OTS 110: Common Core left Handwriting Behind!
- Jayson Davies M.A. OTR/L
- Sep 25, 2022
- 48 min read
Updated: Nov 3, 2024
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Welcome to the show notes for Episode 110 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast.
School-based OT practitioners are not handwriting teachers! However, handwriting is often the most common reason for referral.
In our chat with Debra Collette today, we are discussing a recent article where she surveyed teachers, administrators, and therapists on the missing pieces of handwriting in schools. Ten years ago, common core began to take over school standards, but the standards neglected to include handwriting. Tune in to learn how common core standards have impacted handwriting and how you can support students and teachers in implementing a handwriting curriculum.
Tune in to learn the following objectives:
Learners will identify the connects and disconnects between the common core curriculum with handwriting
Learners will identify the impact common core has made on children’s written expression
Learners will identify how common core and handwriting can impact OTPs
Learners will identify what OTPs can do to support curriculum and handwriting on a systems level
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Guest Bio
Debra L. Collette, OTD, OTR/L
Debra Collette is an Associate Professor and Program Director at Russell Sage College in Troy, NY. She was a school-based OT for 18 years with experience in K-12 and Assistive Technology. Debra has presented findings through AOTA and NYSOTA and has published them in AJOT and OTJR. In addition, she is an instructor for the AOTA Fieldwork Educator Certification Program (FWECP).
Quotes
“Teachers don’t get handwriting instruction in their college or academic programs” Debra Collette, OTD, OTR/L
“We have this set of common core standards that tells us what we should be doing in education. But because there is nothing specific to handwriting, it's easy to set it aside and not think about it again” Debra Collette, OTD, OTR/L
“40 minutes in a week is really not enough… we practice for musical instruments, or we practice for a sport, we have to put a lot more time in than just 40 minutes a week. So that foundational component of handwriting would be much more beneficial if it was a greater number of minutes per week” Debra Collette, OTD, OTR/L
“As we type more and more and as high stakes testing is turning towards a typed response versus a written response… there's also research out there to support the fact that motor skills of learning handwriting, support that overall type response to if you know it, you're going to be quicker at the type response” Debra Collette, OTD, OTR/L
“The teachers benefit from seeing it, and the child benefits from being able to be successful in that classroom in front of the teacher,” Debra Collette, OTD, OTR/L
“...pick a few that you're strong at and that you feel good about, representing where a child's strengths and challenges are within. If you don't understand the language behind an assessment, is that worth giving?” Debra Collette, OTD, OTR/L
Resources:
Handwriting assessments:
Episode Transcript
Expand to view the full episode transcript.
Amazing Narrator
Hello and welcome to the OT school house podcast. Your source for school based occupational therapy tips, interviews and professional development now to get the conversation started, here is your host Jayson Davies, class is officially in session.
Jayson Davies
What is happening in school based occupational therapy practitioners. That is a mouthful. SB, OTs, what's happening? Thank you so much for being here for another episode of the OT school house podcast. We got a lot of great things going on at the OT school house right now. Some I can talk about. Some I just can't let out of the box yet. But we had a great, a wonderful, fantastic, ot school house, back to school conference at the end of August, and we are just building off of that momentum right now to bring more content, more opportunities for you all to interact. That may be a little hint, but I'm just excited for you all, for the OT school house, for all the students and the teachers that we support as school based occupational therapists, and I know that you just like myself, we are making a difference in the lives of students and also the teachers that help us to support the students, or we help the teachers support the students. So I'm excited for everything going on, and I'm also excited for today's chat with Deborah Colette, today, we are talking about a hot topic. We're talking about handwriting, more specifically, handwriting within Common Core. It's like a hot topic within a hot topic. You know, people either love it or they hate it Common Core. And likewise, people love that OT is within handwriting and also hate that OT is within the field of handwriting, or maybe it's reversed, that handwriting is within ot but you know whether you love it or hate it, it is not untrue that the most common reason for referrals for us as school based OTs is handwriting. Now there are a multitude of reasons for that. We're going to dive into that today with Dr Deborah Colette, and you know, it's going to be a good chat. You know, there's going to be some things that you full heartedly agree with. There's going to be other things that make you wonder, what the heck is going on with education these days. But this is going to be an episode that is going to help you. You're going to get a lot of language that you can take back to your staff, to your administrators, and say, Hey, why isn't handwriting in Common Core? And what can we do about it? So that's what we're here to talk about, Common Core handwriting where they mesh, where they don't mesh. And yes, so we're going to dive into it before we do here are the objectives for today's episode. This is a professional development episode, so you can learn how to earn a certificate of completion for listening over at ot schoolhouse.com/episode 110 and so let's go over our objectives real quick, and then we will dive into it. We have four objectives today, and those are that you will be able to identify the connects and disconnects between the common core curriculum and handwriting. You'll also identify the impact Common Core has made on children's written expression. You'll identify how common core and handwriting can impact occupational therapists, and you'll learn you'll learn how to identify what occupational therapists can do to support curriculum and handwriting on a systems level. So it's going to be a good one. We're going to address handwriting and Common Core and occupational therapy. Now I would love nothing more to introduce you to Dr Deborah Colette. Deborah Colette is an associate professor and program director at Russell Sage College in Troy, New York. She has actually been a school based occupational therapist for 18 years before moving into the academic role that she holds now. She has presented findings through a OTA as well as the New York State ot Association, and has published them in the Asia ot as well as the OT Jr In addition, she's also an educator for the A OTA field work educator Certification Program, also known as the F wecp. I haven't yet taken that one, but from what I understand, it is definitely something to consider if you are taking on field work students. With all of that said, please help me to welcome to the OT school house podcast. Dr Deborah. Colette. Deborah, good morning. Welcome to the OT school house podcast. How are you doing today?
Debra Collette
I'm good. Thanks. How are you?
Jayson Davies
I'm doing fantastic. It's, you know, to be completely transparent and honest. You know, not everything is great. And you know, we were a little bit behind today. I had to wait for my mom, my babysitter. There's traffic, but she's here now, and we are good to go. So I really appreciate you being here. It's a pleasure, and I'm excited to talk to you about common core curriculum and handwriting. Before we do that, though, we're going to dive into your article. We're going to do a really deep dive into it, but before we do that, I'd love for you to share a little bit about yourself as an occupational therapist. Maybe I. Just where you are physically located and what you've been up to.
Debra Collette
Okay, so I am a faculty member at Russell stage College. I am the program director of the master's and newly accredited occupational therapy doctorate programs at Russell stage college. I taught in pediatrics for several years, and now I teach in research as well. So I have a couple of articles out there, and I'm working on lots of other things. I was a school based practitioner, though, for 18 years while I came into academia. You're my doctor in 2011 at Rocky Mountain University, and my bachelor's from Utica College in Utica, New York. And so here I am.
Jayson Davies
Awesome, and so, so did you say that you earned your doctorate at the school that you're currently working at, or were they two separate schools?
Debra Collette
No So, Rocky Mountain university I earned my doctorate at, and I I teach at Russell Sage College in Troy.
Jayson Davies
Okay, there we go. Gotcha. Thank you. And you mentioned you have several years in school based practice. What was that like? How do you enjoy that experience? And yeah, just tell us a little bit about that experience.
Debra Collette
So I I was not interested in working with children when I first got into ot I worked in rehab in New Hampshire for a short period of time, and ended up moving back to New York and found a school based practice job near my home, and loved it fell in love immediately. I really enjoyed working with children, teachers, administrators, families, within the school based setting. I really wanted children to have success, and I think that I helped many, many of them get there to feel that little bit of success that they were struggling with outside of their struggles in school. So that was my motivation for staying and then I met a couple of wonderful women from Russell Sage college and taking field work students at that school. And through both of them, I kind of ended up getting my doctorate and coming into academia.
Jayson Davies
Wow, wow. It's always amazing how we end up where we are today, and so that sounds like a wonderful journey. You mentioned that you're kind of in charge of some research now, and you have a few different things in the works. Would you mind sharing with us, other than just the article that we're talking about today, what other things are you interested in, research wise, and what's going on?
Debra Collette
Sure, so response intervention is one of my favorite things to talk about, and it's one of the future directions I would like to go. I think that it is implemented so differently in one local schools, but two across the nation. I think there are some people who do it very, very well, and we could all use some advice from them. And I just think that from a New York state perspective, I would like to head toward like state board or our nysoda organization, and really work to get RTI a little bit more consistent across occupational therapy and school based practice.
Jayson Davies
I love that. I don't know if you've listened to one or 100 episodes of the podcast, but I am a big believer in RTI, you know, I've been using the, I don't know, it's not an acronym, it's a little metaphor, I guess, you know, going upstream. And I call going upstream using RTI to prevent those downstream evaluations, or even the students that just, you know, we can support them earlier, sooner than later, and going upstream to support them may help them down the road. And so you're preaching to the choir. I think most people that listen to the podcast love when we were able to talk about RTI, and they they are really interested in starting up ot within their school's RTI program as well. So who knows? Maybe we'll have to have another another discussion with you later down the road on RTI, especially if you have more research coming out about that, that would be fantastic.
Debra Collette
Sounds good. I don't have research in the works now. It's, it's on my next of Things To Do List.
Jayson Davies
All right, we'll give you, we'll give you three years.
Debra Collette
Sounds good.
Jayson Davies
I know that's not very long when it comes to academic research time. But
Debra Collette
right and right now we're really looking at, I do have a study out right now looking at the effects of child development from COVID, how children are managing school. Now, preliminary results state that, you know, it's children are struggling. They had a year of doing different things than what they were doing in school. So we're continuing that. And I also do some field work educator research, so.
Jayson Davies
Wow. Okay, awesome. That's great. Well, let's go ahead and dive into this article a little bit. The the title of the article is it from 2017 handwriting and Common Core State Standards, teacher, occupational therapist and administrator perceptions from New York State Public Schools. And this was published in the Asia OT. And I guess you know, obviously you have a background in school based OT, but what drove you to specifically look into common core and handwriting?
Debra Collette
So Common Core came out in 2010 was implemented in 11 or 12, and forgetting the. Actual academic years that it was implemented in. But it just seemed like while their guidelines and they were very well intentioned, I think that it added a lot of stress to teachers based on the guidelines, the very strict things that that the Common Core Standards were asking for. We teach a lot to standardize tests, high stakes tests for schools, it's aid driven, and I think the common core standards really stressed a lot of people out in schools. Added a lot of components, but didn't remove any components. So as an occupational therapist, looking at the increase in referrals during that time, it's also the time I was earning my doctorate, so I was really paying attention to what was happening. Was happening. We seemed to get an influx of referrals for handwriting, and I really felt it was because teachers were now not teaching handwriting as much in the classroom, response, intervention, I think that we I ended up supporting a lot of teachers in the classroom with classroom based instruction using several different programs and modified programs. But it just made me think that I wanted to look a little deeper into what really is happening.
Jayson Davies
Gotcha. Absolutely and you know, before we get too far into this, I don't think I have this in the in the notes, so I apologize if this is a difficult question, but I know that there are some states that have kind of they switched to Common Core and they've decided to go against it. I know here in California, we do use common core. It sounds like in New York, you use common core as well, but I know that there have been some states that have almost pushed against it a little bit. And I'm just wondering if you have read up at all in understanding why that is the case, or maybe what some of their reactions are?
Debra Collette
I don't actually know, the states that don't have it was one of my future directions, actually, in this article, to really look at the states that are not using common core. And I never did circle back to it, but I think Common Core is a great concept. It's a great thing to have guidelines for schools to go by. You know, when we have some schools that are very highly driven academically and have high academic standards, and some schools that are maybe a little bit lack space, I think it's appropriate to have specific standards across the nation. I don't know the difference, though, between the states that are rolling it out versus the states that have New York state specifically revised, I think Common Core in general was revised in 2017 right when this article was coming out. But there's not a ton of difference in what that is. There's a couple more developmental perspectives added to it, thankfully. But other than that, I haven't seen a ton, but I also haven't looked deeply into it.
Jayson Davies
Yeah. Okay, awesome. And then kind of a following up with that, you know, I came into the school based ot world around 2012 and you said the shift for Common Core was when, again?
Debra Collette
It was developed in 2010 Well, I think it was really rolled out in 2010 states were really starting to roll it out into their schools in 2011 2012 and, You know, speaking with some people in education leadership, their perspective is that it's the implementation of it that was the challenge. It was rolled out. It wasn't really widely educated. Teachers were not necessarily educated in how to best this, and so therefore it was left to a lot of interpretation of states and then local districts to roll it out the way they saw fit, and it was just confusing. I think there was a lot of push to meet higher standards without a lot of guidance as to what do we let go of then.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, and I know that is that's still struggle today. I think my my wife's an assistant principal, and she goes to PLCs with all of her different grade levels and and trying to get them to teach the to the standards is still struggle, even today. Where I was going with that was that I was coming into the world in 2012 which sounds like it's right, as Common Core was just kicking off. I think I probably started hearing that word Common Core probably closer to 2014 2015 is when I really started to understand what it was, for those of us who have not been a school based ot for more than a decade, 10 years or so, what was in place before Common Core?
Debra Collette
So looking at curriculum prior to Common Core, I think I didn't. I wasn't taught about instruction in school, neither was I in school. So I had to learn. I had to go and speak with the teachers about what is it that they're teaching. So I would go to the kindergarten, first grade, second grade teachers ask them what their curriculum was figured out, what levels of reading, writing, math, production, participation, they were at. They followed standards. This was back when state testing came out, and they were teaching to high stakes testing. So I worked closely with teachers to find out what they were working on. I can't say it's 100% different than Common Core. Common Core, though, I think standardized curriculum across the country so that it. As what was happening in New York was similar to what was happening in Florida, California, Texas, Minnesota, you know, so things were kind of consolidated and more consistent.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, yeah. And again, we kind of alluded to it earlier. I know some states are going like, kind of going back against common core, and I don't fully understand the reasoning about it. I'm sure that there. I'm just going to say it out loud that I know right now there has been a lot of political debate over what is taught and not taught in schools. I don't know if that has anything to do with it or if it's something else, but either way, you know it, I like the idea of having it kind of a universal standards. You know, if you're in Arizona, if you're in California, if you're in Washington, New York, whatever the kids are being taught the same thing. And I think part of that was that you had kids moving and something might have been a standard in the third grade for one state, that might be a standard in second grade at another state. And so if they transferred after their second grade year, then maybe they didn't get whatever it was that was supposed to be taught in third grade, I don't know, but yeah, yeah. So.
Debra Collette
I actually had an example of that one of my mentors for when I first became an occupational therapist working with children in school settings, she was taught, I think, in her original school, she was supposed to learn cursive in second grade, she moved in between. I think I'm saying it back, but she moved in between, and she missed cursive teaching, so she learned how to write cursive. So when she was working with children in school based practice, she has to teach herself right in cursive. So she could teach cursive, you know. So it is true, different different different grade levels in different schools and different states, teach different things as all of the concepts for, you know, character building and social skills, social emotional learning, all of those things came in, we get this build up of all of these things that we have to teach in schools. We have to teach more and more and more consistently. And I think the Common Core really gives us that guidance as to what are those basic skills, but they're missing that single component of handwriting.
Jayson Davies
Gotcha, and you know what? That's what we're going to dive into. So you know, every good research article that comes out, or any research article that comes out, good or bad, typically has a literature review. And I know we've already dove in, or we've Devon, am I a dove? I don't know. The we've already looked at the Common Core. We've talked about that a little bit. But when you were doing and the team was doing the the literature review for all this, was there anything that you found that you didn't know before that comes to your mind, or was there maybe something that you were looking for that you couldn't find? Does that make sense? What did you find out during that literature review?
Debra Collette
It does through my experience and my observations of children and teachers. I really wasn't surprised by any of the information out there. I think the research articles supported what my assumptions already were. You know, in working with children. I saw the children who struggled with handwriting. I saw the teachers who did fabulous jobs with teaching handwriting and wanted ot as a support to just follow up with the little things. I saw that in the research, I saw the curriculum, the handwriting curriculum that were out there and that teachers were using. I saw it be successful. I also saw again, teachers struggle with it when all of these other curriculum requirements were being added. So when I looked at educational articles on handwriting, I saw those struggles. Danica wrote an article. I believe it was Danica who had information in there about teachers don't get handwriting instruction in their college their academic programs, you know. So I don't think anything surprised me, but I wanted to add to that too, so I article is helping at least some people understand a little more.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, that Donna article is one that I referenced too occasionally as well for that same reason. So thank you. And then on the flip side of that, you know you things made sense for what you saw, but was there anything that you were expecting to find, maybe from research. Obviously, every time you you dive into research world, you're you're answering a question. Your question was handwriting and Common Core was, what was the mesh or the disconnect. Was there anything that you were hoping to find that you couldn't find during your literature review?
Debra Collette
I was really hoping to find something out there developmentally that told me how much I needed to be teaching handwriting, and how do I support handwriting instruction in schools? I had a conversation at one point with an instructional technology director who said they're not even teaching typing anymore because kids are learning a keyboard through texting and through gaming. That's very different. Correct, very different. And I was like, you can't take this stuff out of instruction. We still have to learn it as a developmental skill, and if you just put it in there at the beginning. And then practice it, you know, a little bit each day, until you get good at it. Then we all have that basic skill. So I was hoping for that Common Core doesn't, didn't give it back in 2010 and it still doesn't in 2017
Jayson Davies
Gotcha. Yeah. So then Common Core, it sounds like it lost its place, or handwriting lost its place within Common Core. You know, I remember learning to handwrite back in elementary school, and I think many of us do. But why do you feel that you mentioned, you know, texting and whatnot? Why do you feel that handwriting has lost its place within Common Core? Why do you think maybe those who develop common core didn't focus on handwriting, and this may be a research backed question that I'm asking you, or may just be a be an opinion.
Debra Collette
It's anecdotally, I think that it has that skill has just gone by the wayside. And it's while some people still believe in it and teach it, they do it because they know it's important. And other it's not a, maybe a forethought to education. You know, when I look at the standards of even in pre kindergarten, that students have to use a combination of drawing dictating oral expression and emergent writing to talk about familiar topics. That's a lot for pre kindergarten, and there's writing in there, but there's not that development of how do you write? Yeah, talk about math and numbers. There's all sorts of counting things. There's all sorts of use of the hands to count, and what does it a number mean, and what does it represent? And then, how do you use it? We've forgotten that with letters. I think it just needs to be put back in a basic level of education.
Jayson Davies
Yeah. And I think too, my opinion on this is that when I look at the common core standards, you see that word right? You see that word right? They will write. They will write, they will draw. But there's nothing to kind of show what writing means, because there are so many factors that go into writing. A kid, a preschooler, a kindergartner, will write, well, like, okay, are they going to write a sentence? Are they going to write a word? Are they going to like, what are we really expecting them? Are we expecting them to copy a sentence or to write from their own head a sentence? I mean, those are very different concepts, and when you understand that as occupational therapists, and I think that teachers would appreciate that more specificity, I guess, you know and understand like, okay, when the Common Core kindergarten standard says write, what they're really talking about is copying near point, copy from the board or whatever. So, yeah, I think that's a difficult area with Common Core.
Debra Collette
Right, right. And that structure of writing, that that motor skill, with the cognitive component of what I put on paper, what I draw on paper, the more I practice that motor plan, the easier it's going to be for me to be able to express my actual cognitive thoughts. And then I can function in school. I can participate in in activities and be good at it and feel successful at it.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, good thing. Schools have occupational therapists. We can, we can help them out with these things.
Debra Collette
Continue to do that?
Jayson Davies
Yep, yep. All right, so obviously, we're talking about the article. We're talking about handwriting, Common Core, the connections, the disconnect. But what were some of those key questions you wanted to answer with this study?
Debra Collette
So I wanted to look at the present instructional strategies that teachers were using for handwriting under the background of Common Core, I wanted to look at what supports were offered for handwriting in schools. And then I wanted to look at the impact Common Core made on children's written expression. Overall.
Jayson Davies
Awesome. And so what was, what was the methodology? How are we going to how are we going to do this?
Debra Collette
Yeah, so we did a survey and interviews. So we set up a survey. The survey had, I don't know, a lot of questions overall. I think it was over 100 questions total. I was
Jayson Davies
surprised by that. I think it was like 121 or something like that. Is a lot of questions.
Debra Collette
something like that. But when you look at the survey, the survey, not one person answered 121 questions. So every person answered demographic information to figure out who's answering what, and then there are about 10 to 15 questions, depending on the title of the participant, as to what number of questions they were answering. So principals answered about 10 questions, teachers and occupational therapists answered about 14 or 15 questions.
Jayson Davies
Gotcha. Okay, so there's kind of broken down into what your role was, and that makes sense. You're not going to ask administrators what they're doing in the classroom for handwriting, because they're not doing anything in the classroom for handwriting. Got it. Gotcha. All right. And so you had this survey. Was it a was it developed by the team? I'm assuming the survey.
Debra Collette
So the survey came about because I read an article in 2006 that Asha Asher had written, and she had done a survey regarding handwriting, and I loved the article, and contacted Asha as I think all authors would love to be contacted about the research, and we revised the survey so she had a team of researchers, students at Xavier University, and. And I had mine here at Russell H College, and we revised the survey to be more directed towards common core questions and handwriting instruction. Once we were done with that, she was in, she was heading on to the next, her next direction in life. And I took the survey and ran with it here and put it out to New York State educators, principals, occupational therapists and curriculum instructors or directors in New York State.
Jayson Davies
Awesome, great. And so you sent this out to it was within New York, New York State, all of New York State, right? It was Yes, all right, awesome. And so how did you get this out to everyone?
Debra Collette
So our survey was done on Survey Monkey, and we looked at the New York State Education website. We pulled it was over 600 schools that we pulled all of the contact information from. So we developed a master list, which, of course, changes every year as teachers and principals move from place to place. So it's never consistent. So we use that website to send out over 600 surveys, survey requests to specifically those people in New York state. So we knew that it was only going to people within New York State. And then from that, we got 100 we received 131 responses.
Jayson Davies
That's not a bad response rate, one in six. No, not bad at all. Was there? Was there any incentive?
Debra Collette
There was not incentive. Wow. Even better, yeah, yep, just please answer our questions, because we're interested.
Jayson Davies
Awesome. And so you had about 121, 21 I think it was
Debra Collette
131.
Jayson Davies
Do you kind of just have a rough breakdown? Was it? I could see occupational therapists being really eager, and maybe administrators a little less eager to to respond. What did that look like?
Debra Collette
So we actually had 33 principals, 24 occupational therapists, 62 teachers, two directors of curriculum, and eight special educators. So yeah, one of our higher numbers is actually principals, which is impressive.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, and when I when I hear you talk about when you say those numbers in my head, that kind of makes sense, given the amount of OTs that are within a state versus the amount of teachers that are within a state, like you're going to have more teachers because there are more teachers, you're going to have a little less administrators because there are less and then same thing with directors or coordinators. Of course, you're going to have less of those because there's only one director per district, potentially, or something like that. So that makes sense. All right, cool, great. Well, thank you for that. I guess the next step is to really start diving into some of the results and the data, and so I don't know where you want to start with. What were some things that came back?
Debra Collette
Well, what came back is that there's not a consistently used handwriting curriculum, and I think, well, there doesn't necessarily have to be using one to begin with. Is important, you know? So we have this set of common core standards that tells us what we should be doing in education, but because there is nothing specific to handwriting, it's easy to set it aside and not think about it again. So if you have that curriculum in front of you, you have that workbook, even though, you know, not a huge proponent necessarily, of worksheet, worksheet, worksheet, but if you have that curriculum, you can at least embed it into everything else that you're doing, you know, on a consistent basis during the week.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, and I'm looking at the the table that you have here, and just for those who are listening, we've got, I think 20% responded that they used Handwriting Without Tears, 16.7 use fundations. 13% Zainab sir, 6.7% other and then 43% none Correct. That's telling.
Debra Collette
It is very telling. Keep in mind, though, with those results, some of those teachers, well, they were K through two teachers at that point, and there were 30 of them who responded. So that's, you know, maybe they were second grade teachers that didn't, weren't necessarily working looking at that person or and weren't teaching cursive. So there could be a reason that they weren't using a material or curriculum per se, but it is still, it's challenging to know that there are teachers without not a background curriculum to support them.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, and the other thing, I mean, I know from my own, you know, reading of articles, that when it comes down to it. It's not necessarily that one program is better than another. It's just that you need to have a program, and even if it's your own curriculum for handwriting, that is probably okay, but you need to have structure. And going back to kind of our conversation about common core, right? Common Core was supposed to make everything standardized from California to New York. I also think it could be tricky if you know your kindergarten teachers using handwriting without tears, and then your first grade teachers using foundations, and then your third grade teachers using the Size Matters program, that could be very confusing for for kids. So.
Debra Collette
Language even. Of you know, top to bottom, left to right. The you know, the language of the directions of forming letters. Where do your letters sit? What do you call those lines? You know, what do you call the dipper letters? That language, if you don't have a consistent language across a school? And again, you talked about children moving from school to school too. There's a lack of consistency within the language of how letters are even formed.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, yeah, definitely. So that's the the difference between potentially handwriting curriculum you also had in here, different time spent per week about, I'm assuming that information mostly came from teachers, the amount of time that they're spending per week on handwriting. What did you resolve from from that?
Debra Collette
So most people were teaching a very small amount of time, 30 what? So less than 40 minutes per week was one response. About 10 minutes per week was another response. A curriculum director stated that it should be taught 30 minutes times two sessions per week when it's instructed, so as you're learning those instructional components. But then for the practice sessions, it could be, you know, 15 minutes, three times a week, which still is not very much, as children are learning the skill. So I'm thinking, you know, k1, two, and children are really looking at learning the development of writing and becoming more proficient at it, and then, as they progress through first and second grade, getting smaller handwriting, quicker handwriting, more words on a page and paragraph organizing. You know, all of those instructional pieces should be a little bit more than that, and 40 minutes in a week is really not enough. When we think about the if we practice for musical instruments or we practice for a sport, we have to put a lot more time in than just 40 minutes a week. So that foundational component of handwriting would be much more beneficial if it was a greater number of minutes per week.
Jayson Davies
And by chance, did you guys talk at all, or did you have research from before that talked about kind of, what is that recommended amount? I don't know what likes I don't know what some of the programs recommend. Do they recommend? You know that daily 15 minutes? Or what have you seen?
Debra Collette
Yeah, 15 to 20 minutes. I think he had running without tears as 20 minutes per day. Site, I know size matters, is out there. And I was listening to the podcast about had done with you recently. And I don't necessarily know those components, but I know when I was in school working with kindergarten, first grade, second grade, I would try to get in there at least 20 minutes, a couple times a week to assist. And, you know, many teachers were very welcoming. Other teachers are like, I got this, I can do this. And other teachers sometimes pass.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, yeah, no, that's that's how it is. That's definitely how it is. Okay? So we've got different handwriting curriculums, we've got different amount of time spent. I'm assuming that a lot of that information came from teachers. What did we learn from maybe some of the other people involved in the survey? You had teach, or you had administrators, you had OTs, what were some of the information you got there?
Debra Collette
So principals didn't realize that handwriting was was necessarily a problem. They didn't realize that the teachers weren't teaching handwriting. So that was definitely one of those surprising factors. They knew that it was in the curriculum. They didn't realize the disconnect necessarily between common core and the decrease instruction of handwriting as that was being rolled out. Okay, handwriting was still still occurring.
Jayson Davies
So they just figured, you know, there's no there's no common core we aspect to handwriting. There's nothing that says teachers have to teach common or handwriting within Common Core. We are telling them to follow the standards, but at the same time, they should also be teaching handwriting. I just think that's a little comical.
Debra Collette
And it is, and without that explicit statement of, well, keep teaching handwriting, it can certainly go by the wayside. And with everything that teachers have to teach, I also wonder there's a lot.
Jayson Davies
Absolutely and that's what exactly common core is telling you to teach this and this and this and this. And if you're constantly being told to teach this, then you're going to stop teaching other things that you might have usually taught in the first month of the school year. So yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, all right, and so that's what kind of some of the administrators, did you find anything surprising or shocking or relevant from the occupational therapy providers?
Debra Collette
No, just that they would typically, I think most tried to use response, intervention kind of components to go in and support from a classroom perspective first, and then pull children either work with them on the side of a classroom, or pull them out of the classroom to work with them on handwriting. Referrals did seem to be increasing, but I think in general, the OTs certainly supported what was seen with the decrease in instruction through teachers. So I think. Are very familiar with handwriting curriculum. I think OTs were, and I don't think I have this in the article, but I think OTs in general, tend to be those people who go in and make all those modifications for paper, for, you know, providing strategies, giving out those pencil grips, you know, supporting, supporting the teacher, but also the student for that success.
Jayson Davies
So, and what you just kind of alluded to is what an OT might do to support. Did you have some questions embedded in there, like what a teacher might do if a child was struggling, and maybe what some of their answers were? Did they talk about reaching out to an OT, or did they have some general strategies that they would use by chance?
Debra Collette
So one of the, one of the flaws of our study was the fact that we asked about handwriting instruction and not specific instructional perspectives. So we didn't add ask specifically about what handwriting instruction do you do, what supports you give? I think the teachers did say that they would, you know, they would modify timing, they would modify the lined paper. They would give a pencil grip or a different type of pencil if they had one otherwise. The OTs also gave all of those supports when the teacher was was at that loss.
Jayson Davies
Awesome, great. All right, we talked about the majority of the participants. And I don't know that there's an answer to this, but you talked about having one to two coordinator directors. Did you guys gather any data from that, or was it worth looking at, or what?
Debra Collette
From the instructional the curriculum directors?
Jayson Davies
I think so. Yeah, you talked about some sort of directors. I don't know what position they might have been in, but yeah.
Debra Collette
So we call the director of curriculum in this study there. So I think typically the director of curriculum, they are interested in, how do we make education better for children? I think that's just their nature. So the one response that I put in the article was the fact that they believed there should be a specific amount of time per week that is dedicated to handwriting instruction, but that position is few and far between. There's usually one or two per school, if that. So I think that that person, while they're supporting the handwriting instruction, also has to support the remainder of curriculum in general, but the two that we had as part of our study were absolutely in support of keeping handwriting instruction as a practice time.
Jayson Davies
Well, it's good to hear. You know, it's not just us as OTs that are kind of banging our banging our fist on the table saying we need to have it there. It's other people within education that are saying it as well. Correct. Awesome. All right, you do have a topic within the article called The impact of Common Core on children's written expression. And I think as OTs, this is one of those things that we know, and it sounds like maybe it's something that your other other educators also know. But what are some of those downstream impacts of writing that not teaching handwriting at the get go can impact?
Debra Collette
So I think if we don't teach the handwriting skill, the motor components of writing don't get embedded in that motor plan for a child, they end up drawing the letters instead of truly writing the letters. They're not as fluent in their writing, so that makes them a little slower. It makes their thought process a little more challenging. So when they have to add that cognitive component of the writing, what they want to say to that motor act of writing, that combination ends up being a lot harder. Graham was one of the authors who I have quite a few articles in my literature review portion from Graham and his colleagues, and they really talk about that fluency, the timing, speed of writing, and how that affects the child's performance. If you choose samples of handwriting and you have, you know, they could be exactly the same content, you have a messy sample, and you have a very neat sample. The neat sample is going to get graded higher by that by the teacher than the messy sample, because it's just easier to read. And yet, the feeling of those students as they're writing those samples is probably the student who's writing messy is probably much more stressed. So there's that, you know, that child understanding and lack of feeling successful when they're practicing those writing skills, too.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, yeah. And like you said, you know, kids get graded per se on their legibility, and that could impact their overall grade on assignment, even if the knowledge has been learned and expressed, the legibility could bring down the grade for me. I know I to this day, I still have terrible handwriting, unless I really put effort into it, I can write nice. But for me, I just want to get things out as quick as possible. I'm someone who's very, very time. I always like to save time. You know, it's like, do you do I turn right at this light or the next light? Which? Which lights gonna save me that 30 seconds? And that's how it is for me with writing, too, and it always has. And my writing has always been messy, and I think that there's so many various factors that go into handwriting, but at the same time, we are very much judged by our handwriting, whether it's nice or not, and that fair unfair, you know, it is what it is. And I think as all of us, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, I don't want to call it talk, but there's a lot of just understanding, you know, we have to start to understand ourselves, our own biases, our own what we what we do, what we don't do, and why we make those decisions. And as teachers and OTs and educators as a whole, we have to understand that as well, and we have to know that, you know, just because a student's giving us handwriting that's not the neatest doesn't mean that they're not smart or, you know, those don't connect. And I really liked what you said that student that does have the messy writing. It could mean that they're stressed. It could mean that they're rushing. It could mean that they're focusing on the content over what my handwriting looks like because they're afraid that they're going to run out of time. So there's so many different things that that could mean.
Debra Collette
Right? And with high stakes testing, too, the teacher who teaches the child all year long is not necessarily a person who is grading that child's writing sample, you know, so someone who's not familiar with that student does not understand what that child's trying to say because their handwriting is messy. Is also on a one to four rubric, or 04 rubric is going to score a lower score based on the messiness of that handwriting. And it does not mean that that child is not intelligent. It doesn't mean that that child doesn't have a lot to say and that it's perfect with that child saying it just means it's messier and was graded differently. So that's that is a challenge too, of supporting all of our students regardless of what that handwriting looks like. Typing definitely comes into play with that. I think that as we type more and more, and as high stakes testing is turning towards a typed response versus a written response. That may help. But there's also research out there to support the fact that that motor skill of learning handwriting supports that overall typed response too. If you know it in handwriting, you're going to be quicker at it with the typed response.
Jayson Davies
Interesting. That's, I know that there's research about, you know, the remembering factors when you write them versus typing. I know often there is that motor memory, or whatever it is, the motor aspect to writing can help you potentially retain more information when you write it down, as opposed to typing something out. I don't know if there's newer research on that. That was a while ago, but that's interesting to see that if you can write out things, then you're likely going to be able to type out things as well. Is that kind of what you said?
Debra Collette
It is. And I don't necessarily have evidence to support that, but I know in my experiences of working with with children who needed to use a type, needed to type rather than write, because their writing was just that challenging, they were not necessarily better typers, their responses were not necessarily longer. So that would be a really cool study to look at in the future, you know, to see if that was the case. But I know we are all fat with typing than we are with writing at this point, because we've practiced it for so much for so much time, but I think kids were learning to write. It's tougher.
Jayson Davies
Sorry. I'm laughing over here because I I always say that there's a reason I have a podcast and not a very active blog. I am terrible. My writing is not neat. I probably type at about 25 words per minute, which for many of you, I know, that is like terribly slow. And I know for some people that's fairly fast, but for a lot of people, I envy the people that can, like, type 100 words per minute and have a conversation with me at the same time. I'm like, How are you doing that? But those are also the people that have the nice writing like my wife does. So there we go. All right, I do want to talk a little bit about how this research can impact occupational therapy providers. But before I dive into that, I want to give you one last opportunity. Was there, was there anything that we missed that we didn't talk about today, about the research, anything that shocked you, anything that just came to light, or anything that we just missed?
Debra Collette
I just, I want to just make sure that I convey the fact that OTs are there to support teachers in school. You know, we are very collaborative. We can provide a lot of solutions. It's important for us to check in with teachers to make sure whatever strategies we're providing is something that that teacher can actually follow through with in support. My favorite thing to do is to go in and teach with the teacher in those activities, the handwriting activities, whether it's, you know, practicing cutting skills, if they have a class that's challenged, or whatever, to be a direct support to that teacher and and be there with them, rather than hand them some things and have them follow through, because teachers just cannot do one more thing. So Right? I love that a bit. Ability to do that. And I feel like the teachers who took this particular survey felt that the OTs who were coming in and assisting them were doing that.
Jayson Davies
That's great. Actually. I, I am a big proponent for getting outside of the OT literature, as you did for this instruct, for this research, too, you had to go into the education world and do research. And I did that as well. For a recent presentation I gave, and I found articles from teachers that were talking about working with OTs. And you know, like 65% wanted more time with their OTs to learn more. And one thing that really stood out to me was that what they felt was a facilitator, was when the OTs came into the class and showed them how to do something, modeled it for them and their aids, and they it was a quote, unquote, you know, turn off, or lack of a better word, if they didn't do that, if an OT was just telling a teacher something to do. Then it wasn't something that they wanted to hear. They really wanted to see the OT in their room working on that skill with the student so that they could observe it, see how to do it, and then carry it over the next day, the following day, the next week. And so, yeah, we definitely need to get into the classrooms. I think it's okay to do something with a student outside of a classroom, you know, pull them out and work on something. But then once you have that skill down, once the kid has that skill down, then transition into the classroom, you know. And you know, you taught Billy how to write a few letters outside the classroom. Now let's go into the classroom. Let's do it in the classroom where the teacher can see exactly what verbal cues work, what prompts work? What, whether it's behavioral or sensory strategies, what works for that student in the classroom?
Debra Collette
I 100% agree with that. I think the teachers benefits from seeing it. The child benefits from being able to be successful in that classroom in front of the teacher, you know? So you do
Jayson Davies
that. That's big. I like that. I like that, right? The the student benefits. Sorry, I want to make sure everyone heard that the student benefits from the teacher seeing that student being successful in the classroom. Absolutely.
Debra Collette
You know, a lot, some of the kids that we see in OT Haven felt a whole lot of success. So when we teach them to do something successfully, we bring them into the classroom and we set up those opportunities for success. The teacher sees it, the peers see it, you know that. And then the child feels that level of success, and you know that makes them motivated to continue working towards more success.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, yeah, absolutely Sorry, I keep saying we're going to jump into the next part, but occupational therapy providers, you surveyed them, was there any questions related to like, Do you have a role in handwriting curriculum in the in the school, or anything like that? Or was it more of just, how do you support the teachers?
Debra Collette
I think it was more, how do you how do you support well, how do you support handwriting in general? Let me just take a quick peek at the at the questions for OTs, how does your role as an occupational therapist support handwriting instruction in the classroom? What is your philosophy on handwriting instruction? Common interventions that you use? So that was in the article, the adaptive paper, pencils, etc, the handwriting. Yeah, so I think I'm not answering your question, but no, I support the how to support teachers.
Jayson Davies
Okay, yeah. And I think the only other thing that I might like to see again, for anyone looking to do their OTD or their PhD is, how are OTs even going beyond supporting teachers? But are OTs going above that step to the next level, are they potentially working with that curriculum director to potentially do something? Because I think OTs we kind of we work side by side teachers, and I think in a way, it's great, obviously, but it also limits us if we're not able to get to the next level and have those conversations with the directors on the importance of of handwriting, on the importance of sensory just related to the classroom and other areas that we have knowledge about that could help all students, not just the students that are struggling and we're getting called in to ask for and so I would love to see again, for anyone out there looking for a project. How are OTs working with the next level up, the next administration, basically, how are they working with administrators? Or are they, I think that'd be great to see.
Debra Collette
Yeah, I agree with that. I think OTs need to embed themselves in the school culture overall, not just with children and teachers, but with administration. Administrations should know who you are. You should be able to advocate for budgeting items, to be able to support children in classrooms after school programs, you know, I think, to be known by all of the people who work in a school, faculty and staff and administration. Our cafeteria workers knew us because we would go in and we would see children. In and around their their meal times to make things either more fun or to support with a snack. All of the faculty and staff knew us because we were in multiple classrooms. Our administration knew us because we attended meetings. I think it's important to as an OT to embed yourselves in in every part of the school culture that you can.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, absolutely. So going in, and we'll wrap this up with a little conversation about how OTs can take the knowledge from what we talked about today and move forward with it. And we've already done that a little bit, but I like to break up the process of occupational therapy within education into three kind of main categories. I know there's larger there's more to it, but pre evaluation, which can kind of be like systems levels, RTI type of stuff, the evaluation process, and then even interventions itself, you know, after the evaluation, working with students directly. And so if we look at those three areas, let's start with that pre evaluation, the systems level, what would you like to see a takeaway for occupational therapists? What can they do to embed this the knowledge that they have now about curriculum and handwriting? What can they do at a systems level?
Debra Collette
One know what the curriculum is to have conversation at grade level meetings of what is the curriculum that you're supporting. What is it that the children are struggling with within that curriculum? Get some support from administration to be able to do some sort of response to intervention where you're working with either a grade level or classrooms. So again, as you had said, working with all children, we benefit every child, and then identifying those kids who need a little bit more help from there. So that's what I would say from the system. Would say, from the systems.
Jayson Davies
That's great. And before we move on, I don't know how familiar, familiar you are with Every Student Succeeds Act. I know it just came out in 2015 right around the time you're putting all this together. And we talked about the rollout of of Common Core, maybe not being the best. And now we're seeing that again, I think, with ESSA. And you know, within ESSA, we are identified as specialized individual support personnel, SASP, but that's supposed to support all educators, or all of education, not just special education, which is kind of where our role has been for the past 3040, years. But again, we're just seeing that that poor rolled out from administration and how we can support all students. And I think that that RTI, that MTSS roll out, is something that we need to be a part of. So thank you absolutely. And now, so that was the the pre evaluation. Let's talk about evaluation, and maybe even the IEP, you know, goals, services, putting services together. What do you think we should take away from this article that can help us with both the evaluation process and maybe the the IEP, the planning of services process?
Debra Collette
As far as evaluation, I think that evaluations can take a really long time if we allow them to. I think that we need to streamline, you know, those, those key assessments that we know are going to identify what we believe the problem is, become proficient at those so that we're rolling them out very quickly and writing them up effectively, really looking at what are the strengths, what are the weaknesses, or the challenges of the child, and then how would you, as the OT support them, and be very clear and concise in how we put that On paper, but also to follow through with that, with our services that, I think that takes us into the intervention piece too, sorry, of really being direct with the number of not the number of children, the types of of issues children are are showing, you know, obviously you've mentioned sensory we've mentioned handwriting. You know, what are the types of things that we can work on. How can we support from a systems perspective, if there are several kids, maybe in a classroom or grade level, how do you get the most bang for your buck? OT, and then advocate from, you know, a perspective of, how do we support the children who have those major the bulks of the problem?
Jayson Davies
Yeah, but I can ask you a question about Sorry, sorry, save that last part again?
Debra Collette
Just streamlining evaluation, getting really good at it.
Jayson Davies
And I know you're not currently practicing, but you were a school based ot for a long time. Can I ask you maybe what some of your common go to assessments were, whether related to handwriting or otherwise?
Debra Collette
sure I appreciated the evaluation tool of children's handwriting, handwriting, oh my goodness, the ths test and handwriting skills. The Minnesota is a very quick one. I think for me, it depended on how much time I had in the grade level of the child as to which I was going to choose. I think I tended to use the ths more, the Tesla handwriting skills more with kindergarteners, and then the etch Valuation Tool children's handwriting with first and second graders. Typically, I appreciated the Peabody developmental motor skills for a younger population. But because quickly the bot, I'm not going to pronounce that on here I.
Jayson Davies
Neither do I.
Debra Collette
Printing still Swarovski test of motor, so that would be the, the one that I would use for motor skills higher than that sensory profile, sensory processing measure. You know, I think that there is major evaluations are out there. I'm probably missing some, and sorry for those authors who I, who I am missing that I used, but I think to pick a few that you're strong at and that you feel good about representing where a child's strengths and challenges are within if you don't understand the language behind an assessment, it's not worth giving, you know, so to get really good at, what does that mean for the child, and how does that relate to their function in a classroom? You know? You can, I can say that their fine motor skills are not great, but how does that impact them in a third grade classroom, when they can't pick up tools, they can't use them, they can't write proficiently. So I think those are important things to be able to support from that school based perspective.
Jayson Davies
Absolutely. Now I come from the California side of things, I would love to hear just from like New York. Did you guys have kind of a recommended time that it should take for evaluations when you're in the school? Or was, I mean, you because you talked a little bit about time, and you're right. We need to stream like this. We need to, we need to have a system in place so that we know what we're doing. We don't lose track. We stay on target. And we get we get it done. I I'll, I'll start, and I will say, I typically say an average evaluation, the moment you get the referral to the point that you're done with that, that write up for me, especially, you know, before I got really, really good at it, it could take about eight hours, I think whether, I mean, obviously not all in one day, not one work day, but over the time. I think it would could, could honestly take about eight hours. Do you mind sharing what it would look like, potentially for you or someone within your setting?
Debra Collette
Yeah, if you look from the referral process to the write up, I would say eight hours is, you know, certainly is real. I think because of the processes that I put in place over the number of years that I was in practice, and I still do assistive tech evaluations. So I still am a little bit into iterations go, I would say between, if it's a more straightforward evaluation, two and a half hours to maybe four hours. I think I could get it down into that time frame. And as OTs, with full case loads. You know, we're busy people. We have to really figure out, how do we streamline those time frames to sit down and write up the evaluation to before that score the evaluation. So I think getting good at streamlining using templates, you know, the Find and Replace names and ages and that stuff. So, yeah, I would say between two and a half hours and four hours once I was really proficient.
Jayson Davies
Gotcha Great. Thanks for sharing that. All right, we did the evaluation. We took our forward eight hours, whatever it might be, and now we are planning for that IEP and I really want to focus in on goals here, because we're talking about common core. We're talking about handwriting. Handwriting, we know, is probably one of the most common goals that an OT is a part of on an IEP. How can we use common core to mix with our handwriting goals, to create good goals? Should we be incorporating Common Core?
Debra Collette
I believe yes, we should, because we are in educational systems to support children in their education. So I think it's it's 100% okay to use a common core goal to support whatever that piece is that we're working on. So since we're on handwriting, and I'm going to use the handwriting perspective, so I have pulled up in front of me the fact the child, and this is a pre kindergarten goal, needs to use a combination of drawing, dictation, oral expression or emergent writing to state an opinion about a familiar topic in a child centered, authentic, play based learning. So I would pull a piece of that out. So if I knew a child didn't have letters yet, I may say a child will use drawing abilities, such as the lines, circles, squares, triangles, to support a kindergarten based assignment, or pre kindergarten assignment. So I would use something that we work on, that a component of handwriting within that common core goal, to show that I'm working on what all other people in the school are working on for that particular child, but with my little spin on it.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, definitely. I think that's great. Here in California, it's kind of caught on, but not quite completely. Is that they really want teachers to actually tag all of their goals with the Common Core State Standard that it ties to. And I don't think that that necessarily has to be limited to teachers. I think that as OTs, we should also begin because, again, we're in the educational field tying it back to a standard. I know that there are some instances where that may not be the right thing to do. There aren't a lot of standards that tie back to some of the functional skills that we might work on, but when possible, especially if we're doing something related to handwriting. So. Something that is that is related to the core curriculum. We should be tying it back to that, to that core curricular, core curricular standard I have bookmarked on my Chrome. Google Chrome, a website. I don't know if it's California specific, but it has all the state standards. And so it tells me, You know, I can click on kindergarten, I can click on ELA, or language, language arts. And I can look at this, the different standards, and I can say, You know what, I can support this one, this kids in kindergarten. I can support this kindergarten state standards. So I think, yeah, also collaborating with teachers to create goals. I think that's another way to really ensure that you're supporting education is, you know, meeting with a teacher two weeks before the IEP and saying, Hey, what are you working on? Right? I'm sure you kind of are, are an advocate for this. Do you have thoughts?
Debra Collette
I think constant collaboration with teachers is important. We need to know where the children are in the classroom. We need to know what they are and are not doing. We need to be able to support our goals with functional information and data from the classrooms as to, you know, how are they doing on these things and how often, and then move them forward. Know where the baseline is and be able to move them forward. So I do think that it's important for all OTs to know the curriculum. You know, same thing as if you were an acute care hospital, you'd want to know all the diagnostic criteria and all the rules of the hospital, the billing practices, we have to know all of those same things in a different manner in an educational institution.
Jayson Davies
Absolutely, great. I love it. Well. Deborah, thank you so much for joining us today. I think we got through everything that we wanted to talk to and maybe even a little bit more. But do you have any last words for occupational therapy practitioners that are listening that you know they're starting off the school year here? Maybe, I don't know. By time this comes out, it might be like October, but a month in or so, any words of wisdom?
Debra Collette
Be an advocate for ot be an advocate for the child. You know, send, send wonderful things home. Talk to families as much as you can. We don't have tons of time for that, but I think all of those components of being able to support our profession, to advocate for ourselves in all areas of education is really important. I'm always happy to chat about ot advocacy as well.
Jayson Davies
I love it. And one last question before I let you go, Deborah, Is there anywhere where people can Is there a place where they can find more about you or follow you, or even just find where all your different research articles are?
Debra Collette
Sure, my email is C, O, L, L, E, D@sage.edu, that's probably the easiest way to get in touch with me. I am on LinkedIn, and unfortunately, I'm not a social media follower. Otherwise the LinkedIn would would be the extent of it for the moment. But I have an article on a OT, this particular article, and I have another one on ot Jr, on a study that I did on Provo protocol and children with autism. Yeah. So anyone's welcome to contact me if they have questions are.
Jayson Davies
Alright, I'll be the first one. I'm gonna, I'm gonna send you another calendar link for scheduling up to talk about Proloquo to go. That is a topic we haven't Yeah, because you said you're doing at technology or AT evaluation. Still, I know a lot of people need help with that. So maybe one day that's, that'll be our next topic. All right, Deborah, well, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate having you, and I'm sure everyone out there listening is really appreciative of everything that you shared today. So thank you one last time, and I look forward to to keeping in touch.
Debra Collette
All right. Thanks you too.
Jayson Davies
All right. Thank you so much, Deborah, for coming on the OT school house podcast and sharing so much of that wonderful information. Some of that information, you know, comes directly from the survey and the research that you did, and some of that is just the experience that you have learning as a school based occupational therapy provider. So thank you so much for that. Some of the things that just stood out to me was that you know, 40 minutes of handwriting is not enough. And even worse than that, 43% of teachers are not even using any sort of curriculum, whether or not it's a you know formal program or even just a you know curriculum that maybe they developed, it's something that we as school based OTs can help teachers with so that they can support all of their handwriters, which is everyone, not just the students that quote, unquote, need ot so again. Thank you so much to Deborah for coming on the OT school house podcast. Thank you to you for listening to the OT school house podcast. And don't forget to check out all the show notes. We have several links to some of the common handwriting assessments over at ot schoolhouse.com/episode 110 I'll see you over there, and I'll see you in the next podcast episode. Take care.
Amazing Narrator
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