OTS 212: Going Beyond Handwriting with Universal Design for Learning in School-Based OT
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Welcome to the show notes for Episode 212 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast.
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is often talked about as a framework for inclusive education—but what does it actually look like in day-to-day school-based occupational therapy?
In this episode, Jayson welcomes back Deborah Schwind, DHSc, OTR/L, BCP, SCSS, FAOTA to explore how school-based OTPs can use UDL to help students access, engage in, and demonstrate learning without lowering expectations. Drawing from decades of experience, Debbie shares how activity analysis helps her uncover what an assignment is truly measuring and how creative adaptations can remove barriers while keeping students meaningfully included in general education.
From textured spelling rocks and AAC-powered presentations to choice boards, adapted music instruction, and technology that empowers students to show what they know, Debbie offers practical strategies that OTPs can begin using immediately. She also discusses why collaboration is essential, how occupation-based goals can better support student success, and why providing access through technology isn't "cheating"—it's good occupational therapy.
Whether you're just beginning to explore Universal Design for Learning or looking for new ideas to strengthen your school-based practice, this episode is filled with practical examples and fresh perspectives to help every student participate more fully in learning.
🎧 Hit play now and start reimagining what access looks like for your students!
Listen now to learn the following objectives:
Learners will identify the three pillars of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and their role in supporting student participation in school-based practice.
Learners will recognize how activity analysis can be used to adapt classroom assignments while maintaining the instructional goal.
Learners will describe how collaboration with teachers supports the implementation of individualized UDL strategies across classroom environments.
Guest Bio
Deborah Schwind, DHSc, OTR/L, BCP, SCSS, FAOTA is a school based occupational therapist with over 30 years of experience. She completed her doctoral dissertation from Drexel University with her research focused on developing job skills, work behaviors, social skills and self-determination skills through a school-based Community Based Instruction (CBI) program in the elementary school. She received an Innovator Award from NBCOT related to this program in 2021. She has presented nationally, has done several podcasts, has been published and has co-authored several book chapters.
She graduated from East Carolina University where she completed internships at Johns Hopkins University and Duke University. She received her graduate degree from Old Dominion University in educational administration. She is an active member of the AOTA Community of Practice-Transition work group. She is Board Certified in Pediatrics, has a Specialty Certification in School Systems from AOTA and recognized as a Fellow from AOTA in 2023.
Quotes
"Collaboration is huge... it makes our kids successful.”
— Deborah Schwind, DHSc, OTR/L, BCP, SCSS, FAOTA
"Different is not less. Different can be way better.”
— Deborah Schwind, DHSc, OTR/L, BCP, SCSS, FAOTA
"We don't think of the wheelchair as a cheat. We don't think of the glasses as a cheat. We don't think the hearing aid is a cheat. So using the technology for some is what they require.”
— Deborah Schwind, DHSc, OTR/L, BCP, SCSS, FAOTA
"The goals are not OT goals, they're student goals in order for the student to be more successful.”
— Deborah Schwind, DHSc, OTR/L, BCP, SCSS, FAOTA
"We sometimes forget how regulating being successful and confident in something can be.”
— Jayson Davies,M.A., OTR/L
Resources
👉 PebbleGo
Episode Transcript
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Jayson Davies
Hey there! I'm Jayson Davies, and this is the OT Schoolhouse Podcast. Thank you so much for being here. Welcome to episode 212, where we are discussing the power of UDL to support your students. Universal design for learning is a great concept. In theory, every person on a campus should understand the principles of it and be able to support students with learning tools that are accessible to every student. Hence the term universal design. In practice, though, not everyone on campus knows what's available or how to use the tools that they do know are available to them. And that real disconnect is the difference between a student not engaging in a classroom and a student who is completing an entire presentation on seahorses. Yes, I said seahorses. We will be discussing that in just a bit. Our guest today to help us understand UDL and the role that we can play in its effective use on campus is Dr. Debbie Schwind, a school-based OT based in Loudoun County, Virginia. You may remember Debbie from episode 109, where she blew us away talking about the transition programs that she had put in place and the coffee cart programs that she had helped to implement. Now she's back for a deep dive into UDL. Today, Debbie is here to share the real hands-on stuff that have enabled her to support students from kinder all the way through high school and even transition programs with real tasks that have surprised the teachers she's worked with, the parents of her students, and even the students themselves. If you've ever asked yourself, "How do I support my students, and how do I help them to show what they actually know in class? This one's for you. Let's 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
All right, Debbie, welcome back to the OT Schoolhouse podcast. You joined us in episode 109, which was over 100 episodes ago. But you're back, and I'm excited to talk to you. How are you doing today?
Deborah Schwind
I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me. It's always a pleasure to share ideas with you and get information out to our OTs and OTAs. So absolutely
Jayson Davies
and yeah, thank you so much for being willing to to get that information out because I often say like people come to OT schoolhouse and they often you know give me a lot of praise. They'll email me or they'll see me at a conference and I'm always like the first to say like I I'm not a specialty or I'm not a specialist in everything. That's why I have such amazing guests on the podcast. You've also spoken at our back to school conference before. Thank you so much for that. Your content is always well received, and we really appreciate having you here. So, you ready?
Deborah Schwind
I'm ready.
Jayson Davies
All right. The first question I want to ask you, and also congratulate you on, is being with one specific school district for a long time, and that is not easy. And I think you know we don't necessarily think about this early on in our career, but I want to hear from you how maintaining yourself in one district has really enabled you to do a lot of what we're going to be talking about today.
Deborah Schwind
Yeah, so I have been at OT now for 36 years. I cannot believe that, and I have been with this school division for 20 years, and it's the division that my kids went through. I work in my neighborhood community school. I know kids from birth to whenever. I have kids that I worked with in preschool that are in their 20s now, and I'm still in touch with families because I'm in the community, they're in the community, and I I just love that feeling that you're really part of a team. It really does feel like a family, and I think that having school level admin support, principal, assistant principal is tremendous. That they have really embraced me, they have respected me, they have trusted me, and when I have gone to them and said, "What do you think about this? they wholeheartedly support me and my ideas, and I think that comes with longevity, having these relationships over a long period of time, and just having this level of trust. And sometimes you really can only get that if you've been there for a long time.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, yeah. Do you feel like that was always the case? That you had that trust, that you had, you know, an open ear with the administrators, you know, even early on in your career, or you know, did it take a little bit of time?
Deborah Schwind
So my the beginning of my career was more. Hospital-based. So the 20 years that I have been in school-based has been with the school division, and you know I would certainly say in the hospital-based setting I need an admin support as well. But I think one of the things that helped me is I was in the school that my kids were going to-they were in elementary school. That was the school that I was in, and so you just build. You're able to build a lot of partnerships, and I think that that goes a really long way. And I was the PTA president. I was a very active member of the school community, and that that just goes a really long way. So
Jayson Davies
yeah, I can imagine. I mean, like you're building rapport from multiple different angles, which I mean, you can do that. Awesome, yeah, right. And I mean, you don't necessarily have to have a your own student at the school in order to do that. Like there's a lot of things that
Deborah Schwind
that you can do. I think there's more personal buy-in. You have you're more vested when it's your own kids, but certainly you can serve on all kinds of committees whether your kids are there or not. You're benefiting your own kids when it is that at their school, so there's definitely more personal connection, I guess. But my kids haven't been in those schools in many, many years. My son's getting ready to get married. My daughter's getting ready to have her first baby, and I'm still serving on committees and doing things. So, you know, you can definitely make an impact in a lot of different ways.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, let's dive into it. Today, we want to talk a lot about universal design for learning. But as you mentioned, right, you you've been in your practice for a long time, and I want to hear kind of when did UDL for you start to become a thing, and what inspired you to dive into it from a more tier one type of basis, as opposed to an accommodation basis?
Deborah Schwind
Yeah, so that is a very big question. We'll take it
Jayson Davies
one by one.
Deborah Schwind
Yeah, so I would say that there was one particular student that really inspired me to really dive into UDL, and I started seeing him in preschool. He had just turned three. I think the day he started school, he was actually only two, and he had spastic quad CP and was in a gen ed preschool classroom. So I shouldn't say gen ed. He was in an early childhood special education classroom, but he was not in a multiple disabilities early childhood special education classroom. And naturally, in an early childhood special education classroom, you have less numbers and more support, but he really inspired me to think outside the box. And because my supervisor could see some of the things that I was doing with him, when it came time for him to go to kindergarten, his preschool classroom was not at his neighborhood school. So when it came time for kindergarten, they wanted him to go back to his neighborhood school where his siblings were, and they wanted him to be in Gen Ed. And so my supervisor had that school become one of my schools. So then I started seeing him in Gen Ed from kindergarten through fourth grade, and they moved after that. When he moved, actually, he moved three hours away, and I went and visited the school when school started, and I showed them all the different ways that we were adapting the curriculum because it was a challenge, and it did take a lot of thought. I didn't need them to reinvent the wheel, so I drove down there, spent a day, and showed them all the different things that we did to have him spell words, to do math, to do art, to do music, shared ideas with the APE teacher, and you know he he has been my inspiration for so many things, and now he's 18. So and he, like I said, he has vast quad CP. He's a power chair, a power chair user. He really only has function of his left hand, and it's fixed in pronation. So very limited motor movements. He also had very low vision and was never diagnosed with ID or SLD. But there were definitely some cognition things that we needed to help adapt and modify as well. And some of that could have been related to the vision, but everything had to be. Adapted and modified, so he is truly my inspiration.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, yeah, I can imagine. And I do want to come back to talk a little bit more about UDL versus an individualized accommodation. But before we do that, I do want to ask you just kind of when someone asks you about UDL, or maybe you use that term in an IEP. How are you explaining it to somebody who maybe has never heard the term?
Deborah Schwind
Yeah. So universal design for learning is really it's a framework, and there's three pillars to the framework. And we hear the word universal, and that means for everybody, it doesn't have to be somebody with special needs or in special ed or have an IEP. It's universal to everybody. So you know, it doesn't necessarily mean that they have to have an accommodation. However, I will say in order to make their individual needs really stand out. Many times, some of these things are written in as an accommodation, and an example might be, you know, using the computer to type instead of handwrite for somebody who has difficulty with handwriting. In our school division, every student has a laptop, and every student in the whole entire school system, 85,000 students have access to read and write. It's on every single laptop, so it's universal. It's a tier one support, so we don't need to write that in the IEP. However, you know when you think about, we live in a very transient area, so if that student were to get up and leave, we also have a lot of military in our area. So, if they were to move someplace else that does not have that, then it's not very obvious in the IEP. So, there are times when we will write in, you know, specific software for voice typing, or we will write in need for you know laptop or something like that, but it is universal in our school division, so you do not have to. There is a great website called CAST, and it stands for the Center for Applied Special Technology, and they have this great framework called Universal Design for Learning guidelines, and you can very clearly see the three pillars that are on this guideline or framework. And basically, what it says is that students can demonstrate their knowledge in a lot of different ways, or we can present the information in a lot of different ways so that they can access it. So you know, presenting information could be using Braille, demonstrating your knowledge again. Maybe go back to the computer. The other pillar is engagement. So really, trying to find things that are motivating to them, that have personal interest to them. You know, learning can be very challenging for some of our students, and if we can find ways to get them engaged, then we may be more successful. And I'll give you an example that kind of fits in with all three of those pillars.
Jayson Davies
Yeah,
Deborah Schwind
I have a student right now who has a neurodegenerative disease process going on, and she is in second grade. She is never going to be a writer. She does not have the motor skills or motor control to do that. But I do think that she is a reader. So how can we get her to demonstrate spelling skills if she cannot write? She does have an AAC device, but she loves rocks, and so I went down to my creek, close to my house, I scooped up a bunch of rocks, came home, washed them all, dried them all, and then I wrote puff paint letters on different letters on all the different rocks. So immediately we know she's more engaged that first pillar instead of doing a random worksheet. The next one is representing the information, so I could represent the the information again with a worksheet, but I could also represent it with these puff paint letters on the rocks that was more high contrast. I could use like neon color puff paints. It was textured. She could feel the letters, and we could we spread out the letters on the table, and that's how we first started getting her to tell us what letters were. You know, she could not talk, so touch the T, touch the L. Wait, what letter makes the sound? So getting her to do letter identification and letter sounds, and then. Had her spell like that. So let's spell the word dog, dog. Find those letters, and that's how we could tell that she was starting to spell. So she was demonstrating her ability to spell in a different way, but she was still spelling. So that kind of addresses all three tiers, all three pillars of the UDL design process with that one example.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, yeah, that's very cool. I was going to go back to to your original kid that you worked with, but but let's stay with this little girl here. What makes that a UDL as opposed to a specific accommodation that might be on the IEP.
Deborah Schwind
I mean, I think an accommodation is not necessarily a process. I think of it as more of a thing, and so this is more of a framework. And you might pull an accommodation from this framework, but I feel like this is more of an like an umbrella term, if you will, and it guides our practice and it guides how we're going to instill the learning process in our students.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, and so with this little girl, I'm going to assume that this was as part of an IEP that you were working with her, or is that is that off?
Deborah Schwind
Yeah, she was part of an IEP, as was the other little boy I was telling you about with Fast and Quad CP.
Jayson Davies
Okay, and so when I think about an accommodation, I often think about it in terms of doing a full evaluation report, figuring out you know all the different scores, doing the observations, and then at the end of my report, recommending services or not recommending services, and recommending specific accommodations. When it comes to UDL, are you doing that same type of, you know, thorough evaluation, or is it a little bit different in how you come up with these different UDL actions?
Deborah Schwind
Yeah, so I do a full evaluation no matter what, and then based upon you know the findings, their needs, the team, their situation. I think them both being in gen ed really made me think that they required more OT than what you typically would give a student. But based upon the individual needs of the students, recommend the service time, and then going from there, you know, looking at really the individual expectations of the students, what is expected of them in that gen ed setting? What are they expected to do? And if they can't do it in the traditional way, which neither of these students can or could. How can we change it so they can access it and engage and participate as independently as possible? So for me, once I figure out yes, they do need services, it's really looking at a lot of their projects and assignments in the classroom, and I do that through the activity analysis lens. You know, we are experts in activity analysis. We have been around for over 100 years. We developed activity analysis, and we know how to do it inside and out, with great depth, breadth, and richness. So I really look at each individual task or assignment or occupation, and figure out what are they having difficulty doing with this task, and then how can I adapt it or change it so they can engage, so they can understand the material, and so they can express their knowledge. But it really, once I have them on my caseload, it's really, really heavily relying on my activity analysis skills.
Jayson Davies
Okay, so I I want to ask them what might be maybe a difficult question, maybe a maybe an uninformed question. I'm not sure. For me, I guess it's a little hard to grasp what makes it UDL if we're making it so specific to an individualized child, and when I think about UDL, I often think about the larger population supporting the entire classroom. And so, I want to get your take on kind of how this is universal as opposed to more singular for an individual student when we are making it individualized. Does that make sense?
Deborah Schwind
Yeah, so it's universal in that everybody has access to UDL, but we can individualize those UDL that UDL framework for each student. It's always going to be individualized. So using that universal design umbrella, then we can individualize it for each of those particular students so that they are successful.
Jayson Davies
Okay. So in that case, let's let's kind of take a step back then, back to the student with using the rocks, or if you prefer to go another route, we can do that. But but walk us through how you took that activity that is a universal activity, you came up with it from more of a UDL lens, and then you individualized it. Correct?
Deborah Schwind
Right. So again, I think it's just going back to activity analysis and really understanding what the goal of the activity is. So, for instance, you know, I am in the history room. You might find me in any classroom throughout the day. I could be in the art room, the music room, the language arts room, family and consumer science room. You could see me in almost any room there is. So now I forgot the question.
Jayson Davies
How do you go from it being like a UDL framework to it being being more individualized? Is kind of the basis of the question, I believe.
Deborah Schwind
Yeah. So I kind of thinking about activity analysis again and thinking about the goals of the activity and the expectations of the activity. So, if you are in the art room, for example, and the goal of the activity is working on shading or on symmetry, it doesn't mean that they have to use the same art media that everybody else is using, or the same art tool, we can individualize that so they can be successful. Or if they are doing a report on George Washington, the goal of the activity typically is not that they will handwrite what they know about George Washington. It's really demonstrating their knowledge of George Washington, and you can do that in a lot of different ways. You could do an audio little podcast. You could record yourself. You could voice type it. You could keyboard type it. You could make a storyboard like a cartoon. You could make a video cartoon. the The idea is not that you have to handwrite about George Washington. The idea is that we want to know what kind of knowledge have about George Washington.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, yeah. So for me, I guess what I'm hearing a little bit is that the concepts that you're using are open to everybody, but you're helping them to individualize it. And so I'm wondering, to a degree, are you supporting oftentimes the teacher and understanding this so that they can use it in their classroom with any particular child. I guess I go back to kind of it being tier one is a lot of you know supporting the teacher to support
Deborah Schwind
it. Absolutely. So, and a lot of them will come to me. I guess I mean partly because of my years of experience, but I think also just because of my OT background and my OT knowledge that they'll come to me and say, "Oh my gosh, we have this project coming up. Do you have any ideas? How can we do this project with him or her? Or we're working on spelling, and you know, I have the rocks, but is there something else that we could do besides rocks? So we've used magnetic letters. I have a digital app that is magnetic letters on the digital app. We've done Duplos and taken dry erase tape and put on the Duplos. You can write on magnet tiles with a dry erase pen or dry erase marker. We've used Scrabble pieces, Velcroed the Scrabble pieces. I'll take post-it notes and write letters on the post-it notes, or write words on the post-it note, and then do cut-up sentences. So it's still spelling. We're universally working on spelling, but we're individualizing how they express their knowledge or how that information is being presented.
Jayson Davies
Okay, and then do you ever find that teachers take what you implement and begin to generalize it with other students?
Deborah Schwind
I have seen that, and I've also seen them just apply what I have and just take it to the next level. So that. The benefit of being in the classroom, and that's the benefit of the strong collaborative process, that they can really take the information and run with it. And you know, I think it there's a there is a time issue that we all have, and part of the time is not necessarily making all of these things. A lot of the time is just getting your creative juices running and coming up with the ideas. So I think sometimes that's where teachers have the most difficulty is just the time that it takes, and so being able to share these ideas allows them to impact the whole classroom.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, yeah, I think that's right. I often say slash complain about how little prep time teachers and OTs and everyone in education really have. Like, if you look outside public education, there are professionals that spend hours and hours preparing for like one hour long meeting to make sure they get it right. And in education, it's like the complete opposite. We get like one hour to prepare for getting eight hours consecutively right every single school day, and that is that is not easy, and it doesn't allow you that time to get those creative juices going a little bit. Right. I
Deborah Schwind
mean, teaching is doing a presentation all day long.
Jayson Davies
Yep.
Deborah Schwind
And yeah, they do not have the time to prepare for it. And you know, sometimes it's repeated year after year. But things change. Your grade changes. The types of kids you have changes. It is like doing a presentation all day long every day.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, and and the one piece that's always sat a little funky with me in regarding UDL is that it's awesome if you have something in the classroom that can support every single student, but it's also hard to have something that can support every single student because we know that every single student is different, and that's not talking about you know a classroom for students with an IEP or you know like every single student is different, which means that not every UDL thing that we put in place is going to work with every single person. That then means that teachers have to know a lot of different UDL actions or activities or whatever you want to call them. They can't just know one or two UDLs because that'll work for one or two students, not the 30 students they have. Which I think is where you come into play, right? Because you can help individualize the UDL to a student,
Deborah Schwind
right? I mean, what's universal are those pillars, but the examples within those pillars are what are individualized.
Jayson Davies
Gotcha.
Deborah Schwind
So maybe if you look at it that way, it might feel a Little less. I'm not sure what the word is, but I think if you look at the pillars as universal and the concepts as universal,
Jayson Davies
yeah.
Deborah Schwind
But the examples and the way we do implement those things are individualized.
Jayson Davies
Great. All right. Well, we're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we're going to start diving into a little bit more case examples. You've you've shared a few, but we're going to dive into more. So we'll be right back. All right, we are back with Debbie talking about UDL, and Debbie, I heard through the grapevine that you have done something with a PowerPoint on seahorses with one of your students, and I would love to learn more about this.
Deborah Schwind
Oh, these projects are so fun. To see the kids' eyes light up is just such tremendous joy, honestly. So this was a project I did. This is just this past school year, and it was with the student I was talking about who has a neurodegenerative disease process going on, and the assignment was to research an animal. So on a dry erase board, I wrote down the name of six different animals, and she had to point to which one she wanted to do, or she could find it on her AAC device. She does have digit isolation skills, so she picked Seahorse, and so again, I'm not really sure what kind of a reader she is, and because she can't read out loud, I don't know what words she is reading in text. So we did an online audio book. It's called Pebble Go. I think a lot of school divisions have that, and they have Seahorse book. So we would listen to that and pause it after every page, and kind of come up with a sentence about what what they were saying on that page. So an example might be that they were talking about. Seahorses don't have teeth, so again, on a dry erase board, I would. I had some visuals as well. I love using visuals. Lesson Pix is the one that I go to all the time, and I would print out visuals, and I would ask her, "What is something on here that seahorses are missing? And it might have a picture of eyes, a tail, gills, all kinds of stuff, and then it would have teeth. So she would have to choose which of those images was correct. So she would choose teeth. She always got them all right. She always knew the answers, and then we would come up with a sentence: "They do not have teeth, and we did cut up sentence with it. She would have to put them in the right order. Then she glued them in her book. We just used construction paper to make her own book, and she had a PVC adapted glue stick holder that she could glue her words in, and then from there she would have to find it on her AAC device and type that sentence on her AAC device. I would take a picture of that, and then she would have it talk. I would record that, and then I would upload that into a PowerPoint for the audio insertion. And we also did illustrations. Again, she was she couldn't really do a lot of drawing, but she did have digit isolation, or does have digit isolation. So on the tablet, we drew grass. So just some vertical lines on the screen. Took pictures of that. Put that in the book. She drew pictures of rocks because seahorses live in rocks, so just little round circles everywhere. And then seahorses have a squiggly tail, so she drew a little squiggly tail on the screen, took a picture of that, put it in the book. So at the end, she had a hard copy book, just like all the other kids in her class, and she had a PowerPoint, and the PowerPoint had her AAC voice on it because the other students were doing an oral presentation, and this PowerPoint became her oral presentation, and the other kids were just so, oh my gosh, I can't believe she did that, and she was so proud of herself. And then I could send the links to the parents, and the parents would send it to the grandparents across the country, and just such an inspiring activity. And we actually did that quite a few times during the course of the year. This year, she did one on Alexander Graham Bell. The other class was doing biographies. That's the person she picked, and throughout the year they did special projects, and she was included in all those projects, demonstrating her knowledge in a different way, and being very successful with it.
Jayson Davies
Wow, wow! What what grade was this?
Deborah Schwind
Second.
Jayson Davies
Wow, early. Yeah,
Deborah Schwind
it's amazing what they're doing.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, so so I'm going to ask you a little bit of a loaded question here, and and it's about carryover, because I want like this sounds like you must have spent quite a bit of time with this student, quite a bit of IEP time, and did you do all of this, or was there anyone else really involved? Obviously, the teacher kind of had to know what was going on, but
Deborah Schwind
yeah. So again, a lot of collaboration, but that really became my focus because these projects became my focus because once the teacher could really understand how she could work on spelling with her and how she could work on math with her, it was a matter of kind of repetition, and so I could do that with her. But the teacher was already doing that with her, so they started asking me, "How do you feel about working on some of these special projects? I'm like, "Oh, I would love it! I would love that! So I really took over the special projects, and the really nice thing about the special projects is that they occur over a period of time. They usually work on them for like three weeks, so it gave us plenty of time to get all these projects organized and together. So, yeah, that. Go ahead.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, and that was going to lead to kind of the second part of my question. Here is the generalizability of this. You you did mention right that the teacher already has the spelling you know thing down, so now they're moving on to this bigger thing. So that's been generalized. But you know, as you get into to bigger projects like this, it gets more difficult, and you know what does happen if she moves to another class or moves to another school, and and doesn't have an OT who has figured out a scheduling, you know, that allows this to happen. I guess are you seeing that carry over doing these types of things?
Deborah Schwind
Yeah, I mean. I have seen that carryover, but I think it requires a little bit of a vision because if somebody were just to pick up her IEP, they probably you know they just see the minutes. They don't see what's happening in those minutes. So again, that's where that transfer of knowledge occurs in our school division. If we are moved to a different school or the student moves to a different school, we meet with that therapist and tell them, you know, what we've been working on, what the goals are. We have a half a day dedicated to that before school year starts, and that's when we're really able to make sure that knowledge transfers to the new person.
Jayson Davies
Wow, yeah, that's important. I mean, and like you mentioned earlier, collaboration, right? Making sure that the teacher knows what you're doing, and and those IEP meetings, making sure you're relaying that information to the parent so they know what's going on, and and sending them those cool links where they get to see exactly what their student has done done with you.
Deborah Schwind
Collaboration is huge, and you really can't do this type of UDL without collaboration. And you know, I know you know this, but a lot of my passion is also related to transition. And collaboration is a predictor of success for our students because if we are collaborating on goals, we're collaborating on interventions, we're collaborating on strategies, we're we're building routine. We're building consistency, and because of that, hopefully we are able to have our students achieve their goals and be successful. So collaboration is huge. It doesn't just make our job easier in the long run. It is it is heavy loaded in the front because you are spending time, but when you start seeing the kids be successful, then it does make your job easier. But the bigger thing is that it makes our kids successful, so it's it's really important.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, I want to ask you really quickly about the the process of it all a little bit, and in terms of like the IEP here, because I'm assuming the student that you were working with did not have an IEP goal to produce a presentation on seahorses, yet that's what the treatment eventually led to. So, do you feel like you you've had to get a little creative with your goals? Do you feel like you've had to get more occupation based with your goals, maybe, or or Or collaborative,
Deborah Schwind
so they're very collaborative. So we'll you know complete assignments with less than two prompts, or we'll complete adapted assignments independently. So that could be an art assignment, it could be a history assignment, it could be a music assignment. You know there there are broader goals that can be applied to multiple situations in multiple settings, which means that multiple people can be collecting data on it. So they are not OT goals; they are student goals in order for the student to be more successful. So you know it could be we'll demonstrate their knowledge in a variety of ways. We'll demonstrate their knowledge in three different ways, or we'll use a cut-up sentence to put together four sentences or something like that. So they're very broad, and they're looking at that occupation of literacy or the occupation of reading. It's not really looking at the minutia of the fine motor aspects of it. It's looking at that broad occupation to engage and be successful and participate in the educational environment.
Jayson Davies
I had to pause because that's that's so interesting, and I think it's almost counterintuitive to the world that we live in today that wants us to be so microscopic when it comes to goals and data tracking and like honing in on one specific thing. Like I I just feel like that's what we're being told in education is that you have to be so minutely focused on one particular thing, and here you are going a little bit more broad. You have experience. Have you seen that change over time, or has this been kind of a thing that's been pretty common within your? I definitely
Deborah Schwind
have seen this change over time. I mean, I feel like it's definitely it's much more top down now. It's looking at the end product. What do we want to see them do? And you know, maybe that is complete a paragraph, whether it is writing, typing, voice typing, however. We want to do it. It's much broader. We want to see them be successful, and it doesn't mean that you know we need to develop fine motor skills written in the goal. We just want them to type. We want them to be successful. We want them to. What is the end product that the teacher wants. So yeah, I've definitely have seen. And when I first started, there were not collaborative goals. And I would say within really the past five, maybe 10 years, but I would definitely say within the past five years, that has definitely been more of the push. And it just makes so much sense that we are here supporting education. We are related to education. We're related to special ed. So how can we support them? And you know, creating these goals together really allows the student to be successful.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, I I absolutely love it. I feel like you know if you're writing a 80% legibility handwriting goal, that is a quote unquote OT goal, versus if you're writing a written expression ability to complete a you know assignment, that is more of a student centered goal, and it also gives the entire team, not just the OT, more leeway to experiment a little bit with what's actually going to help the student, as opposed to saying, "Look, handwriting is the right way, or typing is the right way, and these are what we are going to focus on. Right? Because who knows? You know, maybe you get three months, six months into supporting the student, and you realize voice typing is the best way, or you realize rocks is the best way. Like
Deborah Schwind
yeah, yeah, yeah. So I will frequently, especially with my older students, write goals about they will self express their knowledge in more than two ways, and that may be using their AAC device, that may be using rocks, that may be using voice typing, that may using a cartoon, so it doesn't matter how they do it as long as I know they know the information. I want to know if they know about photosynthesis. Doesn't have to be through handwriting.
Jayson Davies
Wow, yeah. Do Do you find yourself in the classroom a lot? Then
Deborah Schwind
I do a lot of pushing. I don't. I don't do all push in, and I'm also. There are still some students that I have kind of those traditional handwriting goals with, but I try to push in as much as possible, and that way I know what the expectations are in the classroom and what the goals are of the assignments. You know, I'm not taking the student down into the therapy room to do range of motion and stretching. That's not really the purpose of why I'm there. My purpose is really access. How can they access this information? How can they engage with this particip this information? You know how can they participate? And I don't know those answers if I'm not in the classroom.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So far, we've mostly talked about younger kids. You did talk about one of the students that you worked with all the way from preschool up until 18, but we know about the coffee cart, or at least if you don't know about it, it's in episode 109 that we've talked about. But aside from the coffee cart, what are some other things that you have done with some of the older students? I'd love to hear a few examples.
Deborah Schwind
So, like I said, you can find me in almost any classroom. So I'm in the computer room. I'm in family and consumer science. I'm in tech ed, and one of the things that I have done a lot, and I try to start it in fourth grade, but I do have a middle school that I don't always have the students that transition to that middle school before they get to middle school. So it definitely becomes a big focus of mine in middle school, and that is using a choice board, and the choice board is just a three by three grid, and in each box there is a different way they can show their knowledge, and this is really typically for students who handwriting is just really challenging, and we really want to try to remove it as a barrier, and really kind of decrease that cognitive load. Handwriting can really add another step that they have to think about: what direction does that letter go? Is it uppercase? Is it lowercase? How do you spell that word? And when they're thinking so hard about all of those things, then they're really not thinking about the content. They're not thinking about their ideas. They're not generating their own thoughts. So we can kind of decrease the cognitive load by possibly using something other than handwriting. So these choice boards are all the different ways. Can show their knowledge other than handwriting, and we do have handwriting. We usually put handwriting in one of those choices, but we'll also put keyboard typing. We'll put and and again, it's very individualized. The students can really give some voice and choice about what they like, what they feel successful with. But some of the things would be voice typing, using Google Slides, using a Google document, using PowerPoint with audio insertion or video screen insertion. Maybe it is making a storyboard that cartoon. Maybe it's making a TuneTastic cartoon storyboard that is awesome. It is free, but they have all kinds of characters and all kinds of settings from across history. So you could do something on George Washington. You could do something on the Native Americans. You could do something on the Vikings. So they can demonstrate their knowledge using a cartoon. And so, anyway, we put all these things on the board. I typically don't put it on the board until they have been shown how to use it and they are confident using it. The reason I'd like to introduce this in fourth grade is because by the time they get to middle school, I want them to feel very comfortable, very competent, and very confident in using it, so they will self-advocate for themselves. If I just introduce this to them before they leave in fifth grade, they're going to forget about it in sixth grade. They're not going to feel comfortable or competent or confident to ask to use it. So I use this with a student in middle school who I think I shared this with you. He had to write about sharks, and he was he had Down syndrome, but extremely bright. And it was a reading comprehension activity. The teacher had them read something in a book, handed them a worksheet. I knew he could read everything in that book. He was so smart. He got the worksheet. They were supposed to be written in complete sentences. He wrote maybe one word, and most of the words did not even go with the question that was being asked. And I looked at it, and I was like, "How about if we do a Google slide deck instead? And his eyes got so big, like you're giving me permission to go on the computer. And he, in 30 minutes, he had like at least 12 slides on sharks that was all completely accurate. Each slide had like three or four sentences on it. He pulled in pictures, resized the pictures, change the background, all kinds of stuff, and I shared that with his mom. And I was like, you know, I really think that we need to think about a choice board for him. He can demonstrate his knowledge in so many other ways, and a worksheet is just not for him. So she was completely on board. He just graduated from high school, but used it throughout high school, and it was an accommodation on his IEP was to use this choice board. And he was very comfortable, very confident in asking to use it and self-advocating for it. And self-advocation is a predictor of success. So, yeah,
Jayson Davies
yeah, absolutely. You know, you're talking about the choice board. You're talking about self advocacy. You're talking about these different forms of UDL. And I've got to ask this, and I have no idea what your opinion is on it. But just like in you know late '90s, early 2000s, the internet came around, and we had to start learning to use the internet, which you could argue is a form of UDL now because we use the internet for everything, right? And today we have AI coming around, and I am curious if you have an opinion on the use of AI as a UDL, either now or five years from now.
Deborah Schwind
I mean, I definitely think it's evolving. I think for some students, it may be something that they require. It may be something that they really need to get their ideas and their thoughts together. I think again, it should be individualized. Not every student needs it. Not every student requires it. It's just like a wheelchair. We don't all need it, but for the people that do need it, they require it. And I think it's so interesting. I'm going to jump course just a second, but
Jayson Davies
yeah,
Deborah Schwind
you know, when we have students with a physical disability, we give them a wheelchair. When we have a student with a hearing impairment, we give them a hearing aid. When we have a student who has a visual impairment, we give them glasses or braille. But when we have students who have difficulty writing, what do we do? We keep working on writing. It's a barrier to success. It's a barrier for them to access the curriculum. So why aren't we using technology? And maybe that's AI for some students. There is an illustration software that is an AI illustration software that's also free that I will use to some of my students. It's actually really fun. It's Called AutoDraw.com, and you start drawing on the screen. It has to be a touch screen. I guess you could use a mouse, but it's a little bit harder to control. Yeah. But you start drawing on the screen, and this program starts guessing what you're drawing, and it's pretty accurate. And then it will put in a realistic, simple line drawing, like a coloring book picture, but then you can download it, and then you can use that for your art project, or you can use that for your illustration in your book. So I have definitely used that and shown my students that, and that is something that I have put on the choice boards is autodraw. com.
Jayson Davies
I think I need to go to autodraw.com and turn what you said into a little cartoon, right? The like when someone has difficulty with this, do that because that needs to be a cartoon that's posted in like every IEP room ever, right? Like, why is it that when handwriting's hard, we beat it to death? But you know, we we offer so many other accommodations and tools for others.
Deborah Schwind
It's interesting. I know there's been a lot of research recently about people who take handwritten notes retain the information better, and so we should really go towards handwriting our notes. And I do agree that when I handwrite my notes, I retain it better, and I still prefer doing handwritten notes. However, I'm not everybody, and I have some students with really poor executive function, really poor handwriting, really poor attention, really poor memory, and they cannot listen to the teacher and take notes. They are so focused on oh, did I spell that right? How does that R go? What direction does that B go? They're not even able to attend to the teacher. So then, are handwritten notes the best for them? No percent
Jayson Davies
agree.
Deborah Schwind
So again, it's very individualized, and I think we have to be kind of neuro affirming in that-that not everybody's going to take notes the way that I do or the way that you do. It's individualized, and some people really do need access to partially completed notes or fully completed notes, or you know whatever it is that your school division does or your teachers do. But taking notes is very very challenging for some of our students with memory deficits or executive function deficits or attention deficits, and we don't want that to be a barrier.
Jayson Davies
Absolutely, you know, handwriting's been around a long time. Even typing now, not in the format that it is now, has been a long has been around for a long time, and things change over time. Things evolve, right? And they evolve for reasons. That's right.
Deborah Schwind
Yeah, we don't do art on cave walls anymore. We don't use a quill or ink anymore. You know, exactly. We have evolved.
Jayson Davies
Yeah. Yeah. All right. We're gonna start to to wrap up here. And for anyone listening, if if that makes you sad, be sure to go find Debbie in all the other places she exists. She was recently on Savitha Sundar's podcast about occupations. Go over there, listen to more. But before we do wrap up, I want to ask you because you did bring up earlier how you can be found in all sorts of places over the school, not just the public education classroom, or not just the special education classroom with the the primary teacher. So, what are some of the areas that you have supported?
Deborah Schwind
So, almost everything, but I think some of the things that are most memorable for me because I saw so much success for the students is the music room. I spend a lot of time in the art room, and I have a lot of information that people can find on adapted art tools. So I won't spend a lot of time on that because there is a lot of information out there on that from me. But I spent some time in the band room with one of the students, and he was in middle school. But he self-identified and self-determined that he wanted to be in the marching band in high school, and he had an intellectual disability. And the mom contacted the band director at the high school, and he said, you know, when you're doing band, you're learning the marching formations on the field, and you're learning an instrument. So it might be best if he maybe does percussion where he's stationary, so he only has to learn the instrument. I thought that was a great, great idea. I would have never thought of it, but I use that now for my students, and when I. An IEP meeting, and they're transitioning from elementary school to middle school. That's something that I will talk about. So he was having a really difficult time in band class, and he was in a gen ed band class, so there was no special ed support in here for him, and he was having a really difficult time learning the notes. So I talked to the teacher. I collaborated with her and said, "How about if we just try to enlarge them first? So again, changing the way the information was represented, and that helped a little bit. But then I said, "How about if we color code them? So then we color coded them. So they were really clearly distinct notes, and that seemed to work a little bit better as well. But he was still having a really hard time learning them, so I made some cards just on the computer, and each card had a different note on it on the cleft lines, and so we started playing go fish with these cards, and so he started learning his notes from this go fish game. So I would ask him like, "Do you have a G? He would need to be able to look in his cards and see if he had the note G. So he actually learned his notes from this go fish game. And again, having access to these classes does help predict success because this is a career and technical education classroom. I've been in the facts room, family and consumer science, where I have adapted recipes using vision or different pictures because some of my students can't read. I have adapted sewing activities, and frequently I have teaching assistants in there with the student, but they're not versed in adapting the curriculum. They don't know what the goals of the activity are. So sometimes I will tell them, "How can we do the activity this way, and then they can do it on their own? Other times I'm in there with them, helping them. It just depends upon the student, the situation, my schedule, that sort of thing. But I had a student who was taking, who was in sewing in the family and consumer science class, and he had very low vision, and he could not see the button or the needle or the thread. This TA doesn't realize that oh well you could use a button the size of a frisbee so I got a wooden disc drilled out two holes in it so it looked like a big button and we used a jump rope and the standard for that activity was sewing a button it didn't say it had to be a one quarter inch button or a 12 inch button so he was successful. He did it. I've adapted different resume activities for my students who, again, can't read, can't write. How are you going to write a resume if you can't read or write and you can't research the activity or research a job? I have adapt. I've been in tech ed and have adapted, you know, 3D modeling activities where the students are using 3D programming, and my students can't do that. So really, if you think about the goal of the activity, it's to follow step-by-step instructions. So I'll take Legos, and some of these are designing different automotive type. They have all these modules, and one of them is like an automotive design. So I'll take Legos and I'll take like 25 different Legos, take pictures of them, so they're step by step instructions, and then I have them assemble them with these step by step instructions. Some of the goals in there are just collaboration, problem solving. They will interact with a peer. They will solve a problem. They, you know, it's not always about just can they 3d program. There's a lot of other goals that are going into those tech ed classes. I've been in the computer lab. I had a student who was not a reader, was not a writer, but had comprehension that was just about on grade level, and she would cry throughout the entire computer class. And I went in there to try to figure out what was happening. And I've been in computer class before, but I guess I just wasn't thinking about it. And again, this activity analysis, looking at the words that they were asking her to type. First of all, it was timed, so that was a lot of extra pressure. And the words were all sixth and seventh grade words that were, you know, 20 letters long that she could not read, and so I was like, "How about if we try to do a program that's not timed and that does not have such high level vocabulary on it? So I again collaborated with the teacher, asked if we could do BBC dance mat typing instead, and the teacher was on board with it, and the student was very. Very successful. I also did some keyboard puzzles with her, where I made a printout of the keyboard and then cut up little foam pieces with letter numbers on them, so she could kind of start matching just to get gain some keyboard orientation and keyboard awareness. And the interesting thing about that is, she not only stopped crying in computer class, but the next class after that, her grades went up in because she was so dysregulated and so upset that it was impacting her next class as well. So just again a simple strategy using activity analysis, changing the way she's expressing herself. She's still learning the keyboard. She's still learning typing, which is what the goal of the activity was. She was just using a different program. We
Jayson Davies
sometimes forget how regulating being successful and confident in something can be.
Deborah Schwind
Yes, we Do you know? I think thinking about this, I think one of the dilemmas that we have as OTs, probably a little bit less, but I still think we do. But more so for teachers, is that we don't always have the confidence in doing it differently. And I think sometimes we think different is less, but different can be way better. And I we always don't have the confidence in that. But when you see kids like this who are so successful, it's like, oh my gosh, different is a winner.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, yeah, and and you you forget how much one success can lead to another success, which can you know compound and snowball effect, and you know you start to have success in just a small little thing that really ends up not being a small little thing because it compounds and becomes something else, like you mentioned with that computer class, and then you know the the next class the student was being more successful. Who would know? Right. Yeah. You know. One
Deborah Schwind
thing that does come up a lot with UDL is some people considering it a cheat, and I think it's so important that we understand that it's not a cheat. That it's really about accessing, participating, and engaging, and we don't think of the wheelchair as a cheat. We don't think of the glasses as a cheat. We don't think the hearing aid as a cheat. So using the technology for some is what they require, and I'm sure many of us are familiar with Bloom's taxonomy, which are basically like verbs to indicate our learning, and it kind of starts off in a pyramid, and the base of the pyramid is really kind of recall, like just recalling basic facts, and then those verbs get more complicated and more compounded, and at the top is more kind of self-expression, if you will, and creating things. There's actually a Bloom's taxonomy for digital work, and what it shows is that using digital resources actually requires more planning and there's more steps. So it's not a cheat, but you can. That's definitely something that you can Google, and it just Bloom's taxonomy digital planning verbs.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, yeah. We'll we'll be sure to find that and link over to it. Well, Debbie, I want to say thank you so much. We really appreciate your time, your energy, all the knowledge, all the the little not quips, but the the little things you said today that really that really get us thinking a little bit, right? Like that. Just because AI is here and other tools, just because we can use them doesn't mean they're cheating. So we appreciate that. You have a lot of cool projects in the work. I'd love to let you share about a few of them that are are out or coming soon.
Deborah Schwind
Yeah. So I've been very fortunate to be able to collaborate with several different authors, and Patty Lavager and Francine Saroya just recently published a book on theory using OT theory in school-based practice, and I have a chapter in that. Moira Bushnell also has a book coming out about occupations or using occupations in school-based practice, and I have a chapter in that. And Patty Lavager actually has another book coming out on using high-leverage practices in school-based practice, and I have a chapter in that as well.
Jayson Davies
Fantastic! That's so much fun. We will be linking to all of those that we can that are out right now, like the best practices book. But yeah, we look forward to the others coming out as well. And as I mentioned earlier, please do check out Savita Sundar's Inclusive Occupations podcast. We'll link to that as well, where you can hear Debbie, actually Debbie. And one of her students that she worked with interviewed about transitioning and cafeteria and support in the cafeteria. It's fantastic. Go listen to it. The link is down below in the show notes.
Deborah Schwind
Savitha actually has three of my students that she's interviewed now, and it's just amazing to hear them. They're all adults now, and just to hear their successes is really heartwarming.
Jayson Davies
I love it. I love it. Such a great podcast, Debbie. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it, and look forward to talking to you again.
Deborah Schwind
Thank you.
Jayson Davies
All right, that is a wrap on episode 212 of the OT Schoolhouse podcast, a huge thank you to Debbie for coming back on the show and sharing so many practical, real-world examples of UDL in action and challenging us a little bit to you know recall UDL in our own practice and support the teachers, support the students to put all that into action, not just let things sit in the closet and not get used. And of course, thank you for tuning in. I appreciate you listening to the show. Even more importantly, I appreciate you continuing to grow as a school-based OT practitioner and taking what you learn on the show and putting it into actions. The emails that I receive from you all and the comments that I see over inside the back to school conference community and our OT school bus collaborative community just continue to make me in awe and just really see the value of this podcast and how it's helping you all. So I appreciate you listening. I appreciate you being here today. If today's episode did get you thinking on how you can support access and participation in your school. I do want to invite you to check out the OT Schoolhouse Collaborative. It is where school-based OT practitioners come together for professional development, resources, and mentorship, all designed specifically for you and the other OT practitioners in that community. We're doing some really cool things over there. Like this month, the collab members all voted to work on consultations and putting in place a system that we can use over and over and over again to make sure that our consults are effective and support the teachers. And we voted on that. We chose that, and so we are focusing on supporting every member implement an effective consultation program. So, if you want to be a part of that, head on over to OTSchoolHouse. comm slash collab to learn more and join us today. Oh, and by the way, if you're listening to this after October of 2026, all that is still accessible to you inside the collab. All the replays, all the resources, they're there for you. Until next time, keep learning, keep advocating, and keep making a difference in the students that you serve. I'll see you in episode 213.
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.
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