberger     it is I probably short and sweet has never been my MO I'll just say it. That's just the deal so, but yes, exactly like it's that moment of being a responsible therapist that you would never rule out one piece and just go with something because you thought that's what wasn't required, or maybe the current data was getting very, very excited about right? We want to use all our skills as OTs and all of that support, and the more independent that we're able to make children in their own self regulation, getting them to their most ultimate level, the easier the workload gets on everybody around them, right? And that they get to strut their stuff and show what they know and all those really important wonderful things of being a learner and in a school. So yes, you're exactly right. I just feel like, don't ignore one thing when combined the effectiveness could skyrocket.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, all right. And Jennie, I don't know if you wanted to have, if you had anything you wanted to add, I think that that,    Jennie Largent     that was that, yeah, that was all. I see it too. I just think that it really is more of an and not an or, you know, I kind of think of it like that, because there's so many different like, if you think of just one school systems, well, I'm just gonna call it glossary, for a lack of a better term, okay? You know, every, every school system is going to have their own verbiage, right? Some of it's going to be, you know, just about the school itself and kind of their their own branding or their profile, right? But some of it is going to be okay. This is how we actually work and how we talk to each other. And, you know, everyone's going to have their own custom version of that. Some of it, you know, but what we see is that we can provide this really basic framework that you can bolt on these other, you know, programs and these other ways of communicating and understanding, because we know that it's not all just one and done, like this is not, you know, this is all. We're all evolving together, and this is something that's going to continue to grow, and we're going to, you know, Sel is going to evolve and change, and and OT is good too, you know, we're going to continue to learn more. And so we need to be able to be flexible.    Sherry Shellenberger     And I'll just brag on Jenny here a little bit. She has a three part blog series right now. The first part, the first blog is already up about SEL and how incorporating the Alert program with with existing SEL programs that you might have. So that'll give. People a starting off point, if they're going, Yeah, but how do I explain it? Or whatever. It's a very well done article, and it really does emphasize what Jennie said, we're talking about an and not an or,    Jennie Largent     yeah, it really, it just really, what I did was I went through the research, and I was like, Okay, what? What is actually being, you know, for peer reviewed, you know, research, what is actually being studied and verified, and what's working and what's not, and what we're seeing is just, there's a lot of and this isn't a ding on SEL because you have to start somewhere, but a lot of, a lot of the programs just aren't meeting expectations as they are. And so it's like, okay, well, let's, let's, let's back up and let's combine some things, because, you know, as we're alluding to, and also directly speaking about, is that some of these programs seem to be missing these really fundamental steps.    Sherry Shellenberger     And Jennie, you did a beautiful job, just even on like verbal comprehension and on understanding what different emotions mean. So many of the kid OTs that we may have on our caseloads as OTs, they're not there yet. They're not real. They don't really know what's going on. So they'll tell you an answer, because you're asking them a question, if they're compliant or they'll not, and then you'll say, Oh, this child's being uncooperative and defiant and not enough, which is, of course, not where any of us want to go. So I think that the first blog in this, in that series of three, and it's free on the alert Program website, is, I'm not plugging a sale here. I'm just saying this is the part that I think helps us as therapists to start that change in within the system, to show people what are unique pieces that we have to offer that will help support all the other good work that's being done.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, perfect. And we'll be sure to link to definitely the first one and probably at least the second one, maybe even the third one, by the time this podcast comes out, so be sure to check the show notes for those. We're going to take our final break, but when we come back, I want to really talk to Sherry And Jennie about why ot practitioners haven't always been the best change agents, and what we can begin to do to be better change agents. So we'll be right back as we come back, Jennie, I just want to say I'm so happy to have you here, because it's not often that we have non ot practitioners on the show, and I always like to take advantage of it when we do have non ot practitioners. And with your background in HR and Sherry's background in occupational therapy, I think we might be able to get to some roots here and maybe even come up with some plans for moving forward. And so I guess I want to ask both of you, and I want to give both of you the opportunity to respond to this is, why have ot practitioners? Both of you have varied experience. Why have ot practitioners not always been able to make the changes that we've wanted to make within the school system. Is it organizational? Is it because of our background, you know, not having a business background, or not having that like, to be honest, sometimes not every ot practitioner has like a program background, like how to develop a program and organize a program. What do you see as kind of some of the problems that have led to us being in the situation?    Sherry Shellenberger     Well, I'll go I'll go first, and then I'll let Jennie speak to the real nitty gritty of the of the change agent stuff. But my thinking on this, Jayson, is that we went into our profession to work, oftentimes, to work with clients individually. The schools present this wonderful opportunity to work with clients in a group way. Self regulation is important for every individual on the planet. So now we've really broadened it out in terms of what's required here. But I think in general, I think it's hard for us as OTs to strut ot to strut our stuff. Here I am again, about the strut and our stuff, but there is so much good evidence about the good work that we do, and I think that, because I'm going to come back to that piece of what's going to pop as the thing that was helpful for this individual, isn't always totally predictable, right? That's the point of researchers. When they do research, they tell me they go as broad as they can to try to measure a bunch of things and see where the change happened. So for instance, in the Alert program research, one of the bigger studies, they did functional MRIs. They did questionnaire, standardized questionnaires. They did all these different things. And if you had asked me as an OT would the functional MRI be a good measure, after just a certain number of weeks of Alert program progress, I would think, even as the creator of the program, and I believe in it, and I know it's successful, I would have been like, oh, I don't know, but. But it did. And so that's that part that I think is hard for us as OTs, because when and again, not dissing on PTS, but the PT goal is we're going to strengthen this muscle, right? And they're focused on that muscle, and they're doing the thing, and they just only check that muscle. They're not checking the whole rest of life function, right? And OTs, we want to know is the individual more functional in the world? That's our thing. That's our bag. And so it's much trickier to present that information to our administrators, to our people that develop our programs and systems in a way that is condensed enough, you can see, I can't even talk about it in a super simple way, but Jennie can, and that's a big part of why she's here, is that is that, you know, we have this great, unique knowledge, and we need to find ways to make it manageable for our people in our systems, to understand what it is we're doing, how we're going to measure, how We're going to regroup if we're not getting the results. We want all those good things, and I think that we're trained to be great clinicians, but not great articulators of our knowledge. And so that's my hit of it.     Jayson Davies     Gotcha Yeah, I have a few things to add, but I want to hear Jennie first.    Jennie Largent     I agree with everything you said, Sherry, I just think it comes down to what you said earlier. They're taught to, you know, OTs are taught to zoom in. We're taught to look at the granular, to be very focused on the individual. That takes sensitivity and it takes some senses, you know, that are beyond just sitting down and cerebral, really thinking like we're having, you know, the OTs having to, I think, engage in their own self in a way to, you know, in this self regulation way in order to do their work. But it also so that takes sensitivity, right, and understanding and really focusing on your caseload when you're getting top down directives and pushback, or, you know, hey, timelines, and you know, pressure coming from above that takes tough skin, because that's that, that's not sensitivity, that's being able to beef up, and that's being able to take somebody that might be questioning the, you know, this person for their their own right, no fault on their own. Maybe, you know, hey, I need you to do your great work, and we look forward to you leading us through this, and at the same time, can say, prove that you're the right person and this is the right program, and then it's working. And I feel like those are two very different, you know, ways of communicating and looking at things also, let's just say that. And in the business world, we all know this very well. Communications are not easy. Like, there are so many different ways to relay things to people, so many different, you know, audiences that you're trying to reach. Like, think of just a really basic school system. How do you communicate to everybody that's in that building with the right amount of information for the right person, it can be really, really, almost impossible to it can feel impossible at least,    Jayson Davies     yeah, yeah, no, I agree. I it's you have to talk to kids differently the way that you talk to teachers differently than the way that you talk to assistant principals and principals differently than you talk to the superintendent or anyone in the HR department, like you have to understand the message that you're trying to relay. And yeah, and the other thing that this has been really hard for me, kind of going back to your talking about granular Right? Like you're thinking about each individual student, and when you're thinking about each individual student, I think it is hard to make larger statements. And what I mean by that is, you know, at the OT school house, I've had a really hard time putting out stuff that's more related to, like, overarching treatment ideas and strategies, because in my past, I have, you know, what works for one kid works for one kid, and I think that makes it hard for occupational therapy, right? Like, because we're not going to talk generally and say, you know, this one little, tiny intervention is going to work for all my students, but at the same time, that's kind of what a principal wants to hear. They want to hear that one thing that's going to help everybody. And as OTs, we don't think in that way. We think about one kid as one kid, maybe a small group of kids, as a small group of kids, and I think that really makes it difficult.    Jennie Largent     It's kind of incredible what OTs are being asked to do. So just like I had an OT that was, you know, a consultant for a school district, and you know, this person was doing this exact dance where they're trying to build it, build it, fly it, you know, and judge it all at the same time, right? And, you know, the it was clear to me that the people that were giving these directives still just didn't have the insight that the OTs have. So it's like, it brings us back to we're. Really the big point of all of this is to just expand and shine a light on what the OTs already know and make it a little easier for them to have a guide to know. Okay, now it's time to step back. Let's be intentional, because a lot of times you could just pause and give yourself a little bit of space and go, Okay, so I'm no longer focused on the individual. I'm no longer, you know, okay, now, now let's look at and sometimes materials and communications and assets and visual cues can kind of help you, you know, make that intentional switch. And so that's where I've been trying to fill in that gap, because it just doesn't seem like many OTs have that kind of support.    Sherry Shellenberger     And I would say that self regulation can be your starting point, right? That's to me, that's the road in we're all self regulators. When I would go to talk to an administrator, if they were chewing gum I'm in, they're going to understand what I'm going to say to them in that next little moment, right? Or if I'm going to an administrator who is very primly and formally dressed. It's a different conversation, just like you said, Jayson, right? And so that's where I feel like learning about self regulation, utilizing the Alert program, because it's been evidence based, is going to create those avenues of connection and communication that we can then build on for all these other great skills that we bring as OTs to the to the school setting.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, I want to bring up one other challenge that I think comes up and and that is the idea that ot practitioners aren't often a decision maker within the school district, or they haven't been set up to be a decision maker in the school district, they're not invited to to meetings where funds are being distributed or decided on and whatnot. They're not being asked for input. Sometimes their bosses even just say, hey, the OT department is great. I don't have to worry about you. You guys just keep doing your thing, and we're never like asked to be a part of the table. How do you see that as a problem? And have you seen any people that are doing cool things to kind of make that    Sherry Shellenberger     change? Well, interestingly enough, two of the bigger studies that I have seen done on the alert program and self regulation, there was an OT who was in that kind of a position and could say to people, Hey, this is a way that we're going to improve what we're doing. So number one is to see if those people that are interested in those administrative kinds of positions, that they go for it and they try, they try that. That's one thing that's that's a long term change. Yeah, right, you know. But what is very interesting to me, in the shorter term, what these pilot programs were doing is, let's do a pilot, let's get some data, let's kind of see what we had after we do this pilot, and decide what we want to do with it. And I would say in that sense, it was because people were trained in groups that they then, you know, the sum is greater than the whole of its parts, right? They then, having been trained in a group, they kind of have a baseline, hey, for our system, this is how we could do this, because we know that at this school there's limited space, but we know that at that school we can do data. That's the customization that we're required to have as professionals. But what I really have felt is that, and this was true when we were doing the Alert program courses live too, when people came in groups, when a group had their same common language, their same idea of the framework of the Alert program. I'm using that as the example, because that's why we're here, is that is when the change could happen a lot easier, because collectively, then we know what's going to work in this situation or more likely to work in this situation and what might be a disaster in this situation, right? And we still have our disasters. That's how we all learn. But I think we can limit a lot of them by having as a group and a collective coming together and going, Oh, I could see this work in this way in our system.    Jayson Davies     Great, Sherry, thank you for sharing that. You mentioned something super important, the pilot studies, and that is something that I think is so important and we we often overlook. I like to tell people if you've been on this podcast, or if you've listened to the podcast, I've said it many times, like, sometimes I like to ask for forgiveness rather than for permission. And when it comes to a pilot study, like, that's like the perfect opportunity, right, right? A little pilot study, reach out to a researcher who did something and and see if they'll share with you a little copy of that workbook that they created or something. And a lot of times, people are very open to sharing materials, especially if they have an idea that, hey, maybe this could grow into something larger. But do one thing, get that data that we spent like, I feel like it was 20 minutes talking about earlier with Sherry And Jennie. Get that data because, you know, you're. Kids don't care about the data. I find that teachers don't always care about the data, but as I'm sure, Sherry and Jennie will tell you, administrators care about the data. They've already said that anyone above your assistant principal and vice or principal, they care about the data and the relationship from the data to the cost that's going to be implemented. And this is true for self regulation, handwriting, sensor, integration, you name it, it's true. So, yeah, absolutely.    Sherry Shellenberger     And I think that remembering that such a good point that you make Jayson about like the kids don't care about it. The teachers may or may not care about the administrators do, and they don't know how to get the data. So we need to help them, right? Like this is where, by saying, hey, here are these studies, and you can go and look at them. And the nice thing, and the wonderful thing is, so much is online now in terms of abstracts and things right, and people can check that out on our website. But I'm really proud of that, because it just shows, oh yes, they did this in the schools. They did two different schools. They tried, we're working with the activities, and these were the good results, because the through line in I'll just do a little plug on the through line in our Alert program, research, especially related to your school population, is that the latest information is like huge increases 100% the one New Zealand study where they did pilot, they Just did a small pilot in two different schools, okay, but it gave us really good information, and then they could take it further, and 100% increase in teacher confidence in understanding how to manage information with the Alert program and what that meant for behavior, 100% buy In by the teachers and a 95% cultural fit in a population that has a lot of native, wonderful native folks in that country. So like those kinds of things, and that's a through line in much of the research, is that teachers felt positively supported and that they understood more so that they knew how to approach what they're being required to do. Because as OTs, we're not the only ones being required to do more. Our teachers are under the gun bigger and badder than ever. So yeah, I would say that ability to be able to steer people to that evidence, it doesn't mean you have to know it inside and out. That can feel kind of intimidating, but making sure that we make a nice little short list of. Hey, here's this. This is what I want to do. Here's some of the reasons why. Here's some of the results that other people have found. Wow, that is doing the administrator's job for them. And Jennie, you've taught me a little bit about that. Do you want to speak to that at any level there?     Jennie Largent     Well, I would just add on top of it's kind of like a filtering of communications exercise. OTs, you've got so much information and knowledge, and I feel like it's just one big filtering exercise. It's what, what does this you know, administrator, or whoever you're trying to provide this information for what do they need to know and what, what lens are they needing that's going to be effective, because the more that you can help them communicate the job up right, the just, the better they're going to be. They're going to be set up, and they're also going to keep coming back to you, and they're going to trust you. And so it's going to build, I think, a little bit of a of a kind of a muscle in this way, to where there's a trust that gets built, of course, over time. But that's where we're just trying to help, you know, give that starting point so that you know when you're when you're been asked by your administrator, hey, I need you to run with this. You're not just staring at that blank, blank page, you know?    Jayson Davies     Yeah, I know one thing that often comes up, especially in the business world, is like, you got to make it a win, win, win for everybody. And you've got to make it a win for you and for the kids and win for your administrator. But you also have to think about, like, in most cases, if you're talking to your principal, your principal has a lot of power, but sometimes not as much power as you even think, or, yeah, not as much power as much power as you think. And they've got to be able to explain whatever you tell them to someone else. And so you don't just have to make it easy for them.    Jennie Largent     Right? Go ahead, right and without, without you being invited that table right, like you're having to allow, you have to have your communications and your reporting be able to speak on your behalf when you're not there.    Sherry Shellenberger     We don't want to trust whisper down the lane, huh? That's really our takeaway there, right? No, I'm serious, right? I mean, we can laugh about it, but I'm serious, right? These are really big concepts, and we have to have concise ways. That's the part we didn't ever know we signed on for as OTs. But it is a part. It's a reality. And so here we go. We got to learn some skill sets. We got to do all that stuff, because, again, to the uninformed observer, it doesn't look like work.    Jayson Davies     Jayson, yeah, so Exactly. So Jennie, really quickly, if I may, if someone reaches out to you an occupational therapist, maybe an OTs. They, you know, say, hey, read a lot about the Alert program. I've used it. It works for my kids. I'd really like to get it, you know, on a larger scale, within my school, within my district, and they reach out to you and say, Hey, how do I do this? Would you mind kind of sharing maybe some of the steps, some of the tips that you would give, you know, to hold their hand the way up,    Jennie Largent     yeah, so really, what it ends up being is, is, you know, you just take what, what's their initial goal? You know, where are they starting from? You know, is this a pilot situation where we're talking about, let's just come up with, you know, a few weeks of a program just to get something started? Or are we in a maintenance mode, you know? You know, just find out where they are and what their initial goals are. Then it you essentially come up with, you know, a group of staff that you want to be trained, and also, usually a communications method to get everybody on board. So you kind of start working on those two things together, where you start assigning, okay, here are the main, you know, leaders, the champions that are going to be taking the full program, you know, the full alert program, online course that's going to understand the OT side, okay, which people then may take the your best self course, which is more intended for, you know, it's the higher level. It's it can be for, you know, caregivers. It can be there for AIDS, you know. And so you start coming up with a way to spread this throughout the entire school or even School District, depending on what their goal is, and so then it just ends up being this kind of personalized support where I provide them templates, slides, communications that are intended for them to customize for their own, you know, setup. And so it's a little bit of a back and forth where we just talk through things, and then I, you know, if I can do something that, you know, for example, if there's a tracking spreadsheet that I've created, if you're, you know, starting up with a completely brand new pilot, you can use this tracking system to start getting some legs on that. And it comes with an already ready to go PDF, able report, high level report. So there's some, you know, the whole it has that end in mind, you know, as far as who you're going to have to communicate to, but, but I work with the I work with the individual so that it's useful for their unique situation.    Jayson Davies     Gotcha, I think two quick questions, and then we'll start to wrap up here. When you talk about doing a pilot study, how complicated or uncomplicated is that like? Are we talking about? We need to find a research team to like help us out with this, or is much simpler,    Jennie Largent     much simpler. I come from a communications perspective of, once you say it, and you communicate it, it's it's a thing, you know, create form, and then it's there, right? So it really doesn't have to be complicated. It really can say, here's the test group that we want to start with, the student group that we want to start with. Then you just spread up with, say, Okay, where's their support system? Right? What staff and OTs or school, you know, different teachers and aides who's touching that student? And then you just come up with, Okay, here's the initial goal that we're going to have, the timeline that we're going to give it and and you start naming some, some some expected results. And then as long as you have a way to be able to track that, then you can come out after the end of that, let's say it's an eight week program. After the end of that, eight weeks, you're going to have a pretty good signal of if it was worth the effort or not.    Sherry Shellenberger     And I would say that as OTs, I think we get a little scared about trying to do that kind of data collection, or we just don't know, I wouldn't say scared, that's the wrong word. I think we just haven't been trained how to do that because of the massively comprehensive way that we look at individuals. And what's been so fun for me to learn from Jennie is like just doing some quick checklist things that we check off as we're doing our other documentation while we run a small program with a you know, that that it really does result in good information. And then we get to wow them with the facts of, hey, this is what we saw, you know, and we're not, we're not saying we're not submitting it for peer review anywhere. We're just saying, hey, clinically, this is what I saw, and that tells me I'm on a right track, or it tells me I need to pivot and emphasize something else more right? That's really the intent. It's like clinical reasoning, but done in a data form that I feel like Jenny has been so wonderful to kind of help us to notice and develop to support    Jennie Largent     people. Yeah, and I think we also are helping OT. I think one of the results can be that the leading ot can start getting more comfortable with tracking the outcomes and without, you know, it's because, because there's a little bit of unknown, like. Don't know what the result is, right? You don't know how it's it's a test, so you don't know how the test is going to go. And so it takes a little bit of bravery and confidence, and you need to really believe in the system you're following, right? In order to have that confidence so that you can really do the test worth it, you know, really make the test in the pilot, you know, really work, and it's okay. We don't expect tests for the alert with the Alert program to show that it doesn't it's not effective. I mean, that's the reason why we're doing what we do, because we believe in it. But the reality is, is that, you know the results will be the results,    Jayson Davies     yeah, yeah, okay. And then the follow up to that is, once you have those results, have you found a communication style, a methodology that best works for relaying that to the people who have the powers? Is it best to write up a written report and give it to them? Is it best just to show them the raw data slide shows just verbal. What have you found works?    Jennie Largent     If I knew the answer to that, Jayson, we would have a totally different conversation. Because everybody wants different types of communications. You know, some people want that high level dashboard one page like, give me some good one liners and good data charts. Other people want to know every little detail. So, you know, that's where it really does run the gamut. You know, I start though. What I do? I lead with the assumption that it's always going to be useful to have a simple, high level report that just shows the high impact the places where there was actual, you know, something that's going to be insightful for you to make decisions from, right? So we have the ability to do a one pager report of that, but this not, it's not to say that that's going to solve all of your communication, you know, problems    Sherry Shellenberger     on what their superiors are requiring from them, right?    Jayson Davies     Yeah, very true. Very true. Yeah. I was hoping you'd have the answer to life. Jennie, yeah, I agree. Not quite that good. Well, I agree, right? You've got to have that verbal communication. But it definitely helps. I found that it helps when you put together, you take the energy, the time and energy to put something together. It doesn't have to be perfect. And a lot of times you give them that one pager, I think, and then you get asked for more follow up, and that's where you can write up a little bit more of the details. But yeah, like you said, everyone's a little different. So awesome. All right, as we are wrapping up here. Sherry Jennie, recently, you or the Alert program, you as a team, released an updated version of the alert Program Leader Guide, and just looking at some of the key points that I saw that really stood out to me. The main one was that there's a section for teens, but I would love for you to, you know, share a little bit about it.    Sherry Shellenberger     Well, one of the things that was constant, we were constantly getting asked Jayson, by by people, is okay, well, I know how to do it with children in grade levels. But what about teens? And how about that? So we actually developed some really nice framework for teens, especially so they still go through the activities in the leader's guide, but we have a teen tip in every one of in the activity section there, and then we made a section just for teens, where we encourage therapists To think about having the teen synthesize the information they've learned about the Alert program on themselves or on other people, and either do like an in house, not something for posting online an in house informational video. Or how would they be a reviewer and influencer of some of the activities within the Alert program, or the games or whatever. Or would they like to do a play by play announcer or analyst who interviews people about the Alert program. So we really made it nicely, um, appropriate for teens also, uh, making it that they can even then be observing with or working with younger students with the therapist. Sometimes that's a possibility in the schools. I know our administrators were always really open to having us have, like some of our fifth graders come out and be around some of the groups we did with some of the younger students, that kind of thing. So empowering and so important, I think, and giving them that chance, like saying, Okay, why don't you make a 30 now we're in the age of video, right? And so here we get to go is like, ooh, if you were making a video and you were being an influencer, what would you say about this? And what would you say? Oh, I liked this part. I didn't like that part. Why? What part worked for you? What part didn't work? For you that kind of thing. So I'm actually really excited about the teen section. We had done some of that for a research project that was going on up in Canada, and they had very good results with a lot of the teen information. This was our chance to really get it down in an explicit way, in the leader's guide, updates in the research section, updates in the visuals. Before you know the original Leaders Guide, the last time it was revised was in 1996 it has definitely stood the test of time. And we wanted visuals that represented across age span, across a little more cultural diversity and ethnic diversity and and I think we really succeeded, the guy who is this wonderful artist from Canada. His name is Randy wall. He did all of the graphics within the Alert program. I think anybody who picks up the new leader's guide could find a picture that they go, Oh, I can relate to that kind of thing. So that's and obviously, just in terms of some of the introductory information and updated thinking about SEL, about some of those kind of things, all included there. So that's my short, not so short, short version of I'm really proud of it. I think it's really a worthwhile update and addition. So that's exciting to me. I think it'll support a lot of good therapists.    Jayson Davies     Awesome. Jennie, did you want to add anything?    Jennie Largent     Yeah, I just think that, you know, I'll just add that, you know, the because I came to both the original Leaders Guide and the second edition, relatively in a close amount of time, and so I was reviewing them, and I can see that there is a big difference. You know, there's like, 20% more content. There's a ton more activities in the and the new guide, and there's, you can just tell there's a little bit more of a modern application. You know, as as Sherry was going through and updating the research and making sure that the word choices we're using are modern and updated, you know, there were just a lot of, as you go through that editing process, there was just a lot of new little, little additions that she was able to add. So I think that it's worth it, even for people that have the original    Jayson Davies     Absolutely and it sounds like correct me, if I'm wrong, if you sign up for the course, you get the manual Correct,    Sherry Shellenberger     yeah, in the in the Alert program online course, the leaders guidebook and the and they get a bag of brain breaks that are used throughout as we as we do the course. And they get a handout packet for your best self. It is not included, so I just don't want to mislead anybody. Your best self is really a course for us as adults to learn about our own self regulation. And it's been very effective for even for especially, lots of kids going from, I say kids, because I am of an age here, everyone right? A lot of people going young people going from, like, transitions of high school to college, those kinds of things that and and understand, wanting to understand about self regulation now that they're going into a differently structured environment, those kinds of applications. And then, like I said, in many of the pilot programs, a lot of the adults wanting to learn about their own self regulation, but they may not be as interested in the Alert program, online course, which really teaches you how to take children through the course and gives you tips and tools that way.    Jayson Davies     So Gotcha. Great. Well, Sherry, Jennie, it has been a pleasure having you both on the show. It's been great, not just talking about OT, but also talking about how we can be leaders and change agents within school based OT. It's been a pleasure. And yeah, I think Alert program for all.com is that right?    Sherry Shellenberger     Well, the main website, Alert program com is really where people want to go, and then the other the other links are for the courses themselves, but they'll get directed from the main website. So alert program.com is where you're going to find all your stuff, free resources, and all about the courses and some helpful hints, no matter what aspect or profession you are coming from,    Jayson Davies     perfect Well, thank you so much. We really appreciate having you here, and we'll definitely    Sherry Shellenberger     have to keep in touch. Okay, thank you, Jayson. Pleasure to be here. Thank you so much, Jayson. Take care, and    Jayson Davies     that, of course, brings us to the end of today's episode with Sherry And Jennie on becoming agents of change through self regulation programs. I want to, of course, extend my sincere gratitude to both Sherry And Jennie for sharing their incredible insights on implementing the Alert program and helping us understand how to communicate the value of sensory motor and self regulation approaches to key decision makers. It was especially special to have someone who is not necessarily an occupational therapy practitioner on the episode, who comes with such a such an enormous background on making changes within organizations. That's, you know, something that we learned a little bit about in OT school is how to evaluate communities, right? But to make change is something we could use a little bit of help with. From. Time to time. So thank you so much for all your information. Jennie, as we learned today, bringing self regulation into our schools is not just about working with individual students, it's about creating those systemic changes that benefit the entire school community. And the strategies that we've talked about today, from gathering meaningful data and communicating with administrators and and even implementing effective pilot programs are truly invaluable for all of us as ot practitioners. As always a quick reminder, if you're ready to take your school based ot practice to the next level, I would love to have you join us in the OTSchoolHouse.com , in the collaborative, you'll find additional resources, professional development opportunities and direct mentorship from myself every single month to help you implement what you learned today and every other day inside the collaborative, head on over to OTSchoolHouse.com slash collab To Learn more and become part of our community of change making school based ot practitioners. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll catch you in the next episode of the OTSchoolHouse podcast.    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 OTSchoolHouse.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! If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Google Podcast , Spotify , or wherever you listen to podcasts. Click here to view more episodes of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast

Click on your preferred podcast player link to listen wherever you enjoy podcasts . Welcome to the show notes for Episode 187 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast. Matthew Husband, OTD, OTR/L shares his innovative "Get to Work" program, an after-school initiative providing realistic work experiences for high school students who could succeed in employment with the right supports. The program follows a monthly pattern with on-campus training focused on hard and soft skills, followed by community-based experiences at actual workplaces including pizzerias, box stores, grocery stores, and laundry facilities. Matthew discusses how occupational therapists can support transition planning through self-determination skills training and standardized resource guides for students and families. He emphasizes the importance of starting small with on-campus work opportunities if off-campus trips aren't feasible, including mail room tasks, cafeteria work, recycling programs, and classroom helper roles. Whether you work in a private or public school setting, this episode offers practical strategies to prepare students for life after graduation through building confidence in their employment abilities. Listen to discover how Matthew's "four pots garden" analogy demonstrates how small projects can grow with proven success and learn actionable ways to incorporate employment readiness skills into your school-based OT practice. Listen now to learn the following objectives: Learners will identify how to implement strategies for developing realistic work experiences (off-campus partnerships or on-campus tasks) and how these experiences contribute to authentic work readiness. Learners will recall the content and purpose of a standardized transition resource guide, including tailoring content to local resources and explaining its role in family engagement. Learners will explain how self-determination training helps students identify their preferences, strengths, and weaknesses, and how to write and track SMART goals to support employment outcomes after graduation. Guest(s) Bio Dr. Matthew Husband is an occupational therapist, with nine years of clinical experience, primarily in the field of pediatrics. He has worked in outpatient, home health, and school based practice. Dr. Husband currently works in the school setting, working in a middle/school high school focused on improving the lives of students with autism, with a particular passion for the community practice of transition. Dr. Husband received his Occupational Therapy Doctorate in May 2025 and his Capstone Project focused on improving employability for young adults with autism. Dr Husband supports the profession through his service within the AOTA, serving as the representative assembly member for Ohio. Dr. Husband is also a father, raising three young, amazing kiddos! Quotes “Let's kind of come out of our bubble of what we're working in and let's look at that broader level and then again, let's be creative and figure out within my setting, what can I do? And then again, what are you passionate about in your own setting?” -Dr. Matthew Husband “…Is it something that...maybe doesn't exist right now within your school setting, but you know it's beneficial for the students. And because you're so passionate about it, you can allow others to catch that vision with you.” -Dr. Matthew Husband "The biggest goal for me was just the confidence for the students to know that this is something that they can do and this is possible for them when they graduate.” -Dr. Matthew Husband Resources 👉 Matthew's Linkedin 👉 Matthew’s Email 👉 VOCFIT Assessment : Vocational fit assessment tool with 11 subscales for measuring different components of work readiness 👉 ARC Self-Determination Scale : Measurement tool for assessing self-determination skills 👉 Ohio State Occupational Therapy Drivers Rehabilitation Services : Program that helps young adults with disabilities learn driving skills 👉 AOTA Guidelines for Occupational Therapy Services for Autism : Referenced for work with students with autism and comorbid anxiety 👉 Get to Work" Program : After-school program providing realistic work experience for high school students 👉 Article by Matthew Husband:  Advancing Direct Care Services to Improve Outcomes Episode Transcript Expand to view episode transcript Jayson Davies     All right now that the garbage truck has passed and it's quiet in my room again, welcome to episode 187 of the OT school house podcast. I'm your host, Jayson Davies, and I, as always, am ecstatic to have you joining me today. Oh, it's coming back. You may or may not hear a garbage truck soon. Anyways, today we are diving into an essential topic for ot practitioners working with high school and middle school students, we're preparing them for successful employment after graduation, and that's what we're here to discuss today. I'm excited to introduce to you Matthew husband, an occupational therapist working in Columbus, Ohio. Matthew primarily works with middle and high school students, as you might have guessed, and he helps them to bridge the gap between academic success and real world employment readiness. In this episode, Matthew shares his innovative self determination club, as well as his Get to Work Program, which is an after school initiative that provides realistic work experiences for high school students who can succeed in employment with the right supports. You'll learn how this program combines on campus training with community based experiences at actual workplaces, like a pizza place. Now you might have just tuned out when I said after school program, and if you did, I get it. Most ot practitioners have absolutely zero time energy or even receive compensation for completing an after school program. But don't stop listening just because of that, Matthew and I are here to share some ideas and even real world examples for how this could work during a regular school day. So whether you work in a private, charter or public school setting, Matthew offers practical strategies that can be adapted to any environment, from creating transition resource guides to creating an on campus work opportunity for the students on your campus. There's something valuable here for every school based ot practitioner looking to enhance their transition services. If you've ever wondered how to better prepare your students for life after graduation, this is the episode for you. Let's get started with Matthew husband.    Amazing Narrator     Hello and welcome to the OT school house podcast, your source for school based occupational therapy, tips, interviews and professional development now to get the conversation started, here is your host, Jayson Davies, class is officially in session.    Jayson Davies     All right, Matthew, welcome to the OT school health podcast. How you doing today?     Matthew Husband     I'm doing well. Thanks for having me.    Jayson Davies     Awesome. Yeah, I'm excited to have you here. You are one of the wonderful occupational therapy practitioners that I learned about through your A ot a presentation. And first of all, let me just congratulate you on being able to present at a ot a I'm sure that was a great experience for you.     Matthew Husband     Yes, thank you. I appreciate it. It was a lot of fun in Philadelphia this past year. We had a good time. Are you coming to Anaheim? I'm hoping so. We shall see. But yes, I hope to be there. Did you put in another presentation? Not not for this year? So if I come, I'll just be as a guest. So all right, yeah, just    Jayson Davies     fun. Hey, there's so much to do at a ot a without presenting. Like, I was very thankful that I didn't present last time. Well, I did present one, but, like, didn't present more because it is just so overwhelming everything going on, but it's such a great experience. So it'll be fun for you exactly. Well, let's talk a little bit about that presentation. But before we do, I want to give you just an opportunity to share a little bit about, you know, where you fit into the world of OT and kind of how you got here? A little bit.    Matthew Husband     Sure. So yeah, my name is Matthew husband. I work in Columbus, Ohio, right now as a school based practitioner, and I joined the world of occupational therapy through my younger brother. So he was diagnosed with autism when he was three. I'm 10 years older than him, so when I was in college, I had the opportunity to intern with his occupational therapist during the summer, and loved the blend of play and scientific discovery and just being on my feet all day, and so that's how I got into the world of OT.    Jayson Davies     Wow. What an experience did you I'm assuming then you probably learned about ot through the services that your brother had.    Matthew Husband     Yeah, so he would receive all the basic services, speech, behavioral services and occupational therapy. The behavioral specialist would come to the house, so I got to know him a little bit better, but when I learned about OT, and just all the different things that his occupational therapist did with him, said I got to check that out, so I was able to intern with his ot for a summer, and it was a great experience.    Jayson Davies     Wow, interesting. Never haven't had, I mean, I know a lot of OT practitioners learn about ot because of a loved one having ot services, but to be able to actually end up having a field work and work with the OT that supports your family, that had to be a really unique experience.    Matthew Husband     It really was because she. Knew my brother so well, and I could see the love that she had for him, but then seeing that with all the other clients that she had and all the different types of clients, it really opened my eyes, because obviously my only experience was with my brother, so I got to really see the magic of the work that she did.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, and was that a like a clinic based setting? Or what kind of setting was that?     Matthew Husband     Yeah, it was a clinic based setting. And my mom always wanted to get the early morning slot, so she would take him at like seven in the morning before school for his clinic based. OT, so when I interned with her during the summer, I was there from like seven to three, so it was kind of fun that early morning.    Jayson Davies     OT, very cool. Yeah. And so now you're working in a more of a school setting. I know it's not necessarily a public school setting. I'll let you talk about that. But what drew you to the school settings?    Matthew Husband     Yeah, so I started out clinic based, and I did that for a year, and that was a really good opening experience for me, to be in the clinic and see a lot of different types of children, lots of different diagnoses. And then I spent a year in home health, and that also was really beneficial, understanding the family component, working in the homes, working with parents, being that bridge between the child and the parents. And then I've been a school based therapist for the last six years. And what I love about school based therapy is the interprofessional collaboration that I can have with the members of the team at the school. So I love that part of it.     Jayson Davies     Awesome. And more specifically, you've kind of honed in a little bit in the high school realm. What drew you to that?    Matthew Husband     Yeah, so I've been in the middle school high school for the last three or four years. I'll bounce around with some different kids in the elementary as well, but I love the older students and really thinking through that next step. So they've had this entire educational trajectory that's leading them to graduation and then not having any educational services. And so how do we figure out that last piece of the puzzle before they graduate? And so I love connecting with that age group and thinking about what it looks like for them after they graduate.    Jayson Davies     That's interesting, because a lot of OT practitioners, myself included, when I first started working in the high school, because I feel like once I got into the high school more and understood it, I definitely had a similar feeling that you just expressed. But a lot of OT practitioners get really scared of the high school setting, really, even the middle school setting, and they don't understand where they support the steering. They don't understand, you know, should I be working on ADL? Should I be working on work? Should I be working on handwriting, still and sensory processing? Did you experience some of that when you got first started with the high school?    Matthew Husband     Definitely, I think there is a paradigm shift. Having the background in pediatrics, thinking about what is middle school, high school students, what do they need? What does it look like? Because it really is. You're starting to have that transition to adulthood in that next stage of life. So like you said, it's not like you can hone in on one specific area. You're working on all these areas, but it's also going to be individualized based on what the student    Jayson Davies     needs. Yeah, and we're going to talk a lot about the Get to Work program that you've that you've started, and I think that I'll save more about the high school setting ot world for us to talk about when we get there. But first I want to, as I alluded to a moment ago, your setting isn't exactly a public school, and I want to be upfront with that, because you know a lot of people that listen to this podcast, they work in a public school, and I want to just be transparent that you're not necessarily in a public school, but also that this can work in a public school. So share a little bit about your school. Sure.    Matthew Husband     So yeah. So I'm contracted with a private school called OTs stone Academy in westernville, Ohio, and so my caseload is a blend between IEP in the classroom, working with students, and then a private based caseload as well. And so I'm working on IEP goals during the day, but then I also have some private kiddos that will see that we can work on non school related goals as well through the contract that we have with the school. And so it does allow for more autonomy with the students that I'm working with.    Jayson Davies     Meaning like that, the students that you work with in the afternoon, you have a little bit more time outside of the quote, unquote school day to work with them, right?    Matthew Husband     And we can work on, you know, non school related goals that you might not be able to if you're only focused on those IEP goals. And I think also just the collaboration that we can have within the school setting just allows for a better understanding of what the students need. And that's really as we get into the Get to Work program, really thinking about, yes, like we want the students to be successful within the school system. But then we also have to look at that bigger picture of once they do graduate, once they are successful in the school system, are we making sure that they're set up for that next stage? And that really kind of birthed this idea of the Get to Work program, absolutely.     Jayson Davies     And we'll talk more about what the Get to Work program can look like, even if you don't have those additional after school hours and whatnot. But yeah, you know one of the things going back to. Struggles that ot practitioners have with high school is that that service cliff, and a lot of students are in elementary school, they've got services one time a week, and maybe you get more to a consult model as you get closer to middle school. But how do you I mean, I guess is that similar for you, do you see students decreasing or are you decreasing services as kids get older? Or how does that work in your current setting?     Matthew Husband     Yeah, so I think the the idea of the service Cliff has been really impactful for me, thinking about our students are going to lose a lot of their services once they graduate, so we kind of have this finite amount of time to do as much work as we can and lend our expertise while they're still on our caseload. So what's the best way that we can use our time, especially in those middle school and high school years, to set them up for success later? And so really thinking, Am I just doing direct services? Am I only going to be in one classroom, or am I am I better served if I have consultative services with the teachers, with the aides, with the parents, would that benefit the child more than just the direct intervention that I would have? So it's really thinking about the holistic way of the finite amount of time that I have, what's the best use of that so it can benefit the students?    Jayson Davies     Wow. So then I guess if you are it's hard because obviously every child is different. But when it comes to students getting older, you know, from going from elementary to middle to high school, within your setting, within your practice, do you tend to see a decrease in services as students get older? Is that kind of the route date your you know, caseload trends toward, or do you see it kind of continuing with, you know, relatively similar services across or are you even adding more services as kids get older?    Matthew Husband     Yeah, that's really good question. I think it really kind of depends on the trajectory for the student. I think some of our students who are more geared towards college readiness or being college bound, they'll tend to lose ot services because they're doing so well in the classroom. But some of our students who are better suited for the employment route or independent living route, they'll continue to require and use ot services so that we're thinking about, how are they successful in a Trades Program, or how are they successful in internships or other classes that they might be taking within the school day. So I really think it depends on the type of child and what their needs are. And for some they may lose some of their services, and for some others, maintaining those services are so important, so that they can do well in those different classes that other students might not take. Yeah,    Jayson Davies     I like how you kind of separated those two out. But I I'm wondering, when do you start to have these conversations? When do you start to, you know, whether it's in an IEP or outside an IEP, with a teacher, with a parent, start to think about, you know, which direction is this child going? Are they going down more of that functional skills, or are they going toward college? And that's a very tough conversation to have, and so I'm interested to hear maybe a, how you specifically deal with it, and then maybe B, if your your school setting does have more of a systematic approach, how they might begin to have that conversation?    Matthew Husband     Sure, yeah, that's a great question. I think that for transition planning, which is mandated at age 16, by idea, it's 14 in Ohio, that's a really good time to start that conversation and make sure that we're aligning with parents as we're thinking about what is the right next step for the student. And again, at 14, we're never going to know for sure exactly what the right step is, but we might have a pretty good indicators of which way they might be. So if we can have that conversation with parents at that IEP, when they're starting to receive transition, planning on their IEP, and really kind of digging deeper with parents of, what are you thinking for your child, what do you think the next steps are? And if we're in alignment, I think that's great. And then we can start thinking about, what are the interventions, what are the things that they need? And if we're in misalignment, if parents think that they're college bound, but test scores and the way that we view the student are different, then it gives us opportunities over the next couple of years, especially every year when we meet in the IEP, to try to get on alignment, so that we can help parents navigate that system of thinking about what the next steps would be. So starting around 14, 1516, those are really pivotal years in my mind to start having those conversations.    Jayson Davies     And are those conversations happening in IEP? Or does your school have specific transition meetings? Or how does that work?    Matthew Husband     So it definitely happens in the IEP. So there is that transition section, so we'll have that conversation. And a part of my doctoral Capstone work was actually creating a transition resource guide that I would give a physical copy to parents when the student was turning 14, so that they could have information about what those next steps are. And that was something that was not in place. They would receive some information, but we made it a standardized resource guide that every student. Would receive. And then if they had additional questions about, what was that, whatever was in the document, then we could answer those questions at that IEP,    Jayson Davies     wait, hold up here, was this specific to like your area, or is this something that could be used by any OT, and also, is it something you share?     Matthew Husband     So it is a local resource guide. So it's local to Columbus, but the ideas of the types of resources that you could give so we have some resources for transportation. We have some resources for vocational rehabilitation, independent living, the themes of the resources could be used for OTs, wherever they are, but the specific resource guide that we created has the local resources here in Columbus.    Jayson Davies     That's awesome. I love that. I mean, we've had specifically in my IEPs, and I always wanted to create more of a resource. I never did. But we had, like a PE teachers that would come with a list of different sports and organizations that were very friendly, disability friendly, like, and they would have all the different programs in the area, and I always wanted to create something similar. So I love that you've kind of done this, but at that transition level, like, that's really awesome, and it's really a great idea for any OT. And I love that you're just like, hey, I'm the OT. I'm at this meeting. This is the transition meeting. Here you go. Here's the paper. It's not, it's not like, you don't even have to think about whether or not you're going to give this to a parent. It's just to a parent. It's just automatically transition meeting, boom, here you go.    Matthew Husband     Yep, and give it to him. And then it really opens up that dialog within that transition meeting. I've been in those transition meetings before, and it can be very much like, okay, A, B, C, this is what we're going to do type of thing. But when you give, and this happened last week, you know, I gave a parent information about transportation and potentially driving for a fort for parents of a 14 year old, and they still have a couple of years to think about that. When you see the look on their faces of like, I don't know my son is going to be able to drive. That's all right. Let's talk about that. What? What are some things that you're worried about? Are you worried about their visual perceptual skills? Are you worried about their ability to handle a lot of things at one time, those sorts of things. And then we could think about at 14, what are those areas of concern for the parents? And then that could all we could think about that in our interventions as well. And so again, it allows for that deepening conversation within that meeting to really understand where parents are, but in a very systematic way. Okay, here's what everybody receives, and then we can kind of individually see what's needed for that student.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, you know, I never thought about that. I know. I mean, in my area, California, and I don't know about your area, I'll let you speak to it. But I remember, by time I was in high school, Driver's Ed was no longer part of the part of high school curriculum, but I know once upon a time was for you guys, is it?    Matthew Husband     No, it's not, at least not where I'm where I am currently. So yeah, I think for a lot of parents, that's really scary, because it's like, I just don't know if my kids able to do this, and will they be safe, and do they have the support that they need? And so having this resource can be really impactful for them.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, it's interesting, because OTs ot practitioners actually have a pretty stronghold in driver disability driver awareness, but we always think about it from the perspective of older drivers still being able to drive. I don't know if there's any, and maybe you do, maybe you do, maybe you don't, but I don't know if there's ot practitioner is focusing on, like, driver skills for 18 year olds, 16 year olds, 22 year olds, like, that's definitely something I haven't seen.    Matthew Husband     Yeah, so there definitely is. So Ohio State here, they have a occupational therapy, drivers, rehabilitation services, and they they see the gamut, so they'll see all age ranges. But they've really been working on increasing younger students, or kids with autism specifically, and thinking about helping them as far as driving and the skills that they need to start getting on the road, not to get back on the road for those older clients.    Jayson Davies     Very cool, that'd be a fun job. I want to do that    Matthew Husband     A little, when you're in the car, true, yeah, that's what the simulators are for.     Jayson Davies     Yeah, yeah. Very cool. All right, well, let's continue on. I want to talk about the Get to Work program, but before we do, I want to let you establish, you know, you brought up kind of the two different routes per se, right? Going toward college, going more toward the functional living skills. And when we talk about the Get to Work program, are we talking about both directions, or is it focused more toward one of the other?     Matthew Husband     Yeah. So the actual it's kind of that middle ground. We call it the missing middle of those who if they did not receive the appropriate services, then they could very easily not be employed, but if they receive the appropriate supports, then they could be employed. And so that's kind of really the the area, or the students that we wanted to work with, those who we knew, if they received some extra services, that they could be employed. So we're not really looking at the higher or the lower, kind of in that middle range.    Jayson Davies     Okay, and then the kind of. Follow up must be asked question, because I still think that there are occupational therapy practitioners and others, especially that work in education, that have this internal debate all the time about whether to focus on the here and now academics of ninth grade or to work on the four years down the line, future of real world, application, work, living independently, all that fun stuff. So as a school based ot practitioner in high school, what made you start to key in on, hey, I need to think post secondary. You know, skills.    Matthew Husband     Definitely. Yeah, I think that tension between academics and post secondary success is such a hard tension to live in, because our students need to graduate, they need to receive these credits. But when I'm in a biology class and they're learning about ribosomes and lysosomes and mRNA and I know for sure that they're not going to be using that knowledge in the next part of their education. I'm like, Okay, well, what could we be working on? So really thinking about, well, what are the organizational skills, and how are we consuming knowledge? How are the students understanding how to do that? I can can work that in, within the classroom, but then all those bigger ideas, I really want to hone in on those when I have the opportunities, because those are going to be so much more important for a lot of those students, because their next step will be employment or independent living.     Jayson Davies     Okay, And I guess when you started to do this, I'm sure you went down a rabbit hole and got into research, and I guess just ultimately, what helped you to solidify your idea, hey, I need to be working on those post secondary skills.    Matthew Husband     sure. So as a part of my doctoral capstone project, I was looking at improving employability for young adults with autism, and I created a survey that I sent out to three different stakeholders. So it was educational, vocational rehabilitation and business owners as well, and thinking about the trajectory for employment for our students, starting in education, potentially using the services of vocational rehabilitation, and then hopefully working for a business. And so looking through the lens of all of those who are helping our students reach that end goal of employment, what are the things that they need to be successful? And what I found through those interviews, through those surveys, were a couple of different things, and I can talk about that with my capstone project. One was self determination, but then one was early exposure and realistic exposure to work. A lot of students were coming to different placements or different internships and didn't really understand what work was. They had this picture in their head. Might have been only based on a movie or something that they've seen, but they haven't actually had realistic understanding of what it means to work. And I thought, okay, that could be something that I could do. That could be an intervention to expose students at an earlier age to what it actually means to work, and that could be really beneficial for them in the long run.    Jayson Davies     Okay, so self determination, early exposure, was there anything else?    Matthew Husband     And then the transition resource guide, so building that bridge between parents and the students, and, yeah, those were the big three that I worked on. Very cool, okay,    Jayson Davies     deciding which way I want to go here, because you mentioned the self determination piece, and I think we're going to focus more on that early not early intervention, but early exposure, piece to work. But let's touch on the self determination piece just briefly first, because obviously they go hand in hand. If you don't want to work, you're probably not going to work. So what did you learn about that self determination piece?    Matthew Husband     Yeah, so for self determination, we actually did an intervention where students met during lunch weekly for the entire school year, so it was ninth and 10th grade students, and we were teaching the core components of self determination. So we used what's called the self determination model learning of instruction, and that was kind of like our core curriculum that we used and then we modified it for our students, but really figuring out, what are your strengths, what are your weaknesses, what are your preferences, and how do you use those to be able to set up goals, to create goals for yourself towards things that you want to do on your own. And I think for a lot of our students, for a long period of time, they've been told you need to listen to your teacher, you need to listen to your parents, you need to follow in the classroom, all those sorts of things. And then when they're getting to this middle school, high school age, they've kind of become dependent on that, so they are still listening to their parents and teachers, even though it might go against what they actually want to do. And so it's kind of this area where we're transitioning again from other people telling you you know what you need to do in your life to you taking ownership of it. And so within employment, I think that's really important, because a lot of our students just don't really know what their strengths are and what their preferences are for work, and so if we can teach that explicitly to them, then they can find jobs that are motivating, and it's going to be so much easier to get buy in from the student if they're pursuing things that they enjoy, versus if we're telling them, No, you go do this. We think. You'll be good at it, but if they don't have any buy in, then, yeah, the buy in isn't there.    Jayson Davies     So were you able to take outcomes when you did that that group?     Matthew Husband     Yeah. So we were looking at three different outcomes. So one was the ability to write SMART goals. So they throughout the curriculum, they wrote three different goals, one for school, one for home, and one for future, and we tracked their ability just to write those goals. So it was a five point scale. If it was Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and tie bound, they had all five portions, and they would receive a score of five. And then we tracked to see how well they did over the course of the year as they were writing SMART goals. Another one was knowledge change. So they had a pre test, and then three quizzes that they took throughout the year to see if they improved in their ability to understand self determination. And then the last one was their ability to track goals. So once they had their SMART goal, they had written it, how often would they track that actual goal? So say, if their goal was to take out the trash every day, how often would they actually track that goal? And so we wanted to see them being able to see okay, well, I only track this goal one time. I don't really know if I was doing it, because I don't have any data to show it. So showing them that as you're working towards something, you need to know, am I improving or am I not? So those were the three big measurements that we looked at.     Jayson Davies     And you said you did this in, like, early high school, ninth and 10th graders, right? Ninth and 10th grade? Yep. Okay, so was this part of a, you know, special education classroom. Was this a lunchtime group? Or, yep.    Matthew Husband     Yep, it was lunchtime group. So we would meet, yeah, once a week during their lunch.    Jayson Davies     The rabbit hole continues. How do you do that as an occupational therapist in a high school study? Yeah.    Matthew Husband     So the IEP goals that they had that would relate to, you know, these organizational or self management goals, then we could use that as part of the self determination. And then we would work alongside the intervention specialists and talk about how important self determination was, that could cross over into other classes as well. And then we could work towards those goals during that group.    Jayson Davies     And did you, I guess, how did you facilitate participation? In the sense that? Did you look at IEPs and say, Hey, these eight kids will really benefit from this. I'm going to reach out to them and see if they want to be a part of this group. Or was it more, you know, just kind of, we started this group, kind of like any other campus group, kind of starts and friends invite friends and, yeah, yeah, it    Matthew Husband     was more. It was more of the first one. So identifying, like ninth and 10th grade students that we think would really benefit from this group, and then that's kind of how it started. And then we would look at schedules and see if we could get at least four to six students in a group. Very cool. Wow, are you continuing that? Then, yes. So we have continued this year. So we're trying to make it a little bit better work on the buy in, because lunch can be a difficult time for students. I mean, that's a really, like, funny part of it is that you're saying, Okay, you are self determined, and these are all these things that you need to do, and then you're telling them, oh, you need to come to this lunch group. And so it's like, how do we how do we live in that tension as well? Because we're telling you that you need to make your own choices, but then we're making this choice for you. And that's been something that's been something that's been really interesting, because it's like, All right, well, if we participate, well, if we're working towards our goals, well, maybe we meet every other week, or, you know, maybe we do 10 weeks and then we take a break, that sort of thing. But it depends on what your preferences are and how you work through it. So it's still tricky doing it during lunch, but we've we had really good success last year, and then we're building on that success this    Jayson Davies     year as well. Do you think this is I mean, if someone I'm trying to think about like the practitioner who's like, Hey, this is really cool, I want to try this. But lunchtime is not doable. If you had to put that constraint on yourself, lunchtime wasn't an option. How would you try and alter it a little bit?    Matthew Husband     Yeah, for some of our students that might have a study hall or a learning center where there is some more free time, or if there's some specials, again, this is going to depend on your student and the time that's available. And if there's enough kids, because I do think you need at least four to six kids to be a part of the group, then I might look at those areas. And we had looked at those, and unfortunately, logistically, it didn't work out. But yeah, just being creative, of thinking, Okay, I know that this is really important, and how, within my setting, within the bounds and constraints that I have, what is a way to introduce self determination? And so it might not look exactly like mine, where it's an actual group, but maybe there's some lessons that could be embedded in some different classes, maybe even in an English class or a character education class, something like that, just so that there's exposure to these ideas, so that students could get it because we are I saw through the research that it is so important for students to learn that their strengths, their weaknesses and their preferences.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, well, all right, went down the self determination rabbit hole. Love it. But I do want to talk about the Get to Work program. And I guess first I'll let you explain how the self determination and get to work program are or are not interconnected.    Matthew Husband     Sure. Yeah. So the self determination during school, during lunch, now the Get to Work program is after school on Fridays are our Friday. Is and a little bit earlier. So it's two and a half hours that we were able to set aside after school, and that is private based funding for those students. And so that's kind of the difference between the two, but there was some overlap of some students who are actually    Jayson Davies     doing both. Wow, yeah, I can imagine. And you know, you're, we're naturally going to lose a few people listening right now, because they just heard you say after school. After school, two and a half hours, privately funded. So let's address the elephant in the room, if you were to go work for a public school, would get to work at a public school even be possible?    Matthew Husband     Yeah, I don't know, as I have not been in a public school working on this program. But I think the tenants of thinking about early exposure, early realistic exposure to work, how can you use that core idea within what setting you have? And so maybe it's particular classes. So, like, we have a financial literacy class, and so I've really worked with the teachers of thinking, what are some community outings that we could do with that financial literacy class so they could understand what it actually means to have a bank account. So let's go visit a bank, and let's look at what it looks like to write a check. Or what if we went to a doctor's office and we filled out personal information, if we had that community connection that would allow for something like that? So I think again, the core idea of exposing students to work, if that is what you start off with, then, because we are super creative as OTs, how can you be creative in that space within whatever you're allowed to do within your school or within your district, to work through that idea? Or, yeah.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, and I don't know, I know it would be difficult, but most schools do have a minimum day, kind of like what you're talking about, right? A shortened day once a week, and it would be very difficult to get set up, but I can picture making something happen. It would take some string pulling here and there. You've got to get a teacher on board to help you out who's probably going to be volunteering their time. You may or may not be volunteering your time for the first one or two times that you do this, because you got to, kind of, like, prove that it can be useful before anyone's really going to invest in it. But I'm just like talking to the public school, you know, ot practitioners out there. I think it could be done as an after school program. It would be really unique. But they're, I mean, public schools have after school programs, right? They, what they don't have is after school programs for students labeled as having a disability, or at least, they're not excluded, but they don't really exist, right? Like and so this is that opportunity to maybe pull a string and use that card saying, Hey, we don't have any after school programs for our students with disabilities, I want to do one and get a teacher to help you out. So.    Matthew Husband     I think that'd be great. Yeah, that's a great idea. I'm all for it, yeah.    Jayson Davies     And I'll say also, you know, there are some really good programs out there, and I'm sure you've seen them too, where a teacher takes on initiative. I worked at a high school, and every week, that teacher would facilitate the students making a grocery list. Then they would collect recycling, then they would take a field trip on Thursday to take the recycling in, which was right next to the grocery store, they would go in grocery shop, get everything that they needed for our meal prep. And then on Friday they would prep the meal. Fantastic, right? But not every school has that opportunity. Not every school is within walking distance of a grocery store. So yeah, let's talk about your Get to Work program we've established. This is after school. It is, you know, privately funded, but that doesn't mean that it can't work. So I'll let you kind of provide a little bit of an introduction to the program and kind of how it got started.    Matthew Husband     Sure. So yeah. So we would have two weeks a month on Fridays after school that we would meet with students, and the first week we would meet at school, and we would identify a certain job sector that we wanted to work on for that month. So say the first month was a restaurant. We have a local partnership with a local pizzeria. And so that was our first month that we did. And so on campus, the students learned the soft skills and the hard skills of what they would need to actually work in the restaurant. And so we would go over the soft skills, the people skills that they would need to learn, and then we would do stations of the hard skills. So they might be folding pizza boxes, or they would be filling sauce cans, or they would be bussing tables, things that they could potentially do at that actual pizza restaurant. And we would, we would go through all of those skills, and then the next time we met, we actually went to that pizza restaurant, and we did all those skills on site. And then we would come back and we would have a self reflection and think about all right, what were the different job tasks that you did? What were your preferences? What did you like, what did you not like, what went well, what did not go well, what were the differences in management style? What's the type of clothes that you have to wear when you go out to a restaurant, versus some other sort of job? And so really, this, the way that it was set up. Was the first week. I was exposing them in a setting that they're very familiar with, to the soft skills and hard skills, and then the next time they would actually go out in the community and do those skills on site.     Jayson Davies     Wow. All right, we're going to take a quick break right here, but when we come back, we're going to dive further into this Get to Work program, maybe weed out some of the hard skills and the soft skills. So let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. All right, Matthew, I want to talk about those hard skills and soft skills, but first, who is part of the team? Obviously, you're the mind behind this as occupational therapist, and correct me if that is wrong, but who else is part of this team and how do they interact?    Matthew Husband     Yeah, so I definitely want to give a shout out to Hannah every because she presented with me at a ot another occupational therapist, and this was really kind of born out of our therapy team. So we had OTs, speech therapists, and then we had one of our psych service team members who was a part of the group as well. And then we worked with our community engagement specialist. She was the one who really helped us with the connections within the community. And so she works on some internships with some of our older students, and had previous connections with community members. And we really relied on her to identify, all right, we want to do a restaurant, but we don't actually know who we need to go to. And she said, Oh, well, I have connections here. And okay, this person, she said she's available on Friday. So this works perfectly. And so she was really integral as part of the team to get those connections done. And so really for us as the OTs, we focused on the hard skills. And how do we when we're simulating those job tasks the first week? How do we make sure that they're as close as possible to when the students go out the next week? Then our speech therapist was really focused in on the social skills, really teaching those. And then our Psych Services team member was thinking about the behaviors while we're on site, the hygiene, the dress, the words that we say, those sorts of things. And so it was really nice to have this interprofessional team, because all of our expertise is kind of overlaid and worked together to make it possible.    Jayson Davies     Wow, yeah, I mean, and obviously it takes a village to just pull something off like this, so that that's really cool. All right, you mentioned the hard skills, working on, you know, wiping down tables, stuff like that, and the soft skills, communication and teamwork. Do you find that it's harder to teach the soft skills than the hard skills, or vice versa? And how do you weigh kind of, hey, we need to focus more on the soft versus the heart.    Matthew Husband     Yeah, I think the hard skills as an occupational therapist were easier to teach because we could do some task analysis, we could create some visuals, we could really break it down. Okay. What are they struggling with? Is this a sequencing, executive functioning problem? Is this a fine motor problem? And then I could really, kind of do a deep dive on that. The social skills, you know, those are a little bit harder to tease out, especially when you're just talking about it, because it's all, you know, it's all in the ether, as far as what could happen when you actually go on site, and that's why I love that we could actually go into a business, because then we could see, how are our students interacting with customers, how are they interacting with managers? And so one really interesting experience was we went to this pizza restaurant the first time, and the manager was amazing, so much so that she actually gave us two pizzas at the end for all the students to eat and enjoy. And everybody's like, we love working. Did you like us because of the pizza or somewhere? And then the next place we went, we went to just like a box store, and the manager could only spend, like, a minute and a half with us, and she was so busy that that we only saw her at the very beginning, and then we were kind of left to our own devices. And so that was a really good teaching moment for us, when we came back thinking about, when you're at work, you're going to have different leaders and managers, and they're going to have different styles. And what do you prefer? Do you like someone who's hands off, who gives you the instruction and then you don't really see them? Or do you like someone who's more hands on, who's communicating with you? And it would be interesting, because half of our students were like, Yeah, I like someone who I can talk to, and the other half were like, yeah, if they just tell me what to do, and then I get to do it by myself, that's better. And so it was a really good like teaching experience, even for us, because we didn't realize. We thought that most of them would have preferred the first manager, but they didn't.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, wow. You mentioned, right, like, the hard skills being a little bit easier for an OT practitioner with our task analysis, but you mentioned you had other people on the team, right? All the others that have helped to make this program possible. Do you find that other team members really help with the soft skills?    Matthew Husband     Oh, definitely. Yeah, our speech therapist really working through the different parts of soft skills. What's the professionalism that you need? How do you interact with someone? How do you interact with a customer that you've never met before? And then we'd actually see it on site. Yeah, they really took the lead in that area. And then we could learn from them. And again, we would split into groups when we would go on site. And we would split into groups as we would do hard skills. And so each of us would lead a different group. So it really gave us an opportunity to kind of blend those skills as we were teaching them to the students. Yeah, I bet    Jayson Davies     there's so many pieces that you could work on in here. And I. Know, tell me if I'm wrong, but I'm sure that it's almost like you don't have enough time to address everything, obviously. And so you kind of had to pick and choose. What are we going to focus on? And then hope that when you actually go to the real location, what you worked on on campus plays out the way that you think it will exactly.    Matthew Husband     And yeah, you try as best as possible to set them up. But then that's another learning activity for the students. Of you know, we worked on this when we were at school, and it worked great. And now we're in this box store and we're trying to use the scanner, and it's not working, and we can't find the manager. This is what happens when you're at work, and what do you do? Do you get frustrated, or are you patient? Or what is the problem solving skills that you have to figure out when things don't go right. And so I think those times were actually really important for the students to learn that this is this is life, and this is what happens at work too.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, yeah. And it's also different the interactions that you won't just have with the the people that work there, right? You mentioned a lot about the boss, but the interactions that you have with customers is very different, from a pizzeria to a box store, perhaps, or a shipping, you know, working in an Amazon facility. Have you had to work on like, you know, how you might have customer support type of skills, and is that something that came up with like the pizzeria? Definitely.    Matthew Husband     And I think, like body awareness and body spacing depending on how big or small the location was. So like being in the pizzeria, they were working at a dish washing station that was very small, so they had to go through and they would have to, you know, pass other people, and then obviously the pizzas were hot. So there's that whole sensory experience as well. We did go to a place that was really loud, it was really hot in there. They were doing a lot of work standing on their feet. And so the kind of that endurance came up as well that you really can't simulate when you're in a clinic or when you're at school. You just can't simulate all of those things. And so that was really good to once we had finished, and because a lot of these places were new for me as well. I've never worked in these settings. And so it's like, oh, okay, this is what people are doing every doing every day. This is really good for me to understand what these type of working conditions are, and then be able to pass that on as we think about future groups and how we can diversify the different types of experiences that they can have.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, all right, so you've, we've talked about a box, you know, a box store, we talked about pizzeria. What other types of settings have you ventured out to Yep.    Matthew Husband     So we went to a grocery store as well. So they were doing carts and they were doing stocking. We went to a restaurant supply store, so that was a much bigger store that had a lot of stocking and cleaning as well. That was a quieter one. And then we went to Cintas. They do laundry. And so that one was a lot of sorting, sorting by color, sorting by shape of the towels, how big the towels were. That one was a really loud experience for a lot of our students, a lot of standing, but really giving them as many different type of experiences. They had six different experiences as they went. I think, yeah, those were the six.    Jayson Davies     Okay, so this is about, I'm assuming, then it's roughly a six to eight month, almost a school year program, because you're kind of picking one place to go to a month and focusing on that.    Matthew Husband     Yep. So we did three, kind of in the fall before winter break, and then three after winter break.    Jayson Davies     Wow, that's really cool. I love that. And, you know, Cintas that is, you know, we see their trucks everywhere. I'm sure everyone does, but that's bringing in more of a home skill as well. With laundry was that an area of focus is home skills, ADLs an area of focus of the program, or not so much.    Matthew Husband     Definitely. And talking and kind of, going back to the transition resource guide, one other kind of piece of information that we gave parents was a chore list. And so when we worked with our community engagement specialist, who takes our students out on different internships, she says that she knows right away if students have completed chores at home, have they vacuumed? Have they swept? Have they cleaned tables? Have they made their bed? And she said that directly helps them as soon as they go off on an internship because they're ready to hit the ground running, versus students who have never done chores. She says that she has to work really hard the first couple of weeks to get them up to speed. So we gave that to parents, and we said, hey, this is not only going to help you at home by having your student be able to do chores at home, but it's going to help them with employment down the line. So yeah, so at CentOS, being able to fold, being able to do those sorts of skills is something that they would need if they were going to work there on a daily basis.    Jayson Davies     Yeah. All right. You know, I would love to talk ot practitioners. We love to talk interventions and how you did every single thing. I do want to talk about the evaluation piece, but I do have one more question before we get there, and that is, as ot practitioners, we don't just work on skills. A lot of times we bring into into the fold accommodations for those who need them. And you've mentioned a lot of standing at some of the places you've mentioned loud noises, has accommodations been a big piece of this as well?    Matthew Husband     Yeah, definitely. And for a lot of our students, they did really well. They did better than. I thought, with the endurance piece and the loud noises, but that was something that we prepped them beforehand. So even when we were doing our simulations, we actually were playing louder music, and we were having them stand for, you know, 40 minutes while they were working on a task. And we would provide visuals. Visuals were really big for us as well, just to break up that sequence. And then they could take them with them as they were working on a task at their station. So yeah, so those accommodations are really huge, too, because if we can provide those accommodations so that they can be successful, you know, the employer doesn't, doesn't really care, as long as they're getting the work done. So yeah, that was huge.    Jayson Davies     Very cool. All right, let's talk a little bit about evaluation. One nugget that you dropped earlier, was that, again, correct me, if I'm wrong, is that the students had a big part in choosing, like, what type of industry you they wanted to go into a restaurant, or whatever it might be, is that correct?    Matthew Husband     So they did have some autonomy, as we were talking about the different types, but again, that it really depended on what was the connection that we had in the community that could be available, because there were some places that the students wanted to go to, but the connections that we had were really small, like coffee shops, and there was no way that we could have our whole team going, that we would basically just take it over. So they had some say. But then, you know, as any good OT, we still had the final say.    Jayson Davies     You mean, you didn't have, like, a video game producing company that all the kids, I'm sure wanted,    Matthew Husband     that was one of them. I think everybody would have voted for it.    Jayson Davies     Yep, all right. I brought that up because, you know, you talked about that self determination piece. And obviously, people want to work in a place they want to work in. But you also, as an OT, you know, we all know that taking data is important. You talked about the data that you took for the self determination group, but what about with the Get to Work program? Did you figure out a way to take data to determine if this was something that worked or didn't work, or how'd that how'd that go?    Matthew Husband     Yes. So one assessment that we used is voc fit, the vocational fit assessment, and that has 11 different sub scales, and it's really looking at what are the different components of work. So it might be hard, skills might be soft. Skills might be self determination. And we completed that scale for the student, and then parents completed it as well. Now the VOC fit can be used in a bunch of different ways, a lot of ways. It's usually used as like a longitudinal assessment to see, for a student who's been on multiple different internships, are they improving in those skills? The way that we did it, as we were only doing the six sites, is we did like a pre test, where we filled it out as the as the therapists, and then the parents, and then we also had them fill it out at the end. And we wanted to see, was there a difference? Did they improve in those skills? And really the first year, we just really wanted to know as a group, what are those lower skills that the students have that we really need to focus in on as we look at the cohort itself. And so self determination, again, was one of the really big ones that we looked at in executive functioning as well. And then we could see, did they improve from our vantage point as therapists, and did they improve from the parents vantage point as well? Yeah. Point as well, gotcha    Jayson Davies     and more broader, beyond the data, what was kind of your goal? What was your goal that you would see over the course of this nine months and six different placements?    Matthew Husband     Yeah, the biggest goal for me was just the confidence for the students to know that this is something that they can do, and this is possible for them when they graduate. And it's just a kind of funny anecdote, but when we would take the vans to the site, the car would be really quiet. You could just feel like the palpable nervous energy as the students are thinking about they're going into this new place. They're going to be meeting these new people that they've never experienced. And for a lot of our students on the spectrum, change is so hard, and so even to get them to that place without even having doing any of the hard skills or soft skills was a big accomplishment for a lot of them. And then we would do all of our work, and we would leave and the van ride home, it was like this huge exhale. Everybody's talking and laughing and joking, and for me, that was and for our whole staff, was like, okay, they just did something that I don't know if they knew they could actually do, even if they didn't do it well, even if it was hard, they experienced something new. And now they know when they have the opportunity to do an internship or to apply for a job or do a job, they now know that it's not going to be as hard as they think, because they've had those experiences before. And so that's really the biggest goal that I had for the group, was exposing them to realistic work, and that they can do it, that they're capable, that they are able. And so yeah, so that was the biggest outcome for me,    Jayson Davies     wow. And you did this last year, right? Was the first year?    Matthew Husband     So two years ago was the first year. So the A OT, a conference presentation was the first year, and then we completed our last year. So we've done two years.    Jayson Davies     So what age now are the kids of the first group? So    Matthew Husband     potentially 11th, 12th grade. So now they're getting to, yeah, well, it'll be graduating. So I'm really excited to see, yeah, what does that date? Of those who go through the Get to Work program compared to other students that didn't. How many of them are going to become employed? How many of them are not? What type of employment is it part time? All those sorts of things. So that's a lot of data that I'm really interested in learning about as we go through this process, as we have more and more cohorts of students doing the program.     Jayson Davies     Wow. And so how have things changed from that first cohort to now? You're kind of on your third round. It sounds like, right?    Matthew Husband     Yeah. So I think we've just been able to fine tune things as we go. We've built in the self the arc self determination scale is another measurement that we're looking at. The other piece that we really want to focus in on is that bridge between school and home? What are things that we can do to help parents to make sure that they're following up? Okay, you've gone through this Get to Work program, what are the natural next steps? And so even, like the students with this, making smart goals. All right, you did this, get to work program, let's make a SMART goal for what you're going to do next. Is it applying for a job? Is it completing a resume, those sorts of things. And so as we continue to do the program, those are some of the the fine tuning that we're working on.    Jayson Davies     Wow, it's just, it's just really cool. I mean, because I'm sure you embarked on this, you know, two and a half years ago, and I don't know, did you have, like, any funding, anything like or when it first got started, was it just a shell of what it is now?    Matthew Husband     Yeah, it was just an idea. And it's kind of funny, because another idea that I've had and has come to fruition was starting a garden at our school. We didn't have a garden before, and the first year, there was a lot of resistance as far as well. You know, I don't know if we can have it here. It might not be safe. I don't know if the kids should be out. There's just some resistance. And so we started with four pots, and we only had four pots. And then we did that for one year, and we proved to the school, yes, this can work. And so then the next year, we teamed up with the Industrial Tech the like woodworking Trades Program, and they created these raised beds. And now we have this huge garden. And so very similarly, the same metaphor, it's kind of the same thing for get to work, is, like, it was this idea. It started small. We didn't know if it was going to work, and we're just like, well, let's just try it, get that idea out there, and then if we can prove that it works, then we can get more backing, and then we can, you know, make it better as it goes. So my analogy is, start with four pots and see where you go.    Jayson Davies     I would go even with just one. I mean, start with four is even better. You're ambitious starting with four. Man, that's a lot of work. Matthew, no, that's awesome. So I guess my question is, because it's really hard when you're starting at the beginning with four pods, or when you're starting at the beginning with this idea of, I want to somehow get six students or eight students to a setting that is not on campus. I don't know. I have there been grants that you've applied for or like, How is this even logistically possible? How were you able to get it from an idea to even that first, you know, vacation or not vacation, that first bus or first van to the restaurant.    Matthew Husband     Yeah, I mean, it took a lot of that groundwork and really writing down, you know, what is our curriculum, what do we think, and how does this fit into those goals? Again, we did have the private funding for those students who had it, and so that could cover, you know, our services, which really helps, and then the school, you know, providing the transportation, providing the vans, that was one thing that we could check off our list as well. But yeah, it was really just showing that, here's an idea, here's the research that shows that this is so important and we think that this benefits the students. Let's start it. And luckily, we've had a team, and we've had, you know, a school that has been willing to to run with that idea and see it into fruition.    Jayson Davies     What do you think the benefits of the program have been outside of the work program, program, meaning, what is the benefit of this program that you can sell to administrators that's going to improve the school? I mean, do you think it has? I'm sure you probably think it has. But yeah, does that question make sense?     Matthew Husband     Yeah, definitely. I think another piece of the inner collaboration was kind of the relationships that we have with the intervention specialists and the teachers, and thinking about, what are the transition goals, and how can we fine tune those goals so that the information that we're receiving from this Get to Work program can drive those goals so that we're working towards the preferences that the students have, and then we're seeing improved motivation in the classroom for a lot of our students, as they're realizing that these are things that they want to do. And so that can decrease some behaviors that might happen in the school as well. So any administrator is going to be excited about that, and just, you know, the well being of our students, and seeing that they're again, they're confident, and they're happy, and they're able to prove that, that they can, can do these things. It's just a huge selling point for for those in the building at the school.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, wow. So many, so many great things. I know there's a lot of you know, public education, occupational therapy practitioners will. Listening right now, if they haven't tuned out, out of sheer I can never do this, but the ones who are still listening, you know, first, thank you for listening. But what tips? What advice do you have for them? I mean, you just shared a few right now. But if this is something they're thinking about doing, maybe they're trying to do it during lunch, kind of like what you did with the self determination program, and maybe they can't even get off campus. But what advice do you have for them?    Matthew Husband     Yeah, again, I think it just goes back to that core idea of really having a paradigm shift in the way that you're viewing what is best for the students. And is it just working on this one IEP goal, or working in this one class, or pointing this one student out of this class, or is it this bigger picture? Okay, they've been on this educational trajectory for so many years, but we want to make sure that all of that work that we've done over the past 10 or 12 years can lead to successful independent living or college readiness or employment. And so yeah, that would be my advice for those practitioners, is, let's, let's kind of come out of our bubble of what we're working in, and let's look at that broader level. And then again, let's be creative and figure out within my setting, what can I do. And then again, what are you passionate about in your own setting? For me, this is something that I'm passionate about, and this might not be the passion of every you know, school based occupational therapist, but what are you passionate about? Is it a garden? Is it a movement hallway. Is it something that maybe doesn't exist right now within your school setting, but you know it's beneficial for the students, and because you're Pat you're so passionate about it, you can allow others to catch that vision with you. And so that's something that I'm really excited about, because I've seen that with other therapists. So another like research thing that we saw when we went to a ot a as we were looking at the guidelines for occupational therapy services for autism, was comorbidity of anxiety, and we see that a lot with our students, where they're anxious and that affects their ability to work in the classroom, those sorts of things. And we have another therapist on staff who's really passionate about that, and now she's thinking about, Okay, what would an anxiety class look like, and how would we teach that, or how could that be infused in some sort of curriculum, something like that? So I don't think it has to be particular to this program, but we do in this space, in middle school, high school, we need to have more OTs, because we have the expertise to help with all of this transition stuff. And so I'm really excited about, like, the community of occupational therapy practitioners that are in the transition space, and how can we increase those numbers?    Jayson Davies     Yeah, and two things I don't even think we mentioned during this interview, yet, some of the research that I know you know about that really lead to the emphasis of needing to work on life skills, such as work readiness. I'm pretty sure you probably know it better than I do, but like the outcomes learning out or success outcomes among students is just off the charts if they have workability skills. Is that right?    Matthew Husband     Definitely. Yeah, for sure. And so how are we fostering those and how are we making sure that students are independent in those skills at a younger age, so they can be successful as they move forward. Those are huge.    Jayson Davies     The other thing really quickly, because, as we mentioned, not everyone can get off campus, but when you think about a high school campus, it's like a mini it's a mini restaurant, there's a mini gym, there's a mini like there's all these pieces that can potentially be used as as work sites, potentially. And I think that even if you can't get off campus, maybe you can partner with the cafeteria. And maybe you can't bring in eight students at a time, because the cafeteria is really small, but that can be an area where you can bring in one student to help out during lunch, or, you know, partner up with the custodians to bring in different work opportunities partner with, maybe a coach the baseball team or something like, there's so many opportunities even on campus that you could use if you can't get off campus.     Matthew Husband     Definitely. Yeah, those are really good ideas we have, like our mail room for all of our staff. And so I take that over with all my ot students. And so if there's different things that need to be passed out to be passed out to the teachers, we've alphabetized it so they can put everything in the mail slots. Also the lost and found. That's a really good time for doing some laundry. So we have this huge bin of lost and found. So we'll take it over during for our OT students, we have a shout out board, so they'll take out all the shout outs for the staff. So we'll have those are pinned up on the wall. The students take it out, then they'll pick a winner, and then they have to send an email. So all of these work skills, like you said, are embedded throughout the high school, working in the cafeteria, doing recycling, which you mentioned earlier, having a garden. There's so many different things within the building that can be work skills. Now they won't be specific to that type of job that they might see out in the community, but those are all really good skills that our students can work out work on in the high school setting.    Jayson Davies     Very cool. All right, Matthew, well, really appreciate you coming on sharing with us about the Get to Work program as well as the self self determination program. That was a little extra tidbit for everybody. And yeah, thank you so. Much. Really appreciate it. Where Can anyone who's interested in learning more about you, maybe get in contact with you about either of those programs to learn more? Where can they get where can they find you? Sure.    Matthew Husband     Yep. So I would love to connect with you on LinkedIn. So if you just type in my name, love to connect and love to share the resources. If you have the resources from a ot a, last year, you can get the full presentation from a ot A, and I'll share my email as well for anyone who's interested in learning more. But those are the best spaces that you can you can find me.     Jayson Davies     Sounds good. We'll be sure to link to your LinkedIn and yeah, make sure everybody can find you. So thank you once again, Matthew. Really appreciate it, and best of luck in this third year of the Get to Work program.    Matthew Husband     Thank you so much. It was a pleasure sharing with you today. Thank you for having me.     Jayson Davies     Yeah, absolutely, all right. That brings us to the end of episode 187 of the OT school house podcast. I of course, want to extend a huge thank you to Matthew for coming on the show and sharing his innovative Get to Work program, as well as going into his self determination club, I think that is just absolutely, absolutely awesome that he took the initiative to get to do that. Of course, it was not just Matthew. He shared how this is really a team approach, but it's really cool to hear what he and his team are doing to help so many high schoolers that may not otherwise end up having a job outside or beyond high school because they didn't have the support that he's providing. Whether you're working in a private, public charter school, whatever it might be, I hope you've gained the practical strategies that you need to prepare your students for life after graduation. Remember Matthew's advice to start with four pots, you just have to get started. Begin with a small project, prove that it's effective, and then watch it grow. If you've been looking to connect with other school based ot practitioners and want to access more resources, like this one, and also downloadable resources that you can put into your practice, I invite you to join us in the OT school house collaborative. This is where you'll find additional professional development opportunities, mentorship and a community of practitioners passionate about school based ot to learn more. Head on over to OT schoolhouse.com/collab thanks for listening, and I'll catch you in the next episode of the OT school house podcast. Tata for now,    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 OTschoolhouse.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! If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Google Podcast , Spotify , or wherever you listen to podcasts. Click here to view more episodes of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast

Click on your preferred podcast player link to listen wherever you enjoy podcasts . Welcome to the show notes for Episode 185 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast. In this exciting episode, we're thrilled to welcome back Sarah Collins, a pioneer in the world of homeschooling and occupational therapy. It’s been over five years since Sarah first joined us, right at the onset of the pandemic, and so much has evolved since then. With over 3 million students now homeschooled in the United States, understanding the intersection of occupational therapy and homeschooling has never been more crucial. Together, we get into how homeschooling has transformed, the challenges families face, and the vital role OT practitioners can play in supporting these students. Join us as we explore the innovative ways OT can adapt to the individualized learning environments of homeschooled students, the importance of collaboration with families, and how to address their unique needs effectively. Whether you're currently working with homeschool families or anticipate encountering students transitioning from homeschool to traditional settings, this conversation is packed with valuable insights that will enhance your practice. Listen now to learn the following objectives: Learners will analyze the unique culture and philosophy of homeschooling to effectively collaborate with homeschool families without questioning their educational choices Learners will develop skills for supporting transitions between homeschool and traditional school settings, including identifying accommodations parents naturally provide at home that may need to be continued in school Learners will identify approaches for providing occupational therapy services to homeschooled students through various delivery models (nature-based, private practice, public school services where available) while respecting the individualized nature of homeschool education Guest(s) Bio Sarah Collins, MSOT, OTR/L, is an occupational therapist and homeschooling consultant dedicated to helping parents align homeschooling with their children’s unique needs. Through HomeschoolOT, she provides personalized consultations, teaches month-long courses on key topics, fosters community through group and individual coaching, and speaks at national conferences. Her work empowers parents to build learning environments that support their children’s development and passions. Quotes "Parents are really looking for someone to collaborate with. So whether or not you're coming into a clinical setting or a nature-based setting, they wanna make sure that they're understanding so they can apply it to their homeschool day." -Sarah M. Collins MSOT, OTR/L "I would ask, what accommodations do you naturally provide at home? And I think you could ask that question to a parent... What naturally do you feel like you're doing to help your student that coming in here we would need to do and how do you know that?" -Sarah M. Collins MSOT, OTR/L “Understanding the individualized nature of homeschooling and approaching parents as educational experts can make a tremendous difference in our effectiveness as practitioners”  - Jayson Davies, M.A., OTR/L “We as practitioners, our goal should always be to join the team." -Sarah M. Collins MSOT, OTR/L "When you've got a clash, then you don't have safety, when you don't have safety, then you don't have good rapport. When we don't have good rapport, we're not going to make a lot of progress.” -Sarah M. Collins MSOT, OTR/L Resources 👉 HomeschoolOT  - Sarah Collins' website focused on occupational therapy for homeschooling families 👉 NHERI (National Home Education Research Institute)  - Resource for homeschool statistics and research 👉 HSLDA (Home School Legal Defense Association)  - Legal support for homeschool families, provides state-by-state information 👉 LearningRx  - Cognitive training program owned by a homeschooling family 👉 Equipping Minds  - Cognitive-based therapy for visual processing, auditory processing, and working memory 👉 Wilson reading program  - Mentioned as a structured literacy program 👉 Course for OT practitioners on working with homeschool families (available through HomeschoolOT.com ) 👉 Executive functioning course for teens (in development by Sarah Collins) 👉 Sensory processing picture book  for kids (written by Sarah Collins) 👉 Charlotte Mason Institute offers valuable resources and insights into the Charlotte Mason educational philosophy, 👉 Timbernook provides child-led experiences that challenge the senses and inspire creativity, independence, and imagination in the great outdoors. 👉 AOTA Article - Perspectives of Homeschool Educators on Occupational Therapy: A Pilot Study (AOTA)  Episode Transcript Expand to view the episode transcript Jayson Davies     Hello and welcome to episode 185 of the OT school house podcast. I'm your host, Jayson Davies, and today we're diving back into the world of homeschooling with our returning guest, Sarah Collins. It's been over five years since our first conversation with Sarah about occupational therapy in the homeschool setting, which happened right as the pandemic was beginning to reshape education everywhere. Since then, homeschooling has evolved significantly, with the number of homeschooled students growing to over 3 million across the United States as school based ot practitioners understanding this educational option is crucial, especially when students transition from homeschooling to traditional school settings, or also when we're tasked with assessing a homeschooled student. In this conversation, Sarah brings her unique three sided perspective as an occupational therapist, a homeschooling parent and a parent of a neurodivergent child, she'll share insights on effectively collaborating with homeschooled families, understanding their educational philosophies and adapting ot approaches to support their individualized learning environments. So whether you're currently working with Homeschool families, or you may encounter students transitioning from homeschool to public education in the near future, this conversation will provide valuable perspectives to enhance your practice. Please help me to welcome back to the OT school house podcast. Sarah Collins, let's jump in.    Amazing Narrator     Hello and welcome to the OT school house podcast, your source for school based occupational therapy tips, interviews and professional development now to get the conversation started, here is your host, Jayson Davies, class is officially in session.    Jayson Davies     Sarah, welcome back to the OT school health podcast. How you doing?    Sarah Collins     I am great. I'm really happy to be here, to be back, to be chatting about all the ways that homeschooling has changed and evolved. And I think it's going to be really great. Yeah, just    Jayson Davies     looking at the transcript, looking at some of the numbers we put in there, and I was looking at the date. And as you know, I was just telling you, we released that episode on May 18, 2020 and as you know, I think everyone remembers March 13, if I believe was the correct date, you know, the Day of Infamy with the pandemic officially starting and everything kind of getting shut down. So I'm assuming we must have recorded in April of 2020, which a lot has changed. Yeah, then, yeah, yeah.    Sarah Collins     I actually remember us talking about planning our episode, and I was outside weeding my garden, because I was like, I just need to be outside and by myself. So I remember that planning. I don't remember the actual recording, because the whole time is, oh yeah, such a blur.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, yeah, 100% but just like you know, the entire world, I am sure homeschooling has changed a lot. I'm sure that occupational therapy within homeschooling has changed a lot back then. So I'm excited to jump into this and learn about how you're having an impact on homeschooling, OT, how OT, homeschooling having an impact on you, and vice versa and all that good stuff. So you ready to jump in? I'm ready. Here we go. Awesome. Well, let's do it. Well, we're gonna start off with a little bit of a fun one, because I've been enjoying asking people this question, and we're going to adapt it a little bit for your situation. But if you could snap your fingers and change one thing about homeschool education and maybe occupational therapy. Within homeschool education, what would that be?    Sarah Collins     So it's actually really interesting, because I feel like, as with most things, your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness, right? And within homeschooling, we are so individualized, which is lovely, like we I can really plan out exactly what my kids need, and look at where they are now, kind of what's the next step. But my husband and I recently have been talking a lot about rites of passage. Our daughter is now going into her senior year, and this is the first time, and literally, I'm not joking, the first time that she's been like, well, you know, they have seen your sunrise, and they have senior prom, and they have senior you know, all the graduation now, there's a lot of those things that we do. In fact, their videos from from her and my son went to prom, the homeschool prom, guys. I No joke, this is the thing. They went. And their videos are amazing, because I feel like there isn't the same level of Wow. What is someone going to say about me the next day? Or think about me? You know, you don't even know anybody. They're just dancing like crazy. And they when I say they don't know anybody, that's not true. They they know a lot of people around in our community, but it's not the same people that you're with every single day, all day. You know what? What happens at prom? Is it going to be talked about the next day, but some of those other rites of passage that kind of mark the end of an era almost are not as important or not as recognized, and that can be hard for our kids. So I would say that's what I would change. I don't know how I would do it, but that's what I would do,    Jayson Davies     yeah, some sort of recognition, especially when kind of Yeah, because you don't really have elementary, middle and high school and homeschooling, it's just one spectrum all the way across all the grade levels. So yeah, unique, interesting. Well, thanks for sharing all right. Now, as I mentioned before, you were on the show episode 49 and that was, as we discussed in May, a lot has changed since then. You know, we've gone through a pandemic, a lot of other things, but yeah, give us a quick update on I guess. I guess. What I'm really looking for here is the impact that the pandemic had on homeschool, OT, on you, or homeschool education and on you as an occupational therapist in homeschool education.    Sarah Collins     So it's actually really interesting, because the pandemic on me is very different than what you know it did on even with Homeschool OT and with OT and with education as a whole, or homeschooling as a whole. When we were already homeschooling, we started homeschooling in 2017 and my husband works outside. He's on a golf course, and so literally, our days, besides the fact that we couldn't go on field trips that we did all of the time, they were the same. You know, my husband got up and left and went to work, and we did the same thing that we always do. So our days just kind of flowed right through. And in that way, I feel like we were really fortunate. You know, we weren't having this huge adjustment of, wow, everybody's home at one point, and everyone how do we do this? We just kind of went along, yeah. So yeah, she was actually lovely.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, yeah. You weren't in the middle of all the trying to teach 30 kids over a zoom class and all that fun stuff.    Sarah Collins     So, nope, nope, not even a little bit. And you know, my kids are very busy outside. Wait, I have three athletes, and they are not just small athletes, like club teams, that type of thing all over. My son just made the international team for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. So he's playing in Boston and Rhode Island. I mean, he's everywhere. So for those Now, granted, now he's 14, and that point he was, what, 910, whatever. But it was really nice to have everybody home. I'll just say I I'm kind of the opposite of the majority of people, and I really thoroughly enjoyed it. Yeah, that's kind of sad, or, I don't know it's not sad. It's good, because I really enjoyed it, but I recognize it's not the majority of people's experience.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, yeah. And I know you kind of stay busy within or not. I shouldn't say stay busy, but you stay updated and educated on what's going on in the homeschooling community. Did you find that that was kind of a similar sensation that other homeschooling parents, children, others kind of felt, or were there other consensuses, or was there a wide variety of how people were feeling and doing during the pandemic?    Sarah Collins     Yeah, I think it's a really wide variety. I mean, we obviously could not meet as our co ops, like we typically do, like we our families evolved into throughout the week, and then we, at that point, actually, we still had a hiking group going. Now, we stopped for a while at the beginning of the pandemic. But then, I mean, that hiking group on Fridays became upwards of 60 and 70 kids like that. We would just be outside and going and so there were obviously differences, and there was a whole lot of people who became homeschoolers throughout the pandemic. And then some of that has changed. But a lot of the homeschooling community has just grown, you know, and continue to develop. And there's more and more and more resources. I just got back. This is my conference season. So the busy season all of our homeschool conferences, which, yes, there are there, the majority, at least have one in each state, and then there are some others that are nationwide that kind of move around more nonprofit type things or for profit conferences. So I try to do six or seven every year. And so from about April through now, I'm traveling at least once or twice a month to go speak at these conferences. And so it's pretty amazing to see the number of families that are really invested in their own continuing education so that then they can be educating their children. And I know prior to 2020 because I just opened homeschool ot like immediately before the pandemic, I was homeschooling before that, but not working there, so I don't know what the conferences looked like before that, or that type of thing. I can't really compare, but I can say that there's a an amazing like the one in Virginia that I just left out over 10,000 people.    Jayson Davies     Wow, that's, that's a good, good sized conference, yeah. And so now you're going to the conferences. And I asked this question, slightly selfish. Absolutely, because I am very interested in going to education conferences to kind of share more about ot with non ot practitioners and and so I'm wondering what your take is on why are you going to these conferences? Are you going mostly as a consumer, or are you speaking, or are you trying to get the word about about homeschool OT?    Sarah Collins     Yes, I'm speaking. They are. It depends on which ones that I'm going to. Some of them have a specific special needs day, and so oftentimes that's where they'll put me, because you hear the same occupational therapist, they're like, Oh, well, you need to be on the special needs track. And sure, a lot of what I'm talking about absolutely but then I also have to do a lot of education on weight and occupation. Is anything and everything that a person you know needs and wants to do. It's how we occupy our time. So sure, if people are struggling, that is, you know, our expertise. We can analyze the activity, we can look at, you know, the person, we consider the environment. You know, we are really good at that. There's also pieces of just childhood development where, you know, we fit in beautifully. So I don't only need to be kind of pigeon holed. And so that's that's been a learning curve for me of how to advocate for homeschool OT and for occupational therapy as a whole, to come into these conferences. But typically, I'm speaking about sensory processing, oftentimes about sensory processing. For parents, you know what? If I'm the one who's overwhelmed, I've done executive functioning, risky play, handwriting, so just depending on the conference, they get to pick which one they want, and four they want, five they want. And we go from there,    Jayson Davies     very cool and kind of a follow up on that a little bit. Since you are having these interactions with other parents, slash educators, what are you hearing? What are you hearing from them, as far as their experiences, either with occupational therapy, or their desires for occupational therapy, maybe even their their words against occupational therapy. I mean, you're, you're hearing from an audience that we don't often hear from, and so I'm interested to hear what you're hearing.    Sarah Collins     So it's, it's really interesting. I either hear, oh my gosh, I've loved OT, and my child has been an OT, I hear, sometimes a mix of, what you are you gonna help me get a job? You know, the same thing that we hear, you know, randomly. Or I hear, unfortunately, quite a bit of Well, we had OT, and they told us we needed to go into the public school system. Or, you know, they did not appreciate our educational choice, and so did not continue. And that unfortunately happens frequently, which is part of the reason why I'm here. Because we need to make sure that we as OTs are respecting the decisions that homeschool families are making, and understand kind of the dynamic of what that, understand the culture, understand the many, many, many options, the theories you know, we really need to be in there and say, I'm going to come alongside of you as an occupational therapist and not direct you and tell you what you need to do.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, yeah. I definitely want to ask you more about that. I know we'll get to it about like, how students homeschool, students are getting occupational therapy. Where are those services coming from? But we'll get to that in a little bit kind of getting us into that point, I think, is that, as you mentioned, you were homeschooling your kids for a long time, but you didn't really start getting into homeschool ot until right around the pandemic was starting. So I want to get your take on just the last five years or so with starting to provide ot for home students, because I know when you did it, you're one of the first people really doing this. And so how has that evolved? What did it look like five years ago? And what's it starting? It starting to look more like over the, you know, more recent past?    Sarah Collins     Yeah, it's, it's just such a blessing and just so absolutely an honor of doing what I'm doing. And I hope that this like passion comes across, because I really, really love it. I still am the only one that is working in the way that I'm working now, when I say that, that's because there are lots and lots and lots of OTs, obviously providing direct therapy for kids, and that's not what I do. I do parent education, and I often work to make a match between OTs and families, because with our licensure and even with ot compact, is I just went to a ot a to try to figure out, Is this going to make a big difference for me? And unfortunately, I think it is. But the ability to, you know, provide ot for the homeschool community across state lines is just not a thing. So what I have to do is I'm a homeschool consultant with an OT background, and I'm pretty clear about that with you know, on my website, but also clear about it as soon as I meet with families of Listen, yes, I do have an OT background, but what I'm going to do here is work with you on your your homeschool, and if we. Need direct occupational therapy. I'm going to tell you about it and what it does and help you to find out where to get it. So the majority of what I'm doing is parent education. I have classes on executive functioning, on handwriting, on sensory processing, all for homeschool families. I do have a I'm developing right now, a course for teens that'll be like a high school half credit on executive functioning for homeschool families. I have a book that I wrote new on sensory processing, a picture book for kids. And I do kind of question answer and public speaking type things, but never will I do an evaluation? I don't do treatment, all of that.    Jayson Davies     Okay, so then I guess I would love for you just to kind of walk us through the process of what you do do, because, like you said, you're not doing a formal evaluation. You're not providing direct therapy. But what does it start to look like? You know, if a parent does approach you at one of these conferences, or find you online, and they're like, Hey, I've heard of occupational therapy. Maybe my student may or may not need ot, yeah, what does that process look    Sarah Collins     like to work with you? So I do still keep a theory in my head, so I work primarily from like, the PEO model of care, right? So when I'm working with families, I'm diving into what is your entire routine. Now, here's somewhat of a difference of homeschooling versus, you know, public schooling or brick and mortar schooling, is that, you know, for you guys, you have to think only about that education area of occupation, right? But what we get to think about within homeschooling is you're homeschooling all day, every day, all the time. It's all education. And in fact, one of the basic theories of homeschooling, one of the founders, is Charlotte Mason, or one of the theories, and she talks about homeschooling, or education, all of it being an atmosphere, a discipline and a life. So you know how you set up your home, the discipline or the rhythms and routines throughout your day, and then your lifestyle of just forever pouring in living ideas where kids are going to be able to make connections, in which case that happens from the time that you go to sleep and your ability to do so, you know, waking all the way until the next night. So when I meet with a family, I talk to them about what their rhythm now, you know, where are they having a lot of success, and where are they having a lot of struggles? And then we dive into what, why that might be. So if we're saying, here's the occupation of learning to read, you know, or learning to write, whatever we'll just take learning to read. And this is my, my struggle. So I'll often ask them a lot of questions about, what have you tried so far? We look at some of those underlying skills, performance skills. I talk about other resources, like, what about vision? What about core strength? You know, are we able to sit What about executive functioning? So I ask a lot of these questions, and then I provide resources from there. So do you need to get some outside more testing oftentimes? Do you need to know who in the homeschool community is providing tutoring near you? Okay, let's check into that. Do we need to look at a different type of curriculum? Okay, let's look at that, you know, so we I kind of dive into all of those different types of things throughout their day. Fantastic.    Jayson Davies     All right, well, we're going to continue this conversation and talk more about homeschooling and occupational or I should flip that we're talking more about occupational therapy and homeschooling, but we will do that right after this quick break, all right, and we are coming back here now. Thank you so much for sharing what it kind of looks like to work with you. I want to dive into one number, because we touched on this number back in 2020 when we talked about it, but at that point, you estimated somewhere between two and 2.5 million students were being homeschooled. Do we have any updated numbers on those?    Sarah Collins     So where I go to look for this. It's called nheri. It's the National Education Wait, hold on, national home Education Research Institute. There you go. So it's n, H E R i.com , and another spot to do this, or to look is H S L D A, which is the Home School Legal Defense Association. And that's H S L D a.com , so both of those, but they are only at populations around 2022, so the reason being is that each state has different reporting requirements, so not even every state keeps track of how many homeschoolers that there are. Here in Pennsylvania, we have to send in information to our local school, school district, but not every state has to. We have what's called high report states and low report states. So as of 2020, 22 that number was up to 3.1 million students, and it's still growing at a rate of about six Well, it's about 6% of students, and it's growing at a rate of somewhere between 2.5 to 3.5% every single year, is what the estimates are.    Jayson Davies     And so is that the current or is that same thing that estimate for percentage growth is a little delayed as well?    Sarah Collins     That's a good question. I think, yeah, I think, okay, that's just been the trend for a while. So I would think that that's what they're estimating would be accurate.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, because I remember back when we had that conversation five years ago, we kind of had a lengthy conversation about trying to figure out, okay, well, what's gonna happen? Because, as you mentioned, your homeschooling day to day didn't really change versus every single kid in public education, again, depending on what state you were in, to the degree, but every student in public education day shifted drastically, drastically for some amount of time, others longer than others, but, but yeah, we were wondering, okay, well, would there be a larger shift over to homeschooling?    Sarah Collins     And yeah, that was there was a dramatic increase in 2021 and then it decreased a little bit more back in 2022 so I think that 2021 numbers, so if we're at 3.1% as of 2022 or 3.1 million students. Sorry about that, in 2022 I want to say it was 3.6 million students in 2021 so it rose drastically, and then dropped, and then now it's kind of at a steady increase, but not as drastically.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, okay. I I think this might be a time to talk about some of the more recent developments and stuff that's just going on in the world. And one of the very hot topics right now is school vouchers. And just to be completely like upfront, my take on school vouchers, as far as from a public education, someone who lives, breathes everything public education is that for every voucher, every student that leaves a public education school, whether it be for homeschooling, charter school, private school, whatnot, that is potentially taking funds from students who might need it and can't get accepted in other placements, such as a private school. I can imagine that within the homeschooling world, this is a topic of interest, the waivers or whatnot. And I'd love to hear your kind of what you're hearing, I guess, within the homeschool world, and their thoughts on those,    Sarah Collins     yeah, it's actually really interesting, because there are some that are very pro school voucher and some that are very anti. And then there's some kind of right smack in the middle, which is actually where, where I tend to be. But so there are some families that, as far as school vouchers go, or there's even within different states, there are funding that you can get for homeschooling that is not like their specific program set up for that. Florida is one. Arkansas, one New Hampshire is one, you know, where they will even provide funding up to a certain amount of money for, you know, materials and that, and that type of thing. Now, some families could not homeschool without it, right? And some families whose kids don't fit well within the box, you know, they don't do well. You know, if we're looking at the social theory of disability, where we can think a child or a person is more or less disabled based on their environment, and if their kiddo is not fitting in in a brick and mortar school, yet they cannot afford to do any other alternative without vouchers. I can see why they would want that, right? I can see why that would make a big difference for their family. On the flip side, there's a lot of families that want no government involvement, you know. So they do not actually want this to be a thing, because where there's government involvement, there's more regulation, and not that they are opposed to safety or regulation in that way, but more of like this is different for every single home in every single family, and so it's not the same as having a standard of learning. If what we're looking at is what is our child doing now, and what is their next step? You know, there isn't necessarily a you're behind. It's how we're moving along in this child's developmental and educational needs. And so there is a struggle there. If people are to or they're living in a state that are providing these vouchers where they're like, I don't, I don't want this, because I do not want the involvement and the regulation that goes along with them,    Jayson Davies     yeah. And I can see that, you know, the part of as you were talking, one of the things that like came to mind was like, nobody likes change unless they're the ones that are implementing      the change Absolutely. Yeah.    Jayson Davies     So, okay. Now I've been in some IEPs, and I'm sure that you've heard from parents who have been in IEPs like this. And sometimes it actually happens, and sometimes it's just kind of parents talking, but it's not uncommon for a parent to say, You know what, I'm not happy with the district. I'm going to homeschool my child, and for the most case in occupation in the OT world, most of the students that we would be homeschooling or providing ot to homeschooling are students who would, you know, potentially be on an IEP 504, something like that. So I guess my question for you is, from the homeschooling perspective and parents who homeschool, what are the common reasons that they might choose to home school, and does it often revolve around distrust from a school, or are there a bunch of other reasons?    Sarah Collins     I think there's a whole lot of reasons. I mean, it's actually been really interesting going to these conferences where I'm starting to meet second and sometimes even third generation homeschoolers, so people who have grown up in this, and then they're really excited to be able to homeschool their their own kids. And you know, they can see the advantages of it for themselves and how, you know, they think and what, how they've been able to be independent in so many of their life choices, right? And so now they want to provide that for their children. So that's one reason there are, for sure, there's people like us who we just literally stumbled upon it because of the timing of a move, and that we met our great yeah, we my husband. I follow his job because, you know, I can be an OT anywhere, but he's a golf course superintendent, and so he got his job up here in Philadelphia. And we moved in April, sorry. We moved in January, and then into a rental house, and then we moved again. We're in April, to our house now, and we were gonna have to switch schools again to where we were. And then my son, at that point was in kindergarten, and they had a kindergarten center here, and so he was gonna have to move schools again. It would have been his fifth school in like a seven month period, and we were like, This is dumb at doing this. So we just started at that point and found a great community and stuck with it. So there was no like, this is definitely for us, or this is definitely not for us. It just happened and we kind of stumbled on and there's a lot of people from covid and after the pandemic that did that same thing, where they were like, what? We just stumbled into this, and it's been great. So we're going to stick with it. Now. There are also those that you're right, who have sat in an IEP meeting and they've been like, this is not working for my child, and we need to stop this. We need to find something new, and in which case, a lot of times there, when I'm working with them, I'm having to kind of dismantle some some thoughts, you know, where they're like, either really terrified of getting started with homeschooling, they're really mad at the public school system, which has happened, or they're just like, I was so frazzled, of like, this is what we have to do now, and I don't know What. So, you know, there's a there's a mix.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, I believe that. I mean, it's hard to when you do things out of frustration, it can take some time to to regroup yourself and figure out, okay, well, actually, how to move forward. So I'm sure they appreciate, appreciate your support with that. All right, so let's assume that, for the sake of this conversation. Let's assume that someone was in public school and is no longer in public school, but they already had an IEP in place once they decide to go, the parent takes them out for homeschooling. What happens at that point? What happens to the IEP? What happens to the service providers? What happens to all the accommodations, goals and stuff.    Sarah Collins     So it really depends on the state. Like, for example, we here in Pennsylvania, I actually sought out. We went back into the public school system in 20, let's see, must have been 2018 for some testing for my son. And at that point we were offered partial school day, like they they would provide us with the Wilson reading program, and he was gonna get some OT. And good, I got that ot right, but for us, like we just went ahead and declined that I really wanted to get the information that an OT assessment and that all of the testing would provide, and then from there, I could do things on my own. But there are some families that can get services still through the public school system. Again, it very much depends on on the state. Our the HSLDA, again, that home Legal Defense Association, they have on their website, state by state of who will provide services within the school system and who will not. So it really depends. And they also have, you know, people that you can talk to to kind of figure out what that would look like.    Jayson Davies     Okay, so I mean, from that, I. Me kind of breaking that down, then that likely means that idea does not have anything in relationship to a school must provide services to homeschooling families, otherwise you risk losing your funding. Otherwise it might be relatively similar across all the different states, exactly, okay, and then all the states do it, do it a little differently. What are some of the various ways that you have seen students who are homeschooled receive ot services then?    Sarah Collins     So a few different ways. Number one, like, could be over. You know, I keep pointing across the street because our school is across the street. I'm like, they just go over there. It's fine. They say, I need some help, and then they cross the street. But so there are some that can go in through the public school system. There's also, you know, private practice and through the medical model. Or there are a lot of homeschool families that are searching out nature based cash services. Specifically, I talked a lot about Chartwell, mentioned Charlotte Mason earlier, but there's a lot of home education if it's based if their theory happens to do with Charlotte Mason. So much of it is based around nature and your natural environment, and so families are like, run into these nature based providers. Interesting.    Jayson Davies     That's unique. Never heard I I'm just not familiar with Charlotte Mason, because it sounds like that is probably, you know, more familiar in the homeschooling world. But I know we have had on, you know, some of the people behind barefoot OT, yes, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on in the nature based world, both in OT and in education, and a lot of them are starting to overlap a lot. I know from barefoot ot they are working with even public education schools to implement hour long programs. So very cool.    Sarah Collins     Yeah, it's really cool. And there's several around here in Pennsylvania. And then I you know Laura Park Figueroa, who's, you know, does it all over the place? Nature based therapy, who I think it's maybe merging with barefoot right now, I don't know. I don't know exactly how that works, but, okay, yes, yes, um, but that are really also familiar with homeschooling families and the homeschool community as a whole, and are offering even through co ops, but different opportunities there, but then also, you know, obviously seeing families for private and during the day.    Jayson Davies     Gotcha okay. And I totally just realized that I misspoke. I said barefoot ot several times, and I actually meant I'm more familiar with timber neck. That's the one that I meant to say. So that's why I don't know anything about the what you're talking about. Interesting, all right. But yeah, anyways, I mean, I know that there's a lot of connection between nature based services and education going on right now. That seems to be really awesome. Something that always comes back to me whenever I think about that is, I remember Steve Jobs was on an interview, you know, creator of everything Apple, and someone asked him, like, your kids most love that they get to play with all the newest gadgets and whatnot. And I this quote always comes back to me, and I'm summarizing it, of course, but he basically said, like, No, I don't let my kids play with iPads and iPhones and stuff that stuff's too simple. I want them outside doing stuff.      So absolutely,    Jayson Davies     absolutely, okay. So I asked you that question, why? Why families choose homeschooling? Because I think it's important for anyone who is going to work with parents and with kids of home, it's important for them to understand those reasonings. And I want to get your take on why that's important for ot practitioners to understand the reasons for homeschooling, the decisions behind deciding to homeschool their kid. And I love for you to talk to that just a little bit why that's so important for ot    Sarah Collins     practitioners. You know, we as practitioners, our goal should always to be to join the team. You know that we are coming alongside of families. We're coming most of the time because they are struggling, and you know what they need and want to do. And so if we all of a sudden are meeting these people are in our clients of that are struggling, and then we're like, this is what you should do, you know, or you need to go into the public school system because you need to be able to get these services, or you need to do this for socialization for your children, we're not listening. We're not coming alongside of them. We're not thinking about, Oh, what is it that you specifically need and want to do instead? We're basing it on our own experiences or our own biases of what's right and what's wrong, and that's not joining a team that's not supporting this family, and then all of a sudden you've got this clash, and when you've got a clash, then you don't have safety, you don't have safety, then you don't have a good rapport. When we don't have a rapport, we're not going to make a lot of progress. So to be able to progress. Mess with students and families as the whole then we need to be respectful of what their decisions are and try to understand it.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, and earlier you mentioned that it sounds like some homeschool families have even had a little bit of a rift with some OTs. I guess I want to get your idea like from your perspective, what are parents looking for? What are they thinking about when they think about ot from a home? And I'm sure it's you can't generalize for everyone, obviously, but what are the same some of the things that you're hearing, what do parents want out of the homeschool an OT that's supporting their homeschooling?    Sarah Collins     Right? So it tends to be that a person who's gonna get ot has been going through a day today for a while where they've been struggling with one of their kiddos, and oftentimes it's not, well, I can't say it's always not the first one, but oftentimes it's not the first their first child, because, you know, their first child has been like, they're planning their school based around this, this one kiddo, and then all of a sudden, second kid, I was like, Wait, this is not working, and why? Or the second one's been so easy, right? And then they're like, but why was the first one so hard? And so then they kind of realize, all right, I probably need some support in here. And one of the biggest things that I save all the time within homeschool, OT, in fact, it's kind of my slogan, is that homeschooling is not alone schooling, because, you know, it is very different when people are going in to school on a daily basis, and you have lots of different eyes on your kids, right? And you can say, like, here's kind of the developmental progression, and here is where you're straying from that. Or I can see why there is a struggle with learning to write or whatever. Because here's, here's a reason why. You know, without that, you know, kind of these eyes looking in. It's up to parents, and so many times we as parents can accommodate for our kids needs without even thinking about we're just instinctually doing that, which, again, you know, oftentimes we can say your biggest strength is also your biggest weakness. You know, like we are accommodating our children all day, and then we're like, but wait when we're going across environments this is hard for them. So when, especially for me, when I'm talking to parents and I'm saying, Okay, this is when you need to seek out occupational therapy. Is when we're thinking, all right, across different environments, you're having the struggle like this isn't just isolated to, you know, when I'm trying to write a three o'clock in the afternoon or whatever. You know that we're having a struggle here, because then maybe we just need to adjust the time of day. But instead, you know, we're having struggles across all environments or across different occupations. And so when parents are coming in to therapy, whether it's been that maybe a doctor has told them, or another Co Op parent, or if they are experienced with ot because of other children, or things like that, then they're going to come in and be able to say, like, this is where I during our day, here's where it's showing up. And what do I do? You know, that's what their questions are. What do I do?    Jayson Davies     Yeah, it's, it's, I don't know, it's so hard when you grow up. I'm talking like from the perspective of the practitioner here, if you don't grow up in that homeschooling atmosphere, and it doesn't sound like you did, either, you really have to learn that culture. You really have to understand, you know, what those what the parent is looking for along with what the students are looking for and and sometimes it's one parent, sometimes it's both parents. There's a lot to learn there. And I guess kind of leading into this question here is like for the occupational therapy practitioner or for the parents as well. Do you find, probably more so from the parents perspective. Do you find that they appreciate a therapist or any provider that will come into the home more, that will meet them in the community, or do they prefer to go to a therapy clinic or to an outdoor area?    Sarah Collins     I don't think it's one way across the board. I do think that they're going to look more and I'm saying they but also meaning me, because I told you, you know, I took my son in to get testing, and then we made that decision here. So when I'm coming at this, I'm coming at it from a perspective of an occupational therapist, a homeschool parent and homeschool parent of a neurodivergent son. So I'm like, I'm in it, right? Yeah, there. Now I forgot where I was going, answering,    Jayson Davies     yeah, what setting or what do they appreciate in terms of location of services?    Sarah Collins     Okay, gotcha so parents are really looking for someone to collaborate with. So whether or not you're coming into. To, you know, a clinical setting or a nature based setting. They want to make sure that they're understanding so they can apply it to their homeschool day. Because, again, the homeschool day isn't from, you know, seven to three, or, you know, nine to four or whatever. It's all day, every day. And we as practitioners, that's a beautiful thing to be able to work with families on the whole day, right? And all the things that their children need to not have to segment out. But to do that, there has to be a lot of communication. So I don't know whether it matters which setting that you're in, although I do recognize that productivity wise, it's really difficult in medical based settings, and it's also difficult within a school based setting. When you're used to we collaborate, you know, at the IEP meetings and these updates and whatever, it's a totally different dynamic of a parent, like, Well, what did you do today? And what do I do at home? This is a very important thing.    Jayson Davies     Yep, Yep, absolutely. All right, we're going to take one final break, and when we come back, we're going to talk about the practical applications for ot practitioners when working with Homeschool families. All right, we're back with Sarah. We have one last final segment that we want to go through, and a few questions about the practical application of occupational therapy when working with Homeschool families. And the first question here is, what are some of the ways that ot practitioners can effectively collaborate with homeschooling families to create meaningful routines and address those unique goals that the parents have for their their families?    Sarah Collins     Yeah, I think the biggest thing is, when you're first meeting with Homeschool families that you are asking questions but not questioning. You know, there's a big difference between those two things. And so if you can set up at the very beginning of like, hey, you know, I'm Sarah Collins, I'm the occupational therapist. I'm really excited to dive in with you on, you know, your rhythm of your day. And start with the tell me what that looks like. You know, tell me what your day to day, because it is so different in every single homeschool. You know, the number of children are different, the space that you have is different, which you have, you know, the curriculums you use are different. There's just not a general assumption of what a school day looks like. So you have to dive in and be ready for those types of questions and then work with them on what do you actually need and want from from me the OTs, as I was saying, that we need a lot of collaboration. I still will stay strong with that. But there are families that are like, I have three other kids. I have four other kids. I can't sit here in the office to be ready and waiting or watch the whole thing, and so they need to what's the best way to communicate with you so that we can be collaborating?    Jayson Davies     Yeah, and I was gonna just kind of follow up on that, because you talked about individualized one thing that stood out to me was you talked about there being like you think about a school classroom. I can visualize three different school classrooms. One has 30 kids. One has 20 kids that are all under the age of five or six, and then one has eight kids in a, you know, is labeled as a special education classroom. I'm sure you can think of 30 different type of homeschooling classrooms, if you want to call them that, and they're just all so different, and everything is so individualized. So I like the way that you said that you need to ask questions without questioning, because you are really in the education space, their private life is separated from that public education life. But that's not the case with homeschooling.    Sarah Collins     No, it's not the case. And this question, you know, when you're saying you can picture it in your mind, it makes me giggle, because when we did take my son over for testing and they were offering us to come in partial day for the Wilson reading program. And I just asked her. I was like, Well, what does that question look or what does that classroom look like? Do you know that girlfriend literally told me the walls are blue? And I was like, oh, friend. Like, you know you cannot assume that I do literally do not know what a classroom looks like. Now, granted, I should have phrased that differently, but I wanted to know more of the dynamic, the interaction, the rhythm, the routine, and so we just had this miscommunication that I was based literally on her assumption that I wouldn't know. And so I I had my own kind of negative experience, and I am an Occupational Therapist. I have worked in schools, so it just we have to make sure that we are communicating well. So to go more into that you're right, like every single homeschool is different, and so we just have to make sure that we are asking. The right questions of, how does your environment affect your ability to participate in what you need to want to do?    Jayson Davies     Yeah, yeah. And it can be tricky, I'm sure, right, especially if you're used to a school based OT or public education setting, but to a degree, the individualization of working with a homeschool family, I'm sure, has its benefits    Sarah Collins     Absolutely, saying, like, what happens to the IEP goals? I'm like, well, it's every single part of your day is individualized. You know, it's not even like, I mean, sometimes, you know, I'll keep books or whatever that my older daughter has used and passed down to my son and then passed down to my younger son, but not always. And in fact, this year, my daughter wants to, or she thought she wanted to, she turns out she doesn't, but she thought she wanted to work in the medical profession, and so for her language arts, her junior year, I heard her read books from all different disability communities, and then she was writing papers based on that. We literally created a course based on what she would want to do, and making sure that she could read from all of these different perspectives, so that she was forming not one specific narrative, but listening to voices from lots of different ones. Nobody else has taken that class. We made it up.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, yeah. So that that's gosh, so, because I think when I when I talk to OT practitioners, especially when I talk to OTPs working in the high school setting, one of my favorite things to ask them to do, or to suggest that they do, is to go ask the teacher what the curriculum is because oftentimes, if you want to figure out what goal to write, you should probably need to know what they're actually working on. What does the teacher actually care about? And you've already touched a lot about like, how communication, collaboration is so important, but when you're working with potentially several different families, I mean, in the school setting, maybe we have three teachers at each school that we work with at five schools, 15 teachers that we have to keep in mind, but that same you know, if we have a caseload of 30 kids, that's 30 different teachers, that could be 30 different curriculums. That's hard, but how can we use that individualization, even down to the curriculum, to our advantage when working with a student who's homeschooled, or maybe, do we even care what the curriculum is? But I at the end of the day, everything's individualized. How do we use that to our advantage as an OT practitioner?    Sarah Collins     Yeah, well, one, I think you need to talk to me too. So when you're going to, if you do have questions about these types of, you know, curriculums or whatever, where you're like, is this the best one for this student? I kind of make that my job to to know what is out there. And there are 1000s and 1000s and 1000s. Well, not 1000s, but probably hundreds. I mean, really, if I'm talking with a with a homeschool family, and I'm talking about their math, and I could name off six different, you know, just off the top of my head, curriculums, but not even just like, this one is, you know, in a workbook. And this one uses more manipulatives, but like, here's the theory behind them, you know? So when we are thinking about the individualization, the parents likely know the options. And so what we could be asking, instead of, like, what is the specific curriculum you could be asking, like, what is it that you're doing now within math, or what is it that you're doing now within language arts or whatever, and where are you seeing the struggles? And then we can see if that kind of tracks across different pathways or different occupations, and that individualization is awesome. And so that's where you could come to me and be like, All right, Sarah, this is the curriculum that they're using, and why is that a struggle, or why, you know, what are there other options out there that I could provide for them? And so that's one of the ways I've mentioned a lot that I work with Homeschool families, but I also work with OTs on understanding the homeschool community, but then being able to implement across, you know the areas like OTs working with Homeschool families and homeschool families working with OTs, like, I'm trying to make this beautiful    Jayson Davies     match. Yeah, do you? Do you find that there because you've mentioned that that parents will potentially go through the school, potentially go through a private practice, potentially go through maybe someone who comes out to the home or even nature based. But do you feel like there's still that connection to academics all the time, or does it sometimes actually look more like a medical clinic model type of thing? Because when I think about school. OT, I think about us really being ingrained in the education. But is that always the case with Homeschool, or is it sometimes that parents aren't necessarily looking for that?    Sarah Collins     I think it really depends and kind of on the theory of education as well. Like, there are some families who really kind of do more of a traditional, what you would think of as an educational day, like, these are my specific curriculums. This is kind of our rhythm of going through the day, like we do science and then math and whatever. There are some families that do what we call unschooling, which is where they're really following their child's lead. They're doing life together, and they're just learning in that way. They're finding out what are the children's interests, and then we're going to go that way, that route. In fact, when I was writing the course that I did for occupational therapists, I interviewed unschooler, because that is not our philosophy. And she said, I actually have the quote here. Let me put let me pull this up. Yeah, one of the things she said was, if my child, assuming they were old enough to verbalize, had some sort of delay and was referred to OT, I would ask the child if the delay was causing them distress and offer ot as a support. But I would decline if they were not internally motivated to participate. I would keep the option on the table offered again if I saw the need, and make sure they know that OT is a tool they can always access if they choose to use it to improve their condition. So this oftentimes unschoolers who aren't necessarily worried about a specific developmental progression, they would not be looking for a medical based setting, where we're going to stay, you know, in comparison, standardized testing wise, like, here we are, the developmental, you know, relationship, they're gonna be like, cool. That's nice information to know. Peace out. You know, that's, that's not the thing. But would more likely, I would think, be inclined to go to a nature based where we can encourage development more naturally outside. So it really, I think, I don't think we can say specifically what they would be looking for, but we can say that it's going to be very individualized based on the philosophy of learning, based on, you know, the resources of a family, and based on, you know, their logistics. Probably that's another    Jayson Davies     reason, yeah, yeah, in my head. I mean, there's a few different factors that really pop out. And one is like, when you're talking about public education, you have FAPE, free and appropriate public education, but if the parents don't have access to free and appropriate occupational therapy services, then, as you mentioned, resources are definitely on the in the thought process of going to OT potentially. Maybe there's insurance as a payer, potentially, but not all the time. And so that was one thing that came to my mind. The other thing was that I can imagine some parents, they're the parent, they're the teacher. My guess is there's probably also some parents that don't also want to be the therapist assistant, and they don't want the therapist giving them homework to do with the student from eight to 10am while working on math or something like that. Have you seen that too?    Sarah Collins     Yes, I've absolutely seen that. It is, you know, and this is where I was saying, there are some parents that are like, I'm really excited about this collaboration, and there's some that are like, wow, I really need to be able to drop my son off for a little bit of time and know that he's in a safe spot, and that you're working on some of the goals that I'm doing at home and but I don't necessarily think that I can build in this home exercise program and core strengthening, primitive reflexes exercises and yada yada yada, you know, like, they just don't have the capacity to be able to to add in a lot through their day. But we see that across the board, you know, with every environment,    Jayson Davies     yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, not every teacher follows through with what we give to them, either like that. That's the case when we talked last time, teletherapy was obviously booming for obvious reasons. Is that still a common option within homeschooling. Do homeschooling parents? It wasn't one of the settings that we actually when I asked you earlier, teletherapy didn't come up, but I wanted to bring it up. Is that something that homeschooling parents are using? Or do you find that they prefer teletherapy versus traditional in person therapy?    Sarah Collins     Interesting? I haven't I don't actually hear much about it, as far as, like, when I'm going to these conferences and talking to families and stuff I do. I mean, everything I do is on Zoom, but I'm not doing direct therapy, right? So I do know there are families that are remote. You know, that would be that are kind of far out. There was actually a family that I was talking to at this last conference who was saying, you know, they to get into occupational therapy. They've been on a two, two year reading list, two years, goodness gracious, and so that. And they were then looking at other places, but the next closest place was, like two hours away or something. So they were kind of looking into, what else can we do? And there are a lot of programs within the homeschooling world, as far as cognitive training learning. RX is a cognitive training program that is not remote, but is specific centers and stuff there, and they are owned by homeschooling family. Equipping minds is another one that's cognitive based therapy for visual processing, auditory processing, working memory. I've actually used that program with my own son, and that was developed a research by homeschooling family, and that you can kind of do online as well. So I don't know that people are necessarily looking for teletherapy, occupational therapy, although they might be, but I do    Jayson Davies     know resources, yeah, and it's not something that's coming up, yeah, frequently when you go to these conferences. Okay, yeah. I think we'll start to wrap up here with with one or two final questions. And earlier, I asked you about you know, what happens to an IEP when a student goes from public education to homeschooling? But let's flip that around and assume that a student who has always been homeschooled maybe doesn't have an IEP, but is coming into the school system and maybe has a diagnosis or known learning disability. What advice do you have for the occupational therapy practitioners?    Sarah Collins     Oh, that's really good one, because I want you, whoever you are, I'm talking to you as if you're going to treat my son. We just, I we, I think that we were talking before on this, before we started recording. But my son, next year is going to go to the Philadelphia hockey Academy. So he will no longer be homeschooled. So he is actually the hockey Academy is part has CCA, which is the Commonwealth Charter Academy. So he'll be doing cyber school during the day along with his hockey training. So I've just been working on, what am I going to do to get in to the setting right? And how are we going to take some of these accommodations that I just naturally provide within our home and have it fit into this, you know, educational system? And so as I've been asking myself these questions, one of the biggest things was like, what accommodations do you naturally provide at home? And I think you could ask that question to a parent like for me, he has never really had to do well. He has had to do standardized testing, but this year, I gave him two, I gave him an untimed, and I gave him a timed so that I could have some documentation right to turn in, and the scores were dramatically different. And so I've had to ask, you know, this year, I want to have you know that accommodation for him once we get in, just because I know he visually and auditorily, he just needs more time to process. So I have kind of a paper trail of that, but not every family would. So I think I would ask, you know, what naturally do you feel like you're doing to help your student that coming in here we would need to do? And how do you know that?    Jayson Davies     Yeah, yeah, that's a good I mean. And to be honest, we should be asking that of all of our kids, no matter what, of all the parents. But yeah, I think it's something really to lean in on, though, if you know that the child is coming from a homeschooling family, to know that not only is the parent the expert parent in this case, they're also the expert educator in this space, and to really lean on them for a lot of educational supports that they've been providing. So great response. Cool. All right, to wrap this up, you've mentioned already, actually a few times, about a course that you were working on and building out for a therapist. It sounds like I'd love for you to share a little bit about that and kind of what your hopes and dreams and aspirations, and who's it actually for? Yeah.    Sarah Collins     So I did. I wrote a course for occupational therapists on homeschooling. It's four modules, the first one being kind of, what are some of these facts, statistics, some of the stuff that we dove into today, but also dealing more into even some of the myths and bias that people have against homeschoolers, even down to, like, socioeconomic status and things like that. So we really dive deep into what that looks like. I talk a lot more about the homeschooling theories. You know, we mentioned here a little bit about Charlotte Mason, about unschooling. But even within that, I was saying, you know, unschoolers who are going to come, if you start talking developmentally to them, that's going to be a. Total different ball game than if you're talking about, you know, living educations and your whole atmosphere of life. So the theory actually plays in to how we could interact well with homeschooling families. The third is about research on homeschooling, which there's a lot but and like where OTs can come in, but then the fourth is more on research of occupational therapy and homeschooling, which there's, like one article, which literally we mentioned the last time we were together, and there hasn't been another one. So now there has, I have seen some doctoral dissertations and things like that coming out. So those are in there. But there is not, not much, as far as research on occupational therapy and homeschooling. So that is, you know, the fourth and final module, and then kind of putting it all together of, how can you really come alongside of homeschooling families to be sure that you are meeting their needs and, you know, not scaring them away. Representing our profession really well as well. The whole goal of it was because I was getting so many parents who were coming and were like, you know, the OT is asking me this and this and this, and I'm not going back, and that is not the representation that we want our for OTs. It's also not helpful to homeschool families. And I think the majority of us in this profession are doing this because we want to be able to support families. So let's figure out the best ways to do that.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, yeah. And it sounds like you found a very, a very unique niche, niche, niche, niche, however you want to define it, say it, but it sounds like, it sounds like you have found a place where you really fit into both the OT world as well as the homeschool world. And it sounds like you're helping others to do that as well. And yeah, I think we talked about this last time, right? It's not a huge niche, but there's plenty of space for it, and it and it sounds like you're doing a lot to help them out. So help OTs out, to help homeschool parents out and kids. So that's really cool. That's all at homeschool ot.com right? Yep, homeschool, ot.com you got it awesome. Well, we will be sure to add that to the show notes, as well as that article that has not changed. That one article, yes, yes, yes, we will add that article as well as any other resources or all the other resources that were mentioned during this episode over on the show notes. So be sure to check that out and check out Sarah as well as her course over at homeschool. Ot.com , Sarah, thank you so much for coming back on five years later and sharing all things homeschool. OT, appreciate it.      Thank you so much. Maybe I'll see you again in five years.    Jayson Davies     Let's do it. Set a date. All right, I'll talk to you later. Thank you. All right, that wraps up episode 185 of the OT school house podcast. I'd like to sincerely thank Sarah for returning to the show and sharing her valuable insights on the evolving world of homeschooling and occupational therapy. She has really been a leader within the world of homeschooling and occupational therapy, and I just can't wait to see how she continues to evolve the way that ot practitioners support homeschooled students. Her perspective on both OT and homeschooling gives a very unique window in how we can better support these students and students, and again, I just can't wait to learn more as she learns more and shares more with us, as we've learned today. Understanding the individualized nature of homeschooling and approaching parents as educational experts can make a tremendous difference in our effectiveness as practitioners, whether we're working directly with the students or helping them transition to a traditional school setting. Now, if you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Royal School Based ot practice, I invite you to check out the OT school house collaborative. The OT school house collaborative is where school based ot practitioners can access all the resources, all the professional development opportunities and direct membership from myself. We have so much inside the collaborative, and I would love to have you join us. There you can visit otschoolhouse.com/collab that's C, O, L, L, A, B after ot  schoolhouse.com to learn more and join our community of dedicated school based ot practitioners. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll catch you in the next episode. Until then, take care.    Amazing Narrator     Thank you for listening to the OT school house podcast for more ways to help you and your students succeed right now, head on over to otsoolhouse.com Until next time class is dismissed.  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! If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Google Podcast , Spotify , or wherever you listen to podcasts. Click here to view more episodes of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast

A 4th-grade teacher approaches you and says, "Jaden can tell me all about his favorite book, but when it's time to write it down, he just stares at the paper." You glance at the learning objective on the whiteboard and see why this is important: "Write opinion pieces in which they introduce the topic or name the book they are writing about, state an opinion, supply a reason for the opinion, and provide some sense of closure." - ELA W.4.1 This challenge portrays an academic problem, but with the OT lens , we can often see something more. Maybe it's handwriting fatigue, executive functioning difficulties, a breakdown in self-regulation, or something entirely different. By connecting IEP goals to academic standards , OT practitioners can bridge the gap between OT assessment and intervention and academic curriculum, allowing us to show the IEP team exactly how we support student success in the classroom. Why Link School-Based OT IEP Goals to Academic Standards? In most  states and districts, OT practitioners aren't required to align goals with Common Core State Standards (CCSS), but there are some compelling reasons to consider it: Helps educators, administrators, and families understand our role Makes IEP goals more functional and relevant to school-based (academic) performance Positions OT practitioners as a key player in helping students access the curriculum Encourages greater collaboration with teachers and other providers When done well, aligning with standards doesn't limit our scope. Instead, it actually shows how we can support students beyond just handwriting. Task Analyzing a Common Core Writing Standard Let’s use the standard I referenced above: "Write opinion pieces in which they introduce the topic or name the book they are writing about, state an opinion, supply a reason for the opinion, and provide some sense of closure." - Common Core ELA Standard W.4.1 What This Requires from the Student As you and I both know, one does not simply “Write opinion pieces.” In order to complete an assignment of this nature, there is so much that the brain must take in, process, plan, and execute. To complete this single standard, a student must utilize: Cognitive Skills:  Understanding the writing structure, organizing thoughts, staying on topic Executive Function:  Planning, sequencing, initiating, monitoring progress Language Processing:  Turning verbal ideas into written language Motor Skills:  Holding a pencil, typing, maintaining writing endurance Visual-Motor Integration:  Spacing, alignment, and legibility Regulation:  Managing frustration, sustaining attention, coping with demand Indicators to Look for During the Assessment: As such, when I know a student is having difficulty with a standard like this one, a few things I am going to look for during my observation are: Incomplete or disorganized writing that may signal difficulties with planning or sequencing Avoidance, hesitation, or refusal behaviors that could point to regulation or executive functioning challenges Illegible, uneven, or effortful handwriting suggesting fine motor or visual-motor integration issues Declining quality or visible fatigue after minimal output, indicating reduced endurance or inefficient motor planning Once I have identified the performance areas impacting the student’s ability to achieve this standard, it’s time to go back to the teacher and collaborate on a goal and that the services will look like. Sample IEP Goal Aligned to a Writing Standard Since this goal is tied directly to a Common Core standard, the teacher is going to take the lead on it. As such, it may not look like your typical “ OT goal. ” But that’s okay. Just because a goal does use the words “fine motor” or “sensory” in it, doesn’t mean you cant support it. So, here is a goal related to this standard along with the present levels of performance  and supports that so along with this goal. Goal: Given a graphic organizer and visual supports, the student will write an opinion paragraph that includes a topic, at least one supporting reason, and a conclusion in 3 out of 4 opportunities, as measured by a writing rubric. Present Level: Student can verbally express opinions clearly and articulately about books (oral assessment score: 4/5) but becomes overwhelmed when asked to write. In a recent writing assessment, student completed only 2 out of 5 required elements of an opinion paragraph. Written responses lack organization (scored 1/4 on structure rubric), and handwriting legibility significantly declines after the first sentence (letter formation errors increased from 15% in first sentence to 47% in subsequent writing). Student required 3 prompts to continue the writing task and verbalized frustration ("I can't do this") twice during a 15-minute observation. Supports May Include: Graphic organizers Speech-to-text tools Movement breaks before writing Visual models of paragraph structure OT Services: Direct and (or) Consultation There is never one “right” service. But I often like to combine a direct (2-4 times a month) with a consult service  (~1x month). You may opt for one or the other, and that is okay. Either way, here are some potential intervention strategies that I might use to support this goal from both service model perspectives. Direct Support Examples: Structured writing sessions using graphic organizers Keyboarding or speech-to-text access Visual prompts for sequencing (first, next, last) Sensory regulation strategies before and during writing tasks Consultative Support Examples: Helping teachers implement scaffolding tools Suggesting adaptations like checklists or rubrics Co-creating visuals or sentence starters Supporting behavior plans with sensory input or movement breaks I like this dual approach because I find that it often helps the student to generalize skills across settings and promote carryover. Supporting Other Common Core Standards: A Math Example I get it. That was a writing goal. Easy, right? But what about a Math-related goal? How can OT support that? Let’s break it down as we consider a 2nd grade math standard: "Use addition and subtraction within 100 to solve one- and two-step word problems." - CCSS.Math.Content.2.OA.A.1 This may involve: Visual-spatial awareness (lining up numbers) Executive function (remembering steps) Attention to detail Writing numbers legibly OT Support Could Include: Visual aids to organize problem steps Finger spacing or number writing practice Attention strategies like timers or breaks Graphic organizers for math sequencing Decode and support ANY Common Core State Standard with these 8 steps! While it takes some time, we can decode ANY CC State Standard to its roots and identify where OT can support a child in achieving it. Here are the steps: Read the Common Core Standard closely Take note of the action verbs and expected outcomes. Ask: What is the student being asked to DO? Identify the observable behaviors or tasks. Break the task into observable actions (e.g., write, explain, solve, compare, present) Identify the underlying skills needed to complete those actions: Motor, Sensory, Cognitive, Emotional/Behavioral, etc. Observe the student during a related task Note signs of success and breakdowns in performance. Document which skills are supporting or limiting access Use your clinical reasoning and observations. Collaborate with the teacher to confirm classroom impact Ask about frequency, severity, and impact on learning. Determine whether OT support is appropriate and how it will look Decide on direct intervention, consultation, or classroom supports. Decoding Standards Through an OT Lens Here are words to look for in the standards and what that translates to in “OT-Speak.” Common Core Language OT Skill Areas Examples of OT Support Write, Draw, Type, Label Fine motor skills, VMI, motor planning Handwriting tools, keyboarding, adapted paper, Pre-writing intervention Explain, Describe, Express Language processing, executive function Graphic organizers, sentence starters, regulation strategies Solve problems, Use strategies Problem-solving, sequencing, cognitive flexibility Task breakdowns, visual supports, planning tools Compare, Categorize, Sort Visual perception, organization, attention Sorting tasks, structured templates, visual cues Participate, Work in groups, Engage Social skills, emotional regulation, sensory needs Zones tools, co-regulation plans, proximity support Follow directions, Complete tasks, Respond Executive function, auditory processing Visual schedules, checklists, first-then boards Use tools, Measure, Manipulate Bilateral coordination, proprioception Scissor/ruler tasks, fine motor warm-ups, adapted tools Identify, Locate, Recognize Visual scanning, attention, orientation Desk organization, color coding, scanning practice Present, Speak clearly, Collaborate Self-regulation, public speaking, body awareness Practice routines, posture support, anxiety strategies Practical Takeaways for OT Practitioners Here is what I hope you will begin to do after reading this article. Think functionally.  Standards provide natural entry points for goal areas that affect classroom participation. Start with task analysis.  Break down the academic demand into OT-related skill components. Collaborate early and often.  Teacher input ensures goals are relevant and realistic. Support through layers.  Use both direct service and consultative coaching to empower the whole team. Final Thoughts Aligning school-based OT IEP goals with academic standards doesn’t mean giving up our unique lens. It means applying that lens to the curriculum that students are expected to access every day. When we show how OT supports writing, math, classroom behaviors and OTher academic areas, we reinforce that we’re not just related service providers. We’re educators, too. 📬 Want more support like this?  Subscribe to the OT Schoolhouse Newsletter  for weekly tips, research updates, and evidence-based practices for school-based OT practitioners.

Click on your preferred podcast player link to listen wherever you enjoy podcasts . Welcome to the show notes for Episode 184 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast. Discover the exciting updates and enhancements of the BOT-3 assessment tool with Dr. Elizabeth Munsell, Research Director at Pearson. Learn how this latest version offers updated norms, supplemental scores, and innovative features designed specifically for school-based occupational therapy practitioners. Dr. Munsell explains the key differences between BOT-2 and BOT-3, including new growth scale values for better progress monitoring and specialized scoring options like the Planning and Coordination subtest. She also shares practical insights on how to use assessment results to connect motor performance with functional academic and social participation goals. Join Jayson Davies for this episode that answers your most pressing questions about transitioning to the BOT-3 and maximizing its clinical value. Listen now to enhance your assessment practices and better support your students' motor development needs! Listen now to learn the following objectives: Learners will identify the key differences between the BOT-2 and BOT-3, including updated norms, supplemental scores, and growth scale values (GSVs). Learners will explain how the new features of the BOT-3 can support connections between motor performance and functional, academic, and social participation. Learners will recognize practical considerations for transitioning to the BOT-3, such as communicating its value to administrators and using it in school-based practice. Guest(s) Bio Dr. Elizabeth Munsell began her career path after witnessing the impact therapists had on children with disabilities, inspiring her to pursue occupational therapy. She earned her master’s in OT from Boston University, where she also taught and later completed a PhD in Rehabilitation Science focusing on supporting adolescents with developmental disabilities as they transition to adulthood. Clinically, she worked in school systems and at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital before moving into research, completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab. Her projects have included improving employment outcomes for people with Parkinson’s disease, identifying barriers to work for individuals with disabilities, and exploring technology-based ways to measure community participation after stroke. Today, as Research Director for OT Assessments at Pearson, Dr. Munsell blends her clinical expertise with research to enhance standardized assessments such as the BOT-3, helping occupational therapy practitioners connect motor performance to meaningful participation in school, work, and daily life. Quotes “Using updated tools is the best way to ensure accurate, equitable, and defensible evaluations.”  – Dr. Elizabeth Munsell “The BOT-3 isn’t about just measuring motor skills—it’s about helping us explain how those skills impact handwriting, classroom tasks, playground activities, and participation in school life.”  – Dr. Elizabeth Munsell “OTPs can use the BOT-3 results from that test to make a connection between the body functions and participation.” – Dr. Elizabeth Munsell “BOT-3 as a bridge. It grounds our understanding in motor function so that we can actively link those findings to real-world functional, academic and social participation goals.” – Dr. Elizabeth Munsell “Something that would go really well with the bot is something that looks a little bit more at activities or participation.”  – Dr. Elizabeth Munsell “Reminding your administrators that we do have that responsibility to try to get to the newest test as soon as possible.”  – Dr. Elizabeth Munsell “Our ethical dilemma and our ethics within occupational therapy guide us toward using the most updated assessment tools without a doubt."  –Jayson Davies, M.A., OTR/L Resources 👉 Official Pearson website with BOT-3 information 👉 BOT-2  (Previous version of the assessment) 👉 Pedi CAT  (Mentioned as a complementary assessment that looks at student performance of activities) 👉 School Function Assessment (SFA)  Note: Mentioned that Pearson is developing SFA-2 (early stages) 👉 Sensory Profile 👉 Movement ABC-3  (Movement Assessment Battery for Children, Third Edition) includes a motor performance test and a checklist 👉 DASH  (Mentioned as a handwriting assessment that can complement BOT findings) 👉 Vineland (Adaptive behavior measure - mentioned as being updated) 👉 Q-global (Pearson's digital platform) 👉 Pearson Assessments Website 👉 Elizabeth’s LinkedIn Episode Transcript Expand to view episode transcript Jayson Davies     OT, hello there. And welcome to episode 184 of the OT school house podcast. If this is your first time here, welcome and if you've listened to anywhere between one and 183 other episodes, welcome back today. We are diving into one of the most asked questions I ever receive, especially when it comes to evaluations, and that is, what is the difference about the bot three, and do I really need to upgrade from my trusty bot two? So to help us answer these burning questions and more, I am pleased to be joined by Dr Elizabeth Munsell, a research director of OT assessments at Pearson assessments. She was deeply involved in the developing of this newest version of the assessment. So we know she knows a lot and has a lot to share with us. If you've ever wondered whether the bot two is still valid, how the new norms might affect your evaluations, or how the new and mysterious growth scale values can better support student progress, even when percentile ranks don't budge, stay tuned. Dr Munsell shares helpful insights about supplemental scores that will help you connect motor performance to functional academic and social participation goals, making your assessment data more meaningful for the IEP planning. In addition to that, we'll tackle the big question on your mind, like, how do you convince your administrators to invest in this updated assessment tool, we are all familiar with the bot two, but the bot three is out now. So whether you are a bot veteran or just starting to explore motor assessments, this episode has practical knowledge you can apply immediately to your school based practice. So please help me. Welcome to the OT school house podcast. Dr Elizabeth Munsell,    Amazing Narrator     hello and welcome to the OT school house podcast, your source for school based occupational therapy, tips, interviews and professional development now to get the conversation started, here is your host, Jayson Davies, class is officially in session.    Jayson Davies     Elizabeth, welcome to the OT school health podcast.    Elizabeth Munsell     How are you doing today? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me.    Jayson Davies     Jayson, yeah, thank you for being here. I am very excited to talk to you, because we get so many questions at the OT School House about the bot two, transitioning to the bot three, and we are diving all into that today. So I am excited. But first, I want to give you an opportunity just to share a little bit about how you came to work at Pearson,    Elizabeth Munsell     sure. Yeah, so it's a bit of a non traditional career path, but I started by getting my master's in occupational therapy at Boston University. After graduation, I was working as a school based occupational therapist for several years, mostly in elementary schools in Cambridge Public School District right outside of Boston. I was also doing some work in a community based setting for young adults transitioning into adulthood, and in a rehabilitation hospital. So I was at Spaulding rehab hospital for a while. I started teaching at Boston University in the graduate program for occupational therapy, and from there, I got really interested in going back to school to get a PhD. So I got my PhD in Rehabilitation Science from BU. I worked under Dr Wendy Koster, so she trained me in all things assessment, development related. And then after I graduated from my PhD, I got I went and did a postdoc at Northwestern and Shirley Ryan abilitylab at the Center for rehabilitation outcomes research, so more training on outcomes measurement there. And around the time I was finishing up my postdoc, I saw the Pearson job listed, and was interested in understanding what work would be like in industry, so reached out to the group at Pearson, and everything kind of fell into place from there. So I started working there in January 2023, and it's just a really nice fit with my training. And I love the work.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, that's awesome. And definitely a non traditional ot job. Like, if you tell somebody you're an OT, they don't think, Oh, you must work at Pearson developing assessment tools. But yeah, I'm sure it's a lot of fun. And what's your official role there then?    Elizabeth Munsell     So I'm the Research Director for occupational therapy assessments at Pearson. There's a few or several research directors, and we all sort of specialize in different areas of expertise. And you mentioned having OTs in an industry position being kind of unusual. I work with closely with two other OTs who are in different roles at Pearson, one's in the UK and one's in Australia. So we lovingly call ourselves OTs around the world when we when we meet together at all strange hours of the day for everybody's schedules. But yeah, it's great to have other ot colleagues at Pearson.    Jayson Davies     Awesome. And I'm sure when you jumped in in 2023 You're probably right in the thick of the bot three. Assessment is that right? Like the development    Elizabeth Munsell     of that absolutely. So it was a six year project. I came in about halfway when we were in standardization data collection for the bot three.    Jayson Davies     Wow. All right. Well, I think that is a great transition into this kind of first question here, and that is kind of what. What motivated the development of the bot three? Obviously, the bot two has been iconic for so long in occupational therapy. I never used the bot one. I don't know anything about it. But what kind of led that idea to say, hey, you know what? It's time to work on a bot three. Let's go for it,    Elizabeth Munsell     right, right? So, like I mentioned, I started in my career as a school based OT and like, that's really one of the reasons I followed my current career path, is that I really understood how important it is to have the right assessments in your hand for school based practitioners. And Batu was one of those. I used it in every day, or, you know, often in practice as an occupational therapist. It's really a staple in school settings, and it's been around for a long time, so one of the reasons we went ahead for revision was to update the norms, but also over time, we'd heard from our customers, so those are your listeners, the people who are using the bot in their daily practice. And we heard about several different areas of improvement that people were desiring. So we wanted to address limitations, like outdated norms, the need for more functional and accessible items, the desire for scores to better support clinical practice. And we also wanted to expand the age range of the test and improve the kit equipment. And then the other thing we were thinking about is introducing some flexibility into the test. So the bot three is considered to be a gold standard for motor assessment, but it can take, as I'm sure your listeners know, quite some, quite some time to administer, especially for students who have some significant motor attention challenges. So we really looked to address that also in this revision. Interesting.    Jayson Davies     I don't think any school based occupational therapist uses the entire bot, like there are subtests that more physical or more. I know physical therapists actually use them, so I know we don't typically use all them. I like to use the fine manual control, the manual coordination. Then sometimes I'll throw the bilateral coordination in there as well. When I would use it, is that pretty common from what you've you've seen and heard    Elizabeth Munsell     absolutely so that is actually one of the things that we looked to address, because we know that different disciplines tend to split up the bot in different ways, with OTs primarily focusing on those first three subtests, sometimes doing the other fine motor subtests, which is upper limb coordination, and then PTS would often do the other four gross Motor subtests, and so we do now offer for bot three a total motor composite score as well as your fine motor composite and your gross motor composite, which can be help you kind of use the bot just independently from some of the sub tests. So you can get a summary score for the first four sub tests and a summary score for the last four sub tests that are focused on fine and gross motor respectively.    Jayson Davies     Gotcha, you used the word composite. It's not something we always use when we're talking about assessments, and not something we always use or when we're first coming out of out of grad school and getting into school based OT, I remember being very confused by looking at the bot to scoring for and be like, What is this composite? What does that mean? Can you just kind of give that a definition a little bit of    Elizabeth Munsell     course. Yeah. So typically, how we think about scores on standardized tests is you have your scaled score, which is like the sub test score, and then you combine those scaled scores to make composite scores. So they're composite because they're made up of other scores on the bot, we have two levels? Well, now three levels of composite scores. First are those domain level scores that combine two sub tests at a time. And so we've got two domain level scores in our fine motor section and two domain level scores in our gross motor section. Then we have the next level of composite scores for both fine and gross motor and then all of those come together for the total motor composite score. I also don't want to leave out, like, what I think is a beautiful little easter egg that we could add into the bot three for our OTs in the past. I hope this resonates with your listeners. So in the past, we offered that combined domain level score for the first two sub tests on the bot. And oftentimes people OTs would administer, like I said, the first three. And so what we did is we provided a composite score for just the first three subtests that OTs can now use and report in their documentation, so that they have a standard score that they can align with those three subtests, specifically    Jayson Davies     perfect, cool. And I know we're going to get more into the differences, but I want to kind of not let us get too far ahead of ourselves. We'll get there. You talked a little bit about the process. To what degree were school based ot practitioners actually involved in the process for developing the new norms, or maybe even helping to develop how the test came together? Yeah.    Elizabeth Munsell     So like I mentioned before, I came in halfway through this project, and as a new employee to Pearson, I was just thrilled to see the level of involvement from our actual customers, and in this case, school based OTs on the development of the new revision. They played a really big role in the development of bot three. So besides being led by two research directors who were former OTs in schools, we also conducted focus. Groups surveys and worked with an advisory board that included many school based practitioners. Early on, the outcomes of these activities really helped us determine what needed to be updated for the new test. And then school based practitioners provided feedback on things like new content and scoring, which directly shaped changes to the test, things like reducing reliance on the balance beam, adding more functional items and streamlining administration and scoring. And then when I joined the project during pilot and standardization phases of the bot three many of our field examiners were school based practitioners. The standardization sample included data from a broad range of students across the country, which was collected by school based OTs, and then lastly, ot practitioners played a major role in testing out and finalizing the components of the new bot three before we sent anything out to the printer, these practitioners got an early peek at the new test, and they gave us some feedback about anything that wasn't quite working as we intended, so that we could make sure the test was ready for publication and ready for use in practical, real world settings. Fantastic.    Jayson Davies     Always got to include the people who are going to actually be using the tool Absolutely. All right. Well, we're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, we're going to talk about actually upgrading from the bot two to bot three. What it might look like. Does it have to happen? All that good stuff. So stay tuned. All right, we are back with Elizabeth and I want to talk about that upgrade process. As we know, school based occupational therapy, our districts have limited budgets. Things don't always move as quick as we'd like them to. But what would you say to an OT practitioner who is questioning whether or not they need to make that shift from the bot two, that they already have 50 assessment protocols in their closet, and make that shift to the bot three, right?    Elizabeth Munsell     So I definitely get that it can be a really big decision to buy new assessment, particularly when dealing with the balance of limited school budgets, like any big purchase, you want to make sure that your test is going to add value to your practice before buying it. So I'll say I've had the privilege of talking to a lot of different OTs who've either used or seen the bot three since its release, and overall, our feedback has been quite positive. There's been a lot of cool features that we added to bot three that I do think will add value to your school based practice, but I'll highlight a few of the big ones here. So the first obvious thing is that bot three offers updated representative norms, which is important for maintaining best practice standards and feeling confident in the decisions that you make. As a result of testing, we've also added some new and revised items so we have better floor and ceiling coverage, which that really just means that we get a few new items on several of the subtests that address the really low performing students and the really high performing students, so better spread and skill level on the test. Another feature that's probably received the most attention, positive attention, from school based OTs is the supplemental scores. And so I mentioned one of these earlier, but these are scores that don't require administration of any additional items on the test, but they provide a different way of looking at motor performance, in addition to those core bot scores that we're all used to seeing. So the first is called skilled manual performance, and it's that Summary Score I talked about earlier. It's got fine motor fine manual precision, fine motor integration and manual dexterity together in one score. So we know it's pretty common for OTs to focus on these subtests and their evaluations, we wanted to give you a summarized, standardized composite score for those three subtests. The other two supplemental scores take items from across the test and group them into new summary areas. And so one is called Planning and coordination, and that takes all the items across the full test that have high demand for planning and coordination, and provides a score that is specific to those motor skills. And this is really cool in development. We developed this based on data from a group of people with Developmental Coordination Disorder, and so it's especially useful for individuals with that type of motor profile. The other score is called movement fundamentals. And it takes several of the easiest items across the test and provides a criterion score to describe the student's performance. So something like emerging, developing or proficient in those areas, these are all items that really represent fundamental motor skills, so building blocks for more complex motor skills, and so it's a nice score for students who do have very delayed motor skills, especially because it's a criterion score, and so it isn't norm referenced.    Jayson Davies     Okay, sorry, really quickly, I want to ask a follow up. You mentioned that new kind of grouping that was based off of looking at scores of individuals with Developmental Coordination Disorder? Correct, yes. So what should a school based occupational therapist when they're completing that assessment? Should they only use that subgroup if they're working with a student who has a diagnosis of DCD, or can they still get information using it with all of their students?    Elizabeth Munsell     Yeah? Yeah, great question. So every student's an individual, and so you, and you go into your evaluation with an idea of what you're looking for, right? You have an idea of what have been the challenges and that you've seen function, their functional academics and social participation in school. And so your first and foremost, your evaluation, and what tools you use for evaluation should depend on that. What is the evaluation question at hand? What's the reason for testing? But this planning and coordination subtest because it or supplemental score, because it includes items from across the test, it really doesn't add any additional work. So it's great if you're going to end up giving the full bot to also look at that as a separate domain of motor performance that you could address in intervention or in therapy. You might also have somebody who's particularly difficult to test, which is common, and you may say, I think actually this person does their area of challenge is really more around this motor coordination piece or motor planning piece. It's okay just to pull out those items and give that set of items and get the score just for planning and coordination on the bot three. And so in that way, that is how we tried to add some flexibility. But also, just because it was developed on a DCD group does not mean it's only applicable for a DCD population. I talked to several people when we went to the OT a conference right after the bot three was released, and many of them were saying that they had students who tended to score poorly on the bot, but they didn't really feel like there was one score that could explain sort of the entire like the the nature of the motor challenges. And so what I really hope is that this is a an additional way to look at performance on the bot that might actually answer that that problem?    Jayson Davies     Yeah, I love that, because in my practice, I would always use the fine motor precision. I would always use the fine motor integration. But if I did have some questions about motor coordination, that's when I would throw in. The bilateral coordination test, that's when I would throw in. I mean, I typically did the manual dexterity, but every now and then the upper body coordination of throwing and getting to see, you know, the actual movement you don't what I love about, I mean, assessments, right? We get a score, but we also get to actually see visually, like something that the test can't really pick up. You know, our eyes on the student of throwing a ball. You learn so much. But that's really cool now that there's actually a kind of a little built in sub test per se that helps you to see that    Elizabeth Munsell     exactly, and even just pulling out those items for the clinician to look at and say, Oh, they are having trouble across these items, like maybe it is motor planning and coordination that we should be looking at. In practicality, what that's going to look like, how you were describing that evaluation, Jayson, where you may add in a couple sub tests. Some of our OTs out there are going to have to learn a couple of the gross motor items and administer those to get the planning and coordination sub test. So just keep that in mind. So if you're not administering the full bot, or you and a PT aren't working together to administer the full bot in order to get the planning and coordination score, there are some gross motor items on there, so you'd want to learn those and administer those as part of your evaluation?    Jayson Davies     Okay, that brings up a question. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you can buy one, two, maybe even three, different versions of the bot the gross and fine. Do you have to get the full bot in order to use that one?    Elizabeth Munsell     Yes, you do. Yeah, because you need access to items across the full test. That's the same for the movement fundamental score as well.    Jayson Davies     Okay, sounds good. Thanks for letting us know. One more question about that upgrading process, potentially, are there any built in rules or guidelines to the bot two, bot three, or external guidelines that ot practitioners should be aware of when knowing when to update or if they need to update to a new assessment tool.    Elizabeth Munsell     Yeah, that's the million dollar question, right? It's there aren't really hard or definitive rules on this, but there are best practice guidelines and standards that are put forth by organizations like a ot a or standards for educational and psychological testing, which recommend using the most current, validated assessment that's available. And so in this case, now it would be the bot three since it's since it's released. The reason for that is that using updated tools is the best way to ensure that you're getting an accurate, equitable and defensible evaluation, that you can feel confident making eligibility decisions around because you have these updated norms, and so you can feel confident that the student you're being Comparing to, the norms are reflected there in those norm scores. But in practice, I know that there are several factors that influence how quickly you can make the switch. So generally, Pearson continues to sell record forms for an older version of the test for some time, until we can see that many of our customers have had the opportunity to switch over to the new revision. But what I'll say is just remember that regardless of the version that of the test that you're using, always report and document the version that you're using in your evaluate evaluation reports, which is just, it's super important. For full transparency, and also just to uphold our ethical responsibility to our students,    Jayson Davies     yeah, and two quick follow ups on that. Then when you say identifying which test, that's basically just saying bot two versus just bot and bot three versus just bot. Right, exactly, right. Yes, yeah. And then you also keyed on a big something that comes up, especially more high profile districts, if you want to call them that, that defensible word like that is something that I don't know. I talked to school based ot practitioners across the globe. And for some people, that is a huge concern. They have lawyers at 10% of their IEPs, and defensible is coming up all the time for others. I know that may not be as big of a concern, but as you mentioned, right like our ethical dilemma and our ethics like within occupational therapy, kind of guide us toward using the most updated assessment    Elizabeth Munsell     tools without a doubt, and we do that for a reason. It's important that every so often you go back and you make sure that the norms that you're using to compare your student to are representative of a normative population that your student is being educated in. And that's why we have those updated norms every so often, around every 20 years. But it really depends on the nature of the assessment, what their what domains the assessment is looking at, and so for the bot, it was time for us to do that.    Jayson Davies     Great. And you know what? That's a perfect opportunity for this question, I think, is, how has the normative data been updated, changed? Did you find anything that was surprising? Was it kind of similar? Have anything to share on that?    Elizabeth Munsell     Yeah, yeah. So it is really important for our practitioners to think critically about like the makeup of the normative groups and standardized tests that they're comparing their students performance to. I'll say that for the bot three, the norms are based on a 2021, US Census representative sample, and so they're stratified by age, sex, race and ethnicity, region and educational classification. So that means when we went out to collect data to develop our norms. We made sure that the type of students were collecting data on were representative in all of those ways of the US Census, if you look at the tables in the manual that describes the normative samples from bot two to bot three, you can see that bot three does have more diversity, which is indicative of the more diverse population in 2021 compared to when the bot two was published. And then having, again, like having your standardized scores that are in alignment with these demographics can help practitioners feel a little more comfortable that the student that they're testing is demographically represented in the norms that they're being compared to that's really the key there. So a big change with bot three that practitioners will notice as soon as they sit down to score the test is that we no longer use combined norms. So I'm sorry, we no longer use our sex, sex based norms. We only have combined norms. So we looked at the bot data, and we saw that sex really had a negligible impact on performance at the subtest level. Some people were sort of surprised by that, because I think there was an expectation, because it historically had been part of the bot, that we would see those differences. But honestly, I think it's more of a reflection of the nature of the test items. So for example, you might expect, let's say strength, to be meaningfully different between males and females at the population level. But if you think about and look at the strength items on the bot three, we really aren't looking at measuring extreme levels of strength. The items across the bot three are really more looking at motor skills and that functional level of performance, and we don't really see sex differences in things like strength or other motor skills at that functional level looking at that aggregate sub test data. And so our standardization confirmed that finding and in a lot of ways, it's really nice. It simplifies what we're looking at, because we're just looking at the combined norms for our normative sample, male and female together. The other thing that I'll note that's different in bot three compared to bot two is that, okay, I'll admit this is like, sort of getting in the weeds, but for bot two, the sub test scores had a mean of 15, which, okay, so some people are like, I don't really care, but that's kind of unusual, right? For a standardized test, most standardized tests have a subtest mean of 10, and so we were getting feedback that it was really difficult for people to kind of look across tests and compare somebody's scores. So what we did with bot three is we changed that bot three now has a mean of 10 for our subtest scores, which is great in a lot of ways, but what it will mean is, when you're looking at your bot two and bot three data, you're looking at different numeric numbers on the scores, and so just keep that in mind when you're comparing your student from bot two to bot three, you can do things like looking at the descriptive categories or looking at the percentiles in different areas of performance to help sort of contextualize and compare their performance over time. But that is a difference that you'll notice. Gotcha, okay,    Jayson Davies     thanks for sharing about that. I know when I go to use the bot two, I know exactly what it's gonna look like. I've got my easel book up. I've got my workbook in front of the kid. I've got my block sitting to the side ready to go. Is that different at all for the bot three, are there different tools that they might need same? Does the workbook look different? Does the actual form look different?    Elizabeth Munsell     How's that? Yeah, yeah. So I'll say at first glance, and a lot of OTs that I talked with were very relieved to see this. At first glance, the bot three looks a lot like the bot two. So it is not like an unrecognizable test. It looks and feels very much similar. But as I mentioned before, with a closer look, you'll see that we tried to put in a lot of these clinically useful upgrades to the test. So you know, the test is still going to have your admin easel. It's still going to have record forms. It has an examiner manual. It has a set of manipulatives that come with the test. We also now offer an administration option on Q global with bot two we only had scoring available on Q global. Now we have an administration option, which essentially replaces your record form and your admin easel with something that comes up on your computer screen through Q global. So that is a change, but it's really an addition to the test, because we offer the traditional paper, paper and pencil options as well. Really, the changes are inside the test once you kind of delve deeper into it. So I mentioned those supplemental scores. I also am going to mention something that a lot of OTs have really resonated with, which is a new score that we offer for bot three, and it's called the growth scale values. So we talk we call them gsvs for short. So if you ever hear anybody talking about that, that's growth scale values. I want for a second your listeners just kind of think about a moment in time where they were given a revaluation for a student on their caseload who tended to be lower performing on standardized tests. So and they may feel like the norm referenced tests on the bot didn't really fully represent their improvement over time, because you're comparing them to a normative population. In that instance, I know a lot of OTs will use the total point scores to describe improvement in performance. So they'll take a sub test. You know, you've maybe done it. I know I've done it. You take a sub test score and you report how many points they got last time versus,    Jayson Davies     yeah, they're still in the second percentile, but they've got three extra total point scores.    Elizabeth Munsell     That's exactly right. So the problem is, our total point scores on standardized tests really aren't made to be psychometrically sound and reported that way. Growth scale values are our answer to that. So you can think of them as a psychometrically sound total point score. What's so great about that is that you can then measure intra individual change, so change within the student over time, and it's a great way to demonstrate progress, even for those who maybe aren't showing that progress with the norm referenced scores, that's Wow, yeah. So I'm loving those, and I'm educating people on those as much as possible, and so please reach out if you have questions about that, because I think it's really cool new feature, and one of those that kind of answers maybe some people's frustrations with standardized tests. Yeah, yeah. Beyond gsvs and some of the supplemental scores that I talked about, there are other things that are new to bot two or sorry to bot three, we expanded the age range up to 2511, we have some more items on the test. And you might say, oh my gosh, no, not more items. It's already a long test. But what we did was we looked at the data on bot two data, and we saw that that second trial that's included in several of the bot items, oh yeah, wasn't actually needed. It wasn't making a statistically different score.    Jayson Davies     Always, hold on. I always did it. I always did it. I never left it out. But I always felt like, why am I doing this?    Elizabeth Munsell     Yep, well, so what we know is that it's really about the teaching of the item, right? It's not just about the repetition doing it twice as a trial. It's making sure that the student actually knows what they're supposed to do. And so in previous versions of the bot, that second trial was really like, Okay, you got the kinks out in the first trial. Here's the real thing. But what we found is that most people are just making sure. Most of our practitioners are making sure that they the student knows how to do that item before they're asked to do it, which is exactly right. And so we took out that second trial, and we put a greater emphasis on teaching the task to examinees, and we provide a ton of different supports in the bot three test that help sort of cater to people's different teaching styles and learning styles, so that they can really learn how to do the item correctly before they're tested. So we've got that traditional teaching text. We've got, like, key points to emphasize when you're teaching the item. We have updated pictures that you guys are all used to seeing when you look at the bot, but then we also have these really cool new demonstration videos for each of the items, and those are embedded into our digital administration, but you can also pull those up separately when you're using paper and pencil. Visual version of the test and show your students that. And, yeah, I've got a second grader, and I will tell you, kids love to look at a video. So those are really great. And I encourage people to experiment though with those as a way to really quickly make sure that your student is understanding the item before they have to perform it.    Jayson Davies     You got to make a test for 2025 right? That's right, that's the truth. All right, we're going to take our second and final break, and when we come back, we're actually going to talk a little bit about how to use the bot assessment results to help with intervention planning and within your practice. So stay tuned. All right, we are back with Dr Munsell. Thank you so much for being here, and let's dive into it with this question, how does the bot three better connect assessment results to intervention planning for IEPs,    Elizabeth Munsell     yeah, so I'm gonna talk about those supplemental scores again. Really, we had that in mind when we created those scores. We wanted to give clinicians something that they could really, you know, sink their teeth into and get their hands on for clinical sort of reasoning and moving into intervention planning and so that movement fundamentals, skilled manual performance and planning and coordination, those are all scores that can provide an additional way to look at the student's performance on the test. Beyond those traditional bot scores, they can help us connect our assessment results with the more functional motor challenges that can impact student participation in school. And then I'll give another call out for gsvs, because those are really great for progress monitoring. And progress monitoring and showing the benefit and the students improvement from our intervention is obviously critical when it comes to thinking about treatment planning and what your next step is for your    Jayson Davies     student, gotcha. And would that kind of be, in a way, a similar response to a question on how we're starting to there's just, I can't talk now, there is more of an emphasis on connecting what we are doing as occupational therapy practitioners to academics. And is it those GSPs or the other scores that are helping us to do that in a way, to connect motor performance to functional, academic and social performance,    Elizabeth Munsell     right? So this is an excellent point, and it's also like a question that's very near and dear to my heart, because I've spent so much of my career thinking about participation and how to measure participation and think about participation. And so what I'll how I'll answer that is really bot three is, it is fundamentally performance based assessment, and it gives us a standardized picture of somebody's motor strengths and challenges. And so the areas that we measure on the bot three things like fine motor, precision, balance, coordination, etc, those are the underlying motor skills that can ultimately help support participation in academic and social activities. So then, how do we use this in practice? OTPs can use the bot three the results from that test to make a connection between the body functions and participation. So for example, low fine motor control may help explain difficulties that you're seeing in handwriting or manipulating classroom materials, balance and coordination, can link to challenges on the playground or even social participation on the playground. The bot three isn't a test that is going to measure participation itself, but it is providing that objective evidence base that you need to be able to map motor performance onto functional demands that are in the school, and understand what you need to enable more full participation for that student. So in that way, really think about that bot three as a bridge. It grounds our understanding in motor function so that we can actively link those findings to real world functional, academic and social participation goals that our school based practitioners are really focused on?    Jayson Davies     Yeah, absolutely. I'm gonna ask you a tough question, and to be honest, I might end up editing this out depending on what you say right now. But was there ever a consideration to add a handwriting item to the test?    Elizabeth Munsell     I love this question. So there was we did talk about it. What we ended up doing based on feedback from school based practitioners, from our experts, from people who've been using and developing bot for years, we decided instead of doing something that is strictly handwriting, because we also know that there are so many things that underlie handwriting that are also outside of motor performance. So bot isn't really made to capture everything that goes on with handwriting. So instead, we updated the manual dexterity subtest to include a few more items that really mimicked handwriting, so they gave us a little more ecological validity in those items. We took out the a couple of the first items that were really simple and didn't really tap into, like, some skills that you would need for handwriting. We added things like drawing lines that connect a top line to the bottom line. And so any OT is going to look at that and say, Okay, those are pre handwriting skills. I'm following you there. So we get a little bit more of that, like, closer to a. Handwriting assessment. But ultimately we decided, let's keep this as a motor based assessment, and the handwriting piece, maybe you'll use a tool like the dash or you look at samples of their writing from the classroom to help contextualize what you're finding on the bot. So it's good question, and we definitely did consider    Jayson Davies     it perfect, like I said, I had not given Elizabeth that question on our questions, so I had no idea what the response was going to be. And I'm glad I asked. All right, you mentioned the dash that that people might pair the dash with the bot, bot two, bot three, whichever one they're using. What are some other assessment tools that you've heard from practitioners, or maybe you've used yourself, they kind of go well with the movement test. That is the bot,    Elizabeth Munsell     awesome question. So I think about a couple of things. So like I mentioned before, the bot is looking at more of a bottom up approach to assessment. You're looking at those component skills. Something that would go really well with the bot is something that looks a little bit more activities or participation. And so the couple of things that come to mind for me is the PD cap, which is an assessment that looks at several different domains, and it looks at the student's performance of activities. It's fast, it's quick and easy. You can give it to teachers. You can give it to parents or caregivers to respond to, and it's a great compliment to understand, okay, based on the motor performance I'm seeing and the other pieces of the evaluation that I'm pulling together, what are sort of the high level areas of challenge, obviously, the school function assessment, I got to throw that out there. It is perfectly matched to nearly, I mean, almost any student would be a great candidate for the school function assessment, because it is a laundry list of the things that students need to do to be able to participate in the daily life of a student. And so it's great to be able to contextualize what you're seeing on a motor assessment with what they're actually having challenges with in their day to day, school day that would show up on the SFA another sort of way to look at the person as a whole, and kind of what they're bringing to the activity or the environment is using the sensory profile. So the sensory profile goes really well with the bot. It helps us sort of understand, both from a motor perspective and from a sensory perspective, what is the child bringing to the picture, and then how might we want to adjust their environment, adjust the tasks that they're being asked to do, to better fit or better match that student. And then the last one I'll bring up is the movement ABC. So we just revised the movement ABC three. It has very similar characteristics of the bot because it is also a motor performance based motor test. A lot of times, people will reach for the movement ABC if they want something that's shorter or maybe more honed to a specific age group, because the movement ABC is about 10 items, and it covers three different motor domains, and it has items that are specifically designed for smaller age groups, where the bot you give all the items, and every kid, regardless of their age, has to take all the items. The movement ABC is more specific. It also comes with this really cool checklist that you don't have to do the movement ABC, motor performance piece with. You can just do the checklist on its own. And the checklist is a similarly kind of to the SFA. It has several different areas of real life performance that might be impacted by motor skills. And so you can have the teacher or a parent fill out that checklist to help give you more information that you maybe found on the bot to help contextualize what you're seeing and direct your intervention. Awesome.    Jayson Davies     And we will be sure to link to all those assessment tools so people can easily find them. And I do have to say, I'm sure I could hear them screaming at you, Elizabeth, when you were talking about the SFA, because everybody loves it, but everybody hates that is still asking about using a floppy disk. So everyone stay tuned. We have a special announcement about that coming up at the end of the podcast, so we'll wait until the end. But moving forward, what specific training we're going to kind of talk about the transition process now, what specific training would you recommend to OT practitioners that are transitioning from the bot two to the bot three to make sure that they're using it correctly? I know you mentioned some videos earlier, but how would that look for them?    Elizabeth Munsell     Yeah, all right, okay, you guys have to hear me out on this. I know I'm a little biased, because I make tests for a living, but I do really recommend looking at the new examiner manual, and I mean this even for people who are very familiar and could give the bot two in their sleep. The reason I say this is that even if you've administered the bot two before, a lot what we found is that a lot of the people who are really familiar with the test might skip that part of reading the manual, and then you miss a lot of this stuff that we've included in the bot three to really help you improve your clinical practice, or help you streamline your clinical practice. Like I said, at first glance, you'll look at the bot three, you'll be like, Okay, a couple new items. I can do this. But if you take a chance to maybe look at the manual, you can also practice the new administration on Q global. So go. Ahead and just sign up for an account and take a look at what it looks like on that on screen administration. Get out those administration easels. Make sure you're reading through the Administration section of the manual to better understand, like, what are the new standardized requirements for the bot three? All of those are going to help. We also, at Pearson provide a lot of additional training. You can. We have all kinds of webinars. We have Q global tutorials, we have sample reports, and all of that is on the resources links on the bot three page of the Pearson assessments website. And then you can also always reach out to us if you have any questions about getting to know your new bot.    Jayson Davies     Three perfect. And what about for practitioners who may be you know, covid 19 happened, and a lot of people either a they left school based OT, obviously, they're probably not listening to this, this conversation, but they went and found a hybrid job, or they went and found a teletherapy job, and they just stayed with it, because that's what we do for those people who are providing evaluations over telehealth. Do you have any advice for them? Any wisdom for them?    Elizabeth Munsell     Yeah. So as we look ahead, I can see the bot three really evolving in this way even more. But right now, we do have additional supports, like I said, as the digital administration that's available on Q global, it's a great way to be able to get more into doing an hybrid administration. We also published on the Pearson website telehealth recommendations for how you would administer the bot three in a hybrid setting. And I'll just be very frank, there are some subtests that lend itself really well to that, and there are others that don't lend itself as well to remote administrations. One area, I think, of growth as we look forward with the bot three, as we're trying to keep up with the evolving scene of school based occupational therapy and occupational therapy in general, is that we're looking to identify really the right technologies that can be used so that we can support the aspects of the test that don't lend themselves as well right now to a hybrid model or a telehealth model. I'll put in a plug. One of the ways that we do this at Pearson is the folks who work on ot products are really looking to hear from ot practitioners to understand what their needs are in the clinical setting and how that's evolving. We hold pretty regular OT and PT forums, where we ask questions about what your needs are and try to get an idea of what you guys are thinking about and what ot practitioners want in terms of digital advances and things like that too. So keep an eye out for those, and we'd love to hear from you.    Jayson Davies     Is it logistically sound to say that the bot to when you're reporting it, that it is standardized if you're able to do it over a teletherapy model.    Elizabeth Munsell     So no, we didn't collect any data using a teletherapy model. We did it all in person, and so the standardized procedures are in person, following what we have in our standardization in our manual that talks about the administration guidelines and walks through each item. So if you were to use it in that way, you can always cite the high the telehealth document that we have on pearson.com to talk about the following best practice guidelines to administer it via telehealth. And then, like everything you know, we're flexible in clinical practice, things are not standardized at all times, and so please document that and let people know that I did not administer this as a standardized approach, but I followed the best practice guidelines. And you know, here are the reasons why we can feel confident in the findings, or here are the reasons why we may have to take these findings with a grain of salt and provide a little more information    Jayson Davies     that totally makes sense. I'm glad that there is that additional resource on the website to kind of help us, but that, to a degree, isn't un similar or dissimilar to what we do when we're in actual practice. I mean, I know that there have been times that I put on a report look, I used the bot two, but technically, I can't say it was standardized, because I had to give more instruction. I had to do this. I had to do that. The student needed more practice. La, dee da, dee da, so in a sense, I think it would be kind of like that,    Elizabeth Munsell     right. That's exactly right. And we tried to, sort of, with the bot three, with this revision, we tried to identify some of the places where people were very often saying, like, I couldn't follow a standardized approach. And we tried to address that, or add additional flexibility, like I said earlier, about teaching the items and things like that. But there are always going to be things in clinical practice that just aren't standardized. Things don't always go as planned. People aren't planned. People aren't predictable. People are complicated, and so it is exactly what we would recommend for any time that you wouldn't follow the exact standardization procedures on a test    Jayson Davies     perfect and you can still get so much information from it, so you get so much just by watching, yeah, yeah. All right. But earlier, I asked you a question about, like, why ot practitioners should potentially move forward to the bot three, from the bot two, you know, and we talked about that for a little bit. I actually want to give you the opportunity now to kind of flip the script a little bit and, you know, pretend you're, you are that school based OT, and you got to convince your administrator a little bit. How are you going to do that? How are you going to convince your administrator to spend a few $1,000 on this new test that kind of is already in the closet, just an older version of it, right?    Elizabeth Munsell     Right? So when I think about this question, I really think about it as a question of communicating the value and the quality of the new bot three so in terms of value, OT, practitioners can point to all the things that we discussed today, improved accessibility, new clinically relevant supplemental scores, enhanced progress monitoring with gsvs. Another practical selling point is that it is comprehensive but also flexible. So instead of needing multiple motor assessments, you can you really answer many different motor evaluation questions using the bot three in terms of value and qua sorry, in terms of quality. We talked a little less about this, but there is extremely strong evidence for the reliability and the validity of the new test, which is absolutely critical for a high quality standardized test. You know, I guess this is another plug to look at that manual, because we do a lot of initial validation studies and reliability studies. We look at different clinical populations, and we report all of that in the manual, and the summary of it is that we found that it is very it's it works great in clinical groups. It's reliable on retest and across different raters, and so you can be confident that you're using an extremely high quality test. And then lastly, I think that every ot practitioner out there should try to emphasize that the updated and Representative norms on the new bot three are really essential for making sure that we make equitable, fair intervention decisions and decisions about whether or not people receive services, and so reminding your administrators that we do have that responsibility to try to get to the newest test as soon as possible, and that there's a real reason why those are really the key, the key features for selling the bot three to your administrator,    Jayson Davies     perfect. Thanks. That'll be very helpful for many ot practitioners, I'm sure. All right. Thank you so much for all of your time. Elizabeth, we're going to start to wrap up here, but I have three somewhat I think are going to be fun questions that I want to end with. I alluded to one a little bit earlier that we're going to talk about, but the first one is when you talk to OT practitioners about the bot three, obviously you're excited about that. We can hear it in your voice. But what are ot practitioners most surprised by, most excited by, when it comes to the bot three?    Elizabeth Munsell     Yeah, so I will say it is really I've been thrilled because it's a lot of different features. I will the new supplemental scores really seem to have landed in terms of what we're needing out there, clinically, the GSB seem to have really answered a needed question, a really a needed problem about, how do we show improvement in our students, especially when they're not scoring anywhere close to what would be within that average range for other their norm group. I didn't mention this earlier, and this is sort of maybe, maybe a silly one for some but maybe not. One of the things we did is for the balance beam sub test, we removed the balance beam and so now those are just offered as supplemental items, and you can administer the balance sub test completely on the floor. And that was really answering questions that we heard or, you know, needs that we heard from our users who said, We really need this test to be better suited for people with lower levels of performance. And so that's just an example of one way we tried to address that they and people seem to their backs, seem to thank us, because that's a heavy balance beam, and people seem to like that change the attention to those who really are may have difficulty completing the bot. Two, those are three things that come to mind. But I'd also love to hear from people if they find other things that they're really excited about when they start using the bot.    Jayson Davies     Three, absolutely, yeah. And Elizabeth, really quickly. I still have two more questions, but where's the best place for people to actually get in touch with you    Elizabeth Munsell     so you can reach out to your Pearson Assessment Consultant, and you can find that on our pearsonassessments.com website, they're regional assessment consultants, and they can answer so many questions, and they'd love to hear your feedback on bot three. If you want to talk to me directly, you can always ask them to be connected with me, and I'm very happy to respond to to questions and thoughts about that. You can also find me on LinkedIn. And then I'll just also encourage people, when they're going to find their Assessment Consultant, check out the bot three page, because a lot of the resources that I mentioned today, and even more are posted there. And so we've got some really cool webinars that talk about comparing the bot three to other assessments. And also just. What's new with the bot three and how to use the bot three digitally. And we even have something up there around those growth scale values and those new scores too. So check it out.    Jayson Davies     All right. Perfect. And for the final two questions, how do you see assessment tools changing in the next decade or so? Obviously, we use assessment tools as school based ot practitioners, but you are literally, like, have the power. No, I'm just kidding, like you are the one creating them or helping to create them. Obviously, it's not all your decision. But where do you see assessment tools changing over time? Obviously, we've seen changes the last 1020, years. Kind of what do you foresee?    Elizabeth Munsell     Oh, well, I love that. I wish I had the power. But, you know, I do have the ability to advocate for what I think is the next move in assessment, and in order to do that, well, we like, like to keep our one foot in the door with our OT practitioners and really understand what their needs are. So for sure, we try to advocate for you and what you guys want. Where I see it going. I mean, it would be remiss for me not to talk about AI, right? It's just giant and it's everywhere. And so we're seeing anything from Ai scoring of drawings to video capture, AI motion capture AI for the more performance based tests doing real life, sort of like ambient capture of people's movement in daily life, and developing and deriving ways to score that it is truly Pandora's box of options. And at Pearson, we're really working on, sort of looking through and seeing what will resonate most with our customers and what is also going to be of the very highest quality, because our tests are used in high stakes settings, and we want to make sure what we put out is of the utmost quality. But I'm super excited to see where things go. I feel super fortunate to be sort of on the inside of understanding where we're going with assessments. And yeah, we want to keep bringing new things to you for sure, I    Jayson Davies     just wanted to say I told you so to everyone listening, because I have been telling people for the longest time now that I know Pearson's gonna do something they're gonna have to, like AI is just whatever it becomes, is going to be a way to help us get scores better, get scores easier. And, yeah, I had no idea that was coming, but I'm excited. And it, I know it's not going to come soon enough. That's my biggest like, I wish they could be here now, but yeah, I    Elizabeth Munsell     make absolutely zero promises here, and this is really just my musings on where we could be going in assessment. So you know, don't take my word as like,    Jayson Davies     gonna be Elizabeth, whoever, whoever your boss is, needs to listen to this whatever minute of the podcast and make it happen. All right. Final question, I alluded to it a little bit earlier. Are there any other updated assessment tools coming soon from Pearson?    Elizabeth Munsell     Yes, well, you did give a little teaser on the school function assessment. So we have started. We're in the very, very early phases of development for the school function assessment too. Eventually, you know, we're going to go through a very similar development process. We're going to hear from what school based practitioners want, and we're going to update and get rid of that floppy disk item. Because we put out a survey, and the number one thing people said was get rid of the floppy disk items. So that's heard loud and clear. But we're gonna make other updates to bring that into, you know, 2020 whenever we decide it's time to publish that that thing. But we're so excited, we'll be looking for examiners to help us collect data for the standardization sample of that test. And so, you know, always keep an eye on the Pearson website. You know, when those emails come up in your inbox, a lot of times we're looking specifically for OTs. So keep an eye out for that. And if you would be interested in helping collect data for SFA, we would love to have you. The other test that some OTs may be familiar with and others maybe not so much is the Vineland test, which is an adaptive behavior measure, and so we're working on a revision for that still along, you know, in the very early phases of development. But if you have experience with Vineland, or if you're interested in Vineland, it might be a good time to take a look at it and sort of think about if that could be useful to you, or if you'd be interested in doing data collection for    Jayson Davies     that project. Perfect. To everyone listening, be sure to subscribe to OT squad newsletter, because I see these emails sometimes, and I just like, take their link, take their paragraph, and I plug it into my newsletter to make sure that you know that, hey, they're looking for OTs to help collect data, or, Hey, they have a survey about how to make the m not the infant, sorry, how to make the SFA better. So I try and let you know in my newsletter as well, you can learn more about that at ot  schoolhouse.com/newsletter , with that, Elizabeth, I want to say thank you so much for all your information. I couldn't imagine learning more about. About the bot three, at least for what I need in order to move forward with, with starting to learn more about actually getting it and and using it. So thank you so much. We really appreciate that. Is just pearson.com the best place for people to go to learn more about the bot three.    Elizabeth Munsell     Yeah, Pearson assessments.com and thanks Jayson for having me. I love talking about this. Obviously, I'm like, super pumped about the new revision, and hopefully I'll be able to come back and talk about other tests in the future. I'm, you know, thinking about SFA, so hopefully we'll talk again.    Jayson Davies     Absolutely, that would be brilliant. We'll set a date five years from now. Does that sound right? That's probably a comfortable date. Yeah. All right. All right. August 28 we'll say there. Okay. Elizabeth, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure, and I look forward to staying in touch. Have a good one. You too. All right, that concludes our deep dive into the bot three with Dr Elizabeth Munsell, I want to extend my sincerest thank yous to Elizabeth for sharing her expertise and insider knowledge about this assessment that we all use and really know that we should be using when we need standardized assessments, her insights on the supplemental scores, growth, scale, values, and practical tips for transitioning from the bot two to the bot three are especially helpful to us all. If you found this episode helpful, I would love for you to join the OTs cross collaborative where we regularly discuss assessment tools, intervention strategies and documentation approaches just like this, the collaborative offers exclusive resources, professional development opportunities and direct mentorship from myself to help elevate your school based occupational therapy practice, whether you're struggling with evaluation reports, need help justifying services or just want to connect with like minded ot practitioners. We've built this community for you. You can learn more and join us inside the OT school house collaborative at ot  schoolhouse.com/collab that's ot school house.com/c . O, L, L, A, B, collab. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the OT school house Podcast. I'm Jayson Davies, and I'll catch you in the next episode where we will, of course, continue exploring topics that matter most to school based ot practitioners like you and me. I'll see you next time. Take care.    Amazing Narrator     Thank you for listening to the OT school house podcast for more ways to help you and your students succeed right now. Head on over to otschoolhouse.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! If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Google Podcast , Spotify , or wherever you listen to podcasts. Click here to view more episodes of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast

Click on your preferred podcast player link to listen wherever you enjoy podcasts . Welcome to the show notes for Episode 183 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast. Discover how you can make a tangible difference in the lives of transition-age youth. Jacklyn and Greg Boheler, occupational therapists and co-founders of B3 Coffee, discuss their unique, neurodiversity-affirming non-profit. They share how they've built a multi-faceted organization that includes a transitional employment model and a robust community program to support young adults with disabilities beyond high school. This episode provides invaluable insight into how school-based OTPs can support transition-age youth by focusing on foundational skills and connecting families with crucial adult services. You will also get a look at B3 Coffee's exciting plans! Listen now to be inspired to facilitate meaningful change for your students and your community! Listen now to learn the following objectives: Learners will identify why a "cliff" occurs and recognize the urgency of addressing it by connecting students and families with crucial adult resources and advocating for a focus on lifelong skills. Listeners will understand the significant gap in services and support that many young adults with disabilities experience after graduating high school. Listeners will grasp the occupational therapist's vital role in helping students develop a comprehensive, occupation-based transition portfolio. Guest(s) Bio Jacklyn Boheler, MS, OTR/L Jacqueline Boheler is an occupational therapist and co-founder of B3 Coffee. Inspired by her experiences at UNC Chapel Hill, she co-founded B3 to create authentic, inclusive spaces for young adults with and without disabilities. As the project coordinator for Work Together NC, she advocates for disability inclusion, universal design, and neurodiversity-affirming approaches in the transition to adulthood. Greg Boheler, MSOT, OTR/L Greg Boheler is an occupational therapist, co-founder of B3 Coffee, and the founder of OT for Neurodiversity. As an autistic individual, he focuses on hands-on, occupation-based activities to help others. He works as a high school transition facilitator and has integrated B3's model into schools, helping students build foundational skills through practical projects like a student-run coffee cart. He is committed to challenging ableist assumptions and views his role as a community facilitator. Quotes "But we know that many adults with disabilities, especially if they're not going on to college, experience a huge loss in structure, a huge loss in meaningful day activity once they exit the school system." -Jacklyn Boheler "We know that not every person with a disability wants to work at a coffee shop forever, right? So we do our best to connect our interns on the back end with employment." -Jacklyn Boheler "I view us more as like facilitators for it...so in our role, I feel like, very much as like OTs is...is to kind of create opportunities for engagement and the community is going to show up and it is going to build from there." -Greg Boheler "I'm a big proponent of...the idea of foundational skills, like the roots to the tree, those types of skills, the things that come, they're precursors to participating in everything else." -Greg Boheler Resources 👉 B3 Coffee 👉 Instagram : @b3coffee 👉 Facebook : B3 Coffee 👉 Instagram : @neurodiversity_OT 👉 Teachers Pay Teachers : They have a storefront on this platform with materials for transition-age youth. 👉 ChatGPT 👉 UNC Chapel Hill : 👉 Chapel Hill Public Library : 👉 Bryden Carlson-Giving Episode Transcript Expand to view the episode transcript Jayson Davies     Hey there. Welcome to Episode 183 of the OT squads podcast. I'm your host, Jayson Davies, and today we have an inspiring conversation lined up with two incredible occupational therapists, Jaclyn and Greg Bohler. They are the dynamic duo behind b3 coffee, an innovative non profit that is redefining Community Integration and Support for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Today, we'll dive into the inspiration behind b3 what the 3b actually are and how b3 has now grown into a multi faceted organization that not only serves coffee but also fosters belonging and empowerment through unique programs and initiatives. Whether you're an OT practitioner, an educator or just someone passionate about inclusive communities, this episode is packed with insights and inspiration. So grab your favorite cup of coffee and let's get started with Jacqueline and Greg Bohler.    Amazing Narrator     Hello and welcome to the OT school house podcast, your source for school based occupational therapy tips, interviews and professional development. Now to get the conversation started, here is your host, Jayson Davies. Class is officially in session.    Jayson Davies     Greg and Jacqueline, thank you so much for being here. Really excited to talk to you about b3 coffee. Jacqueline, we'll start with you. How are you doing today?    Jacqueline Boheler      Doing well. Thanks for having us. Awesome.    Jayson Davies     Yeah. Thank you so much for being here. And Greg, you as well. How you doing?    Greg Boheler     Doing awesome. Thanks for having us. Jayson, absolutely.    Jayson Davies     I am so excited to talk about b3 and everything that you're doing over there. I've been following you now on social media for a little while, and it's just every time a new post comes up, I'm like, wait, what they're doing that that's so cool, the way that they're helping students and and especially young adults really kind of transition into the workforce and get everything going. So let's really just kind of dive into that. And I don't know who wants to take this first question, but what inspired you to create b3 and how did that background of occupational therapy influence its founding?    Jacqueline Boheler     Sure I can share about b3 inception. So I was an undergraduate student at UNC Chapel Hill, and I happened to get a job at Starbucks as a barista, and I loved that job. The Starbucks on campus really became a third space for me, so not home, actually. I mean, it was work, but like, it was a space where I would also hang out, socialize, connect with people, study, and it became my little community hub on campus. And at the same time, I was also involved with some student organizations on campus that promoted friendship between people with and without disabilities, and that really got me connected with the local disability community, young adults with specifically intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families, and I enjoyed it in the sense that I got to connect with those individuals and really form those meaningful relationships. But at the same time, I did see flaws in the way that the quote, unquote, inclusive community was being facilitated. So I noticed just how it was contrived in a way, and how there was definitely a charity mindset underpinning a lot of what was happening. So, you know, for many students, this was a resume booster, or this was, you know, something to feel good about themselves, and you have to, like, submit a certain number of friendship updates and go to this many number of events with your so called buddy, which I find to be a slightly patronizing term. And, you know it this is where we are as a society. So organizations like this are needed, but I also know that we can do better. And so I saw the way that coffee can really organically bring people together and create spaces of authentic community. And so I really merged those two experiences and came up with the idea of starting a pop up coffee stand in conjunction with that student organization. So at the time, this was a really small little shindig, just, you know, a folding table that we would pop up on campus, and I knew nothing about, like, quality, brewing methods, and you know, as it just kind of took off from there, especially when covid happened. I met Greg and occupational therapy, um. Um school, or my master's program at UNC, and Greg really helped push it across the finish line, as far as forming a nonprofit and branching off from what was then a student organization, or like a component of a student organization, and really broadening our reach and serving the whole triangle area, so chapel, Hill, Durham, even a little bit of Raleigh.    Greg Boheler      I think it's important to note that she pulled me in with special interests. So we're both neurodivergent, and I love doing things with my hands, like fixing things, cooking, gardening, whatever, do something with my hands. And she was like, the the b3 coffee was a pop up, if we had thing, they had equipment, right? And she was like, this equipment needs to be built, or this equipment needs to be fixed. And so I was like, oh, cool, yeah, I can do it. And then next thing, you know, I'm in, and we're forming ourselves as a nonprofit and and, like she said, that happened right at the time that covid was coming along, which actually proved beneficial for us, because people had this like void in, like what they were doing each day, and like community and like so we kind of moved online that really built up our numbers. And then from there, we started building the nonprofit into what, what it is today.    Jayson Davies      When you when you say you that you moved online. Greg, what do you mean by that?    Greg Boheler     So, because during that time we were so isolated, like everybody was so isolated. I mean, even in OT, we were in OT school, during that time, you had to have one person that you were with, and then, like nobody else, like that was your study partner, that was your person that you were in contact with. And so for a population, the individuals with disabilities, especially like young adults, who are already in many ways isolated and vulnerable, covid really like really emphasize that. So what we did is we created online, Zoom meetings, just social. It's just come in. We've got a topic. We're going to talk about stuff, we're going to connect. Maybe there's online games that we're doing, and the community really responded to that, and kind of it was a good like weekly, bi weekly thing that people could come and connect. Awesome. Jacqueline, go ahead.    Jacqueline Boheler     yeah, during those calls, we would also do a weekly challenge. That's the terminology we still use today, although it's evolved in meaning. But we would have something like do something kind for a neighbor, or do something artistic this this week. And you know that is a challenge to do, maybe a novel occupation, right? And it also was just a simple way to connect week to week. And, you know, have something to look forward to, and today, everyone's busy again, so we've kind of just turned it into a discussion question. So you know, what's your favorite ice cream flavor? Who's your favorite actor, actress, things like that. And, you know, we're, we're still doing those weekly community zoom calls to this day. You know, once neurodivergent people have a routine. We're not letting it go. I think everyone else is tired of zoom, except for our b3 community. We've got, you know, at least 30 folks on those calls every week. So.    Jayson Davies     that's awesome. That's fantastic. Congratulations on getting that going and also keeping it started, but also just congratulations on having built a community for this community. That's awesome.    Greg Boheler     I don't want to correct anything, but like, building a community. Like, the idea of building community, one thing that I didn't realize going in is like, I imagine that it's like, oh yeah, we're building this thing. We don't build it. I view us more as like facilitators for it. The disability community in our area is very strong. There's a lot of, like, cross disability collaboration stuff going on. So in our role, I feel like very much as like OTs is, is to kind of create opportunities for engagement, and the community is going to show up, and it is going to build from there. So I view myself as more of like a community facilitator, rather than somebody who's like, it's not on us.    Jayson Davies     Yeah. I mean, it sounds like that's kind of how organically it kind of came to be with what Jacqueline was talking about, this, this community that already existed. She became a part of, but kind of found a little niche that really even facilitated it even more so, very cool. I know that your model b3 or the b3 model. I should say really, b3 stands for being, belonging and becoming. How has maybe the model or the mission? Has it shifted over the last several years? Has it largely remained the same? How has the growing gone and what has changed around that? Yeah.    Jacqueline Boheler     So fun fact, we actually came up with the 3b before we'd ever learned about Ann Wilcock. But obviously the you know, ot framework has had a huge influence on b3 so many of our activities and our programs that address life skills and community participation are incredibly occupation based and hands on, and we're using universal design and scaffolding activities and doing task analyzes. And I think that's one of the reasons that our the programming aspects of b3 has really taken off, is because of that lens that we're bringing to it. But yeah, the b3 model has changed a lot over time. And Greg, if you want to talk about like.    Greg Boheler     Yeah, I'll provide some context, because you're talking about programming. So initially b3 was just pop up coffee. Is it kind of a catering thing? Somebody can pay for us to pop up, or we would pop up at, like a local town event, you know, to provide visibility, Disability Visibility, and to just get out there. When we became a nonprofit, then covid happened, we realized the social piece, like that's the huge part, is the connection. And how can we we maximize that and and create different avenues from that. So coming out of covid, we had this big social piece that we wanted to do, we had the pop up piece that we were doing, and that's where we went into our other two areas. One of them is a an employment model. I'll let Jacqueline talk about that we have, like a coffee kiosk. It's a very unique model of it's an internship model. And like I said, Jacqueline, you can go into that. And then the other piece, the fourth piece, is educational programming for adults with disabilities. We create curriculum based off of what the popular, what our what our community would like to learn about, and then we have classes.    Jacqueline Boheler     Yeah, so the programming was really created after seeing the cliff, or at that many of our folks experience after leaving high school. So I'd say we primarily serve the young adult age range, although gradually we're recruiting more and more of middle aged and even older adults to be a part of b3 but we really embrace the concept of lifelong learning, so anyone 18 and older to can can enroll in a b3 program. But we know that. You know, many adults with disabilities, especially if they're not going on to college, experience a huge loss in structure, a huge loss in meaningful day activity once they exit the school system, if they have a job, it's very likely that it's a part time job due to a variety of reasons, including income caps on their benefits or stamina or other reasons. And so you know, there's a lot of time outside of that, that part time job, if they have a job where they might be experiencing what we know is occupational deprivation and yeah, our program topics vary from how to take public transit to cooking to emotional regulation to computer literacy. We do lots of needs assessments and kind of whatever our members say they want to work on. We make a program out of it, and we've got a lot of help from field works ot fieldwork students, thankfully, to bring that all to life. But yeah, and then we have, like Greg was mentioning, a transitional employment model out of our kiosk at The Chapel Hill Public Library, and it is an integrated model, so people with and without disabilities work alongside each other in equal but collaborative roles. We have, you know, the barista role, the customer service role, we might kind of tag team both roles, depending on the person's support needs, but it really serves as a launching pad into long term employment. So for the person with a disability, in most cases, this is their first ever work experience and an opportunity for them to build confidence, build some soft skills, and hopefully build skills that will be generalizable to any setting. We know that not every person with a disability wants to work at a coffee shop forever, right? So we do our best to connect our interns on the back end with employment, or maybe they want to just volunteer somewhere, or maybe they just want to increase their community participation. And so we always have a closing meeting at the end of the intern. Internship, where we do our best to connect them with what's next and make sure that they're supported to achieve their goals post internship. And then for the ally, or the non disabled individual who's working alongside the person with a disability, the the internship serves a slightly different purpose, right? So for them, it's pre human service professional training. So we tend to attract a lot of pre occupational therapy students or social work, or any kind of, you know, yeah, speech language pathology. And this internship really serves as a hands on experience supporting the disability community, really, I like to say, an immersion in disability culture and a way to really first hand experience how to facilitate inclusive community. So for them, you know, this is a way to build up their resume and to not only that, but also just to mutually benefit from this space of belonging that we have cultivated at at The Chapel Hill Public Library.    Jayson Davies     That's awesome. Greg, go ahead,    Greg Boheler     yeah, I have a couple notes. Yeah, the internship model at the library mimics what we do with our programming. It mimics what we do with everything, which is we're very much informed by, like a non hierarchy model, people with and without disabilities serve and participate in the same roles. So at the kiosk, our interns are both doing the, you know, the computer, the POS system, and then the drinks. Both of them kind of switch back and forth. So we feel like, especially with our allies, our ally interns, the non disabled ones, or maybe they are disabled, but they're not hired as the disabled interns. They get this preparatory experience before heading into these human services fields of like number one, collaborating with with future clients, right working at the same level. There's no hierarchy. It's removing a lot of the stigma and language that may be used within the disability space, because they're going to go into settings where, where it's just inherently ableist from the assessments we use to the standard procedures and just the words and language that we use on a daily basis. So we feel it's important for all of our allies, whether they're helping with classes, participating in programs or being an intern, to get this neurodiversity like affirming kind of lens as they continue their education.    Jacqueline Boheler     Yeah. So we've developed ally ship trainings that all of our allies participate in, covering everything from disability etiquette to the history of the disability rights movement to current systemic issues that disabled people face, really equipping them with how to advance from the stages of and Greg has this like five part model, but like awareness to acceptance, Ally, ship, accomplish. Ship, right? It's a it's a process of learning and unlearning and making mistakes. And we we think that disabled people so often have to adapt to neurotypical norms. Why isn't it? You know, non disabled people more often having to meet in the middle and learn about disability culture and disability etiquette. So that's yeah, the way we see it is that that meeting in the middle    Jayson Davies     Awesome, yeah. And for everyone, I know this is an audio only podcast, but I encourage you to go over on Instagram, b3 coffee, or head over to the website and and you'll be able to see some of the visualizations of what Jacqueline and Greg are talking about. So be sure to check them out over there. Greg and Jacqueline. As you know, this podcast is primarily geared towards school based occupational therapy practitioners working in the school system K through 12 or K through 22 even for adult transition programs. Have you both or has b3 with you and all the others that support b3 have you had the opportunity to work with high school and transition age students while still in public education?    Greg Boheler     Greg, you can take that one. I have an answer for you. So my nine to five for the past four years have has been working in high schools as a transition facilitator. It's a non traditional ot role. I don't need my license to do it, but what I'm doing every single day is OT. It's occupation everything, and it's, it's essentially writing, working on the IEP to create goals that facilitate the transition into a. Adult life, and then working on those skill areas that individuals will need as they become adults. It's an ongoing process. Whenever I don't feel like I'm fully an adult, 34 years old, but it's just a long journey. But they're skills that are important to develop, and so I've been working in the schools for years. Go ahead with what you're    Jacqueline Boheler     well, talk about the b3 student? Org chapter,    Greg Boheler     sure. Yeah. So, um, one of the ways that I've kind of married the two is that I've brought B threes into the schools and done like, for lack of a better term, coffee cart weekly for our for our staff, it's something that we offer for free for staff to have an order coffee and treats. So what that entails is, like, there's so many things that we can work on, from an occupational stare therapy standpoint, with our students with disabilities, there's the coffee production, there's the sending out, like the service, survey, there's the baking the treats the day before, there's delivery. There's a process when we're actually making and delivering the coffee, of like following the step by step recipes. So there's so many things going on, and it's been a great way to kind of have a little bit of v3 while I'm at school, and also connect high schoolers with the organization before they have that, that cliff, the drop off services when they graduate.    Jacqueline Boheler     And I think it's important to note that this is not just students with disabilities participating, which is what you often see. This is, you know, students who are receiving general education may be neurodivergent, may not be, who are coming into the adapted curriculum classroom and collaborating on the coffee orders week to week.    Jayson Davies     So, so how did that facilitation look like? Or was that already kind of in place? Or did you start like a club on the campus? And that's kind of where the v3 cart kind of is part of that club, or how    Greg Boheler     that happened. So I began it as a club. But the concept of coffee cart and the concept of, like, treat cart is, at least where I'm from, North Carolina. It's, like, really common in the schools. Like, there's a it's something that happens everywhere. So I was like, this is a perfect avenue for us to kind of bring that b3 mentality in. I think it's something that can be done without the b3 branding anywhere like you write a grant, you create the processes and you create opportunities, once again, facilitate those opportunities for engagement with the disability and the non disabled populations working together. Yeah,    Jacqueline Boheler     and it was actually a sibling of a student with a disability, that was our first approach to Greg. Actually, I don't even know if it came from us, but about starting A, b3, chapter,    Jayson Davies     awesome. So this is actually, when you say chapter, it is a club on campus that is a its own entity, but kind of is associated with y'all affiliated. Yeah, it's a student Gotcha. Yeah, that's very cool. And Greg, you say that, like, it's so simple to get a grant and put some processes in place and find some people that want to do this. Like, I think grants are super scary, especially for someone who's hasn't gone over through a grant. Had to do research where they had to get a grant. But I know in the school based ot world, I very rarely hear from people who have ever done a grant. I mean, I've never done a grant for you. Was that scary? I mean, how did you even find out about like, where to go for this?    Greg Boheler     So I found out where to go. Through it, from our from our, like, finance and HR person at the school, whoever pays gives me my paychecks, that that person and so, but I, yeah, going into it. You know, I'm coming right out of school. I had never done a grant, I will say, being a part of this nonprofit in the role that that Jacqueline I have, we're filling out grants all the time. But when I first started in the schools, I hadn't really done any grant work. And so my first one that I did in the schools, I was intimidated by it, and I think that first time, I was like, Oh, I put so much effort into, I tried so hard, got it. I probably put way too much effort into because what I've learned is that a school grant, in comparison to the kind of grants that not like MPOs and stuff are getting, the complexity level is it's it's not even close. The School Grant is much, much more relaxed, much more chill than any any kind of big grant that we're that we're getting as an organization. So I would, I would encourage people to not be intimidated, get an idea, come up with a grant, come up with a budget. The budget doesn't need to be perfect, especially for school grants. If you don't use all the funding, they're they're cool with that. And so like last year, we. Did a cooking grant. We bought some cooking equipment. We bought ingredients every week. We did cooking like we learned recipes and used it with both of the the classrooms in our that are serve our disabled population in the school. And then the year before that, we did furniture refurbishment, right so we have students looking on Instagram and Pinterest, looking up how to, like, refurbish old furniture. I go and I pick up $10 piece of whatever side table. We bring it to the school, and we we do something with it. So if you have an idea, and you you like, you're interested in, kind of like, marrying that, that occupation with, with these, like foundational learning areas, I would encourage people to go    Jacqueline Boheler     first, yeah. And the other alternative I'll mention is PTA sponsorship is one potential route, because that's kind of a Teacher Appreciation thing, right? Yeah. So that I think we followed that model starting out. And also there's chat GPT now, which is really a game changer when it comes to writing grants and coming up with budgets. Not saying, like, write it for you, but definitely use it as an aid in the grant writing process.    Jayson Davies     I highly, yeah. I'll second that one can definitely help you. Help you out there. I just noticed that we've talked, you know, you talked about the four different areas that b3 really helped to support the community. But I want you to, kind of, I want to give you an opportunity to kind of share what the physical location of b3 kind of looks like, and how it is supportive. You talked a little bit about the online zoom community interactions, but And you talked a little bit about the programming as well, but I'd love to just get your sense of what that space looks like and how it facilitates community.    Jacqueline Boheler     Yeah. So we are located at the Chapel Hill Public Library that is our main physical location. However, we also have our programming that occurs at a local church, which is conveniently located across the street from UNC Chapel Hill's campus, and that's yeah, engage UNC students and create that integrated atmosphere, but I love being at The Chapel Hill Public Library for a coffee kiosk, because it is a space where people are organically encountering our members and Not necessarily expecting to have their order taken by a disabled person. So, you know, there's all kinds of inclusive coffee shops out there, right? But with being in a Chapel Hill, in a public library, like no one is really going there to support an inclusive coffee shop, they are going there to pick up their books or to go to kids programming. And you know, it is a very organic experience encountering b3 and I think that has provided an incredible amount of visibility to disabled people in our community because they're in such a publicly facing space, and that is the foundation of breaking down stigma when you are randomly encountering a person with a disability, living, working and equally, participating in the community. And that is just normal, right? And we have different ways of kind of facilitating connection between the broader public and our members, or those that are behind the kiosk. One of those ways is we have kind of, like an occupational profile of each person that is working displayed, and it just shares a little bit about this person's hobbies, this person's interest, fun fact. And the customer will see that and be like, Oh, I really like that movie, too. And you know, it'll stimulate a conversation beyond just the transaction of the coffee order. We'll write out a joke of the day, and our members pick that out. And you know, a kid sees it, and, you know, asks, what's the answer to this joke? And, you know, just creating those organic moments of connection is what I think we've really been able to accomplish, particularly being in such a public space where there's a lot going on and people of all ages and abilities come to the library, and, yeah, I'm really proud of what we've been able to create there.    Jayson Davies     I really value everything that you just said, like, I mean, the idea that the people that are going to be three are not, I mean, the people familiar with b3 are going to be three because it's b3 but so many people, as you mentioned, they're not seeking out b3 they're just happening to find it like the Starbucks that are in every Barnes and Noble then the. Like, you know, you just go and you want a coffee while just checking out Barton double. So, yeah, Greg, go ahead. I know you wanted to add,    Greg Boheler     yeah, that's a beautiful way of putting it. I was just going to talk about the other space that we use. So our primarily, we have our programming. We use a local church. We they have a great space right on campus. It's super it's on the transit line. There's student engagement. It's great. But I feel like for us, it's kind of weird, because really where b3 is, is where stuff's going on, like it's in the community. And that really builds. It echoes what Jacqueline was saying about like, that community integration, that visibility, the random encounters. So we we use, we build off, a lot of existing platforms. If there's a jazz festival going on, we're there. If there's a Pride Parade, we're there. If there's some like, arts event, or what it's something that the town is doing, we're going to try to be there, whether it's just a small group of people going, or we're formally there in, like, a catering capacity, yeah, yeah, capacity, exactly. Perfect work. We like to be out in the community. And I feel like that community integration, that community space, is really one of the primary spaces of b3    Jacqueline Boheler     Yeah, like we started out just doing our own social events, like Valentine's Day party, New Year's party, you know, and it just being a b3 event. And gradually, we've been expanding beyond that. Our members definitely won't allow for us to let go of any of our signature holiday events. However, we've expanded beyond that now, and you know, whatever free public event is happening in the community, we're going to make it accessible for our members to attend, and we're going to create an event page for it and facilitate our members access to it.    Jayson Davies     That's awesome. I love how you're coming at this from not just let's support our members, but let's support the entire society at large to better understand our members and the DIS the disabled community, that that's awesome, like, because you could easily be doing b3 but only be focusing on the neurodivergent community and, like, kind of putting that focus there. But obviously you kind of have thought about this from so many different ways that ot practitioners are so good at doing. So I'm not surprised you've done this, but I love that you're kind of trying to figure out, and you already have, how you can support this from from many different angles that that is awesome. Jacqueline, behind the scenes, off, off audio, you mentioned the clubhouse model, which was awesome because I actually did a level one in a clubhouse down here in Southern California, you know, level one being there for what, one or two weeks or whatever. And so I got to experience that, and very unique, very different from what you think of ever as occupational therapy. Like it's exactly what occupational therapy should be, without all the bureaucracy and money and all that. And so it sounds like that to a degree. B3 is maybe not directly modeled, but influenced by the clubhouse model. So I'd love to let you talk about that.    Greg Boheler     Yeah, we got the idea fieldwork level one. We were in a mental health clubhouse, and we were like, Oh, this is really cool. And kind of backlogged, that idea as something that maybe down the line we could create for the IDD space. It's not something that we've seen anywhere. There may be something on the West Coast, you guys are so progressive and ahead, but, but, but it's something that we kind of logged away as this would be really cool if there was this space for adults with disabilities to come and and kind of just be a part of the day, right? Jacqueline,    Jacqueline Boheler     yeah. So historically, the clubhouse model was made by and for people with severe and persistent mental illness, so it does have pretty rigid eligibility criteria, like you have to have schizophrenia or severe bipolar, and so a lot of our members would not qualify for the clubhouse that is local to our area. And like Greg said, We've never really seen the clubhouse model trialed for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, despite having a very similar set of quality of life needs as the severe and persistent mental mental illness community, yeah, and so that is b3 future. So that is the vision that we are actively pursuing and actually piloting starting this fall. So in addition to our more structured educational programs, we are going to have drop in hours. So this will be kind of a more flexible time that members can come and go as they please, and there will be different activity stations, maybe a craft station or a Game Station, and or you can just go and hang out and listen to music on your phone like it's really going to be very. Member led, and we will encourage members to start clubs based around their special interests, if they want. You know, we're definitely doing D and D club and book club or, you know, whatever our members are interested in. We want the clubhouse space or drop in hours to reflect that. So we are, yeah, really excited to see how this goes. Stay tuned, but because we've really broadened our offering so much beyond coffee, at this point, we will be rebranding to be three rather than be three coffee. So be the coffee is not going anywhere, but will be like a branch of the broader organization three, and then we'll have the b3 clubhouse as the other branch. So,    Jayson Davies     so the clubhouse will be a completely separate, independent location. You guys, are you doing that at a different location?    Greg Boheler     It'll be, it's eventually, yep, it'll be its own location. Got to be on the bus line. Got to be right in the community, where there's lots of things to walk to, the thing that excites us, I think the most about the clubhouse is this organization is it's complex, but it's not complex. It's not complex for us to figure out how to run it and to have these, you know, four prongs. We've got the social and then the catering, and then the kiosk and in the programming, like for me, it makes sense in my mind, it's good, but I can't hand this off to anybody else. This is not like a replicable model, right? We have two neurodivergent OTs running it. We have so many, so much support from the local universities, whether it be our ally interns, or just even even assistance from different programs at the local universities. It's not something that could occur everywhere. Whereas the clubhouse, if we have this happen, and we prove it works, that's something that could occur elsewhere. That's something that in a large urban area would be very beneficial for a lot of people. So that's one of the things that really excites us about it, is we've we finally kind of keyed in onto one of the things that can be replicated from our model.    Jayson Davies     That's fantastic, that's exciting. That's really exciting, I'm sure, for you, for the entire community that you're surrounded by there in Chapel Hill and and in the area that that's got to be exciting. Is this something that members are already actively a part of?    Jacqueline Boheler     Yeah. I mean, they've been involved in every stage of the planning process so far. So we had a social work student do a needs assessment for us and go around interviewing members and their families about, you know, what kinds of activities should we have? And people want a pool table and certain bean bags, and, you know, we'll see how much we've gotten the budget for them. Yeah, and we're hoping to get funding, I'll say, from our local managed care organization. Things are a little iffy right now with Medicaid being under threat. But regardless, we're going forward, and we're going to pilot this at a very small scale, just using the church we already have access to in the fall, and kind of see where it goes from there with with the ultimate aim of being open nine to five one day, and having our own standalone building for all of the community building to take place.    Jayson Davies     Yeah, yeah, wow. I have so many follow up questions. I do want to go back to you, Greg, because I did miss one earlier, and I think this is an important one for the school based ot practitioners, listening and kind of your experience, I think will really help with this. Is, what are some of the skills, especially that in high school, you know, we often focus on academics and school based OT, but what are some of those skills that you have seen are so important to work on, because you've seen it both in the school but also after the cliff. What are some of those things that you really advocate for school based ot practitioners to help their students with?    Greg Boheler     So for me, I'm a big proponent of and I hope, I think this is something we're already doing, but I think it's important to highlight it is, is the idea, like the idea of foundational skills, like the roots to the tree, those types of skills, the things that come they're precursors to participating in everything else. So things like self advocacy, self regulation, executive functioning, things initiation and like problem solving, skills working on like like identity development, that's such a fun thing to do with, especially if you're talking about middle through high school. There's so much going on. These foundational skills, I think, are so important to get, like, get the work underway before individuals leave the school system. And these skills. Are great because they can be worked on while you're working on other things. They can be it should be very occupation focused in how you're doing it. So if you're going to be working on, like, I mean, executive functioning is kind of low hanging fruit here, but executive functioning cooking, boom, done. We're cooking all day, but you're actually undercover, incognito, working on things like attention and focus, and like time management and like following multi step directions and stuff like that. So I'm a big proponent of focusing on those foundational skills, and those are the things that are really going to prepare a lot of people for for accessing those tasks and big mile markers and things that you have to do as an adult that    Jayson Davies     Yeah. And then kind of another follow up to that, more from not necessarily the OT side, but in your role as a transition coordinator, yep. What are some resources that you think every OT or every person dealing with transition in high school? What are some resources that maybe they should obviously, every community is different, but what should they kind of put together, maybe in a folder of resources for our people that are community that are transitioning?    Greg Boheler     Okay, so for emerging emerging adults, some of the resources and services that it's important to get connected with are, I mean, depending on what we're talking about, like what their diagnosis is, what their level of support that is, getting connected with supported employment agencies, getting connected with Medicaid providers, if that's something that They're able to pursue and and get their SSI local organizations and nonprofits is something that we definitely leverage. I've definitely leveraged a lot around here. So we have an amazing database of resources in in North Carolina that I'm able to go on and I'm able to see, oh, I can I connect, connect this family with this resource, because they can get benefits counseling, right, and they have Spanish speaking advisors. It's perfect, you know? So leveraging the already existing organizations and and businesses that kind of do this work is is something that I place a high priority on as far as like, the actual like, tools and stuff that I'm using. I'm not a huge I don't use a lot of standardized assessments. I think you had Bryden on recently, and he's not. He doesn't use a bunch of standardized assessments either. Yeah, nope. But I do gather a lot of data through either taking a standardized assessment and piecemealing it, like taking the pieces that I want to use, or like observation based, like occupation based stuff, right? I get a lot of data from that, and then, before we have a student graduate, we've we consolidate this information into a like toolkit that they can use oftentimes. It's called, like, a portfolio before they graduate. And it has things in it that we've worked on. It has things that come from my data. It has things like resumes. It has things, you know, things that they can use and manipulate.    Jacqueline Boheler     Videos of the student, videos of them working    Greg Boheler     stuff like these are my regulation strategies that I can lean on. These are some of my sensory preferences that I can you know, stuff like that is is great for them to have on hand before graduation.    Jayson Davies     Wow, that sounds. Sounds like your your district has really put some effort and yourself obviously, have really put some effort into identifying this role and really making it something meaningful. Because I don't know, I just, I've worked in several districts. I've talked to OTs around the around the country, and it just feels like transitions are so piecemeal together, and they're just kind of being done because it's required on an IEP, not because it's actually beneficial for students when they're transitioning. And it sounds like that's not the case in your in your area. We    Greg Boheler     are very fortunate in this district to have one of me at each high school. Wow, which is very rare. It's usually one per, like, the entire district. And like you're saying, there's still that, there's still that energy of like, Oh, we got to do, we got to do this transition part on the IEP. But something that we've emphasized, at least, that my team has emphasized, is that the transition section, especially when you get to that high school like level, should guide a lot of the IEP. The goal should be related to these skill areas, these these things that they're going to have to learn as you adapt and and go into adulthood and potentially lose services and have to figure out employment and post secondary education and all these other things, so    Jacqueline Boheler     which is a completely different system, and sadly, a lot of educators aren't informed on how. Exactly adult services work, and you know how early you need to be applying for things like waivers, which give you access to home and community based services. So like here in North Carolina, the it takes 15 years to get off the wait list, at least for services like respite and even in some cases, supported    Greg Boheler     employment, yeah, so depending on where you are, connecting, connecting families, with these big agencies, with these like, you know, statewide things early on is better, because even if they're not going to need the services right now, there are things that can be initiated at any age as they continue their education towards graduation. So    Jayson Davies     wow, that is such thank you for sharing that, because that is something that I know we all think about, but sometimes it just feels like so big pie in the sky thing that we just don't know where to start or where to address it. So I'm glad that you were able to kind of share a few things about it. So awesome. I think we're going to wrap up here today. Greg Jacqueline, thank you so much. But before I do, I want to give you the opportunity to share with everyone listening, where they can learn more about becoming an ally, learn more about even maybe one day starting a chapter, or even just learning more about b3 in general. Where can they learn more about y'all,    Jacqueline Boheler     yeah, so you can visit our website, b3 coffee.org to learn more about the organization. You can find at b3 coffee, actually at the belong, become on Instagram. That is b3 Instagram. And then we have b3 coffee Facebook page. And if you're interested in just general neuro diversity affirming resources and an ally ship framework, then check out. It's neuro diversity underscore. Ot on Instagram, we have this kind of side initiative that, to be honest, like we don't attend to very much, I get that, but you know, all the resources are still there. It's called OTs for Neuro diversity, and we also have a Teachers Pay Teachers storefront with a lot of the materials that we use with transition age youth on there. So    Jayson Davies     awesome. Well, thank you so much. Really appreciate having you on and we'll definitely have to keep in touch to see how b3 evolves beyond just coffee. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having us all right. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the OT school house podcast, and a big thank you also to Greg and Jacqueline for sharing your time and energy to share the b3 story. I hope you found our conversation with Jacqueline and Greg as enlightening and as inspiring as I did. What they are doing is just fantastic, and it's actually something that I really want to do, kind of in my home town community, supporting that transition age youth is something that has always been like the top of mind for me, and it goes back all the way, you know, to my pre ot days. But really want to support, you know, those 20 year olds, 30 year olds that are trying to transition, or even, you know, 1819, teenage, teenage year olds, if you want to call them that, that are trying to make that transition from school into life. So Jacqueline and Greg, their work with b3 is a testament to the power that the community can have, especially within the disability community. So again, thank you so much for tuning in. And if you're interested in learning more about b3 coffee, or the larger b3 initiative, be sure to visit their website at b3 coffee.org and follow them on social media as always. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review and sharing it with your friends and colleagues. Or if you'd like to get even more resources related to school based occupational therapy, be sure to check out the OT school house collaborative, where you can get courses, resources, research, reviews and even live mentorship, our calls with myself over at ot  schoolhouse.com/collab , Your support helps us to continue bringing you valuable content, and we appreciate it every single day. So until next time, keep making a difference in the lives of those you serve and take care. I'll see you in episode 184 Bye, bye.    Amazing Narrator     Thank you for listening to the OT school house podcast for more ways to help you and your students succeed right now, head on over to otschoolhouse.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! If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Google Podcast , Spotify , or wherever you listen to podcasts. Click here to view more episodes of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast