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OTS 59: When to use Screenings in School-Based OT

Updated: Jun 28



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Welcome to the show notes for the Episode 59 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast.


In episode 59 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast, I'm sharing with you the who, what, when, where, why & how of screenings in the school-based OT setting. Whether you are a brand new OT or a seasoned School-Based OT, the likelihood that you are using screenings and the subsequent opportunities to their full potential are unlikely simply because it is not something we are trained in. I hope this podcast can inspire you to move forward with supporting more students than just those who are on an IEP. So please listen to learn how.


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Have any questions or comments about the podcast? Email Jayson at Jayson@otschoolhouse.com

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Episode Transcript


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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, Jason Davies, class is officially in session. 

 

Jayson Davies   

Hey there. And welcome to the OT school house podcast. My name is Jayson Davies, and I hope your 2020 school year is off to the best start that it possibly can be in light of everything going on right now, it's been eye opening to kind of see everything that's going on with all the emails and questions that I've received from everyone. It's crazy. Just, you know, a lot of you are virtually online, 100% like I am for the most part, some of you are having evaluations in person, while others are having evaluations over a teletherapy platform of some form. And then you have others who are in a hybrid model, where students are on campus two to three days a week, or they're split up in cohorts. And so you're on campus every day working with kids while they're revolving in and out of the school in some form. And then still others of you are full time and the kids are full time, and you are on campus seeing kids wearing that PPE, trying to figure out how to, I guess, limit the spread of the Coronavirus by either a, you know, minimizing tools that are used between students, or maybe, maybe you're going into classrooms as opposed to pulling out, or the other way around, you're only pulling out as opposed to going into classrooms as a way to try and prevent the spread of Coronavirus. It's all just been really, really amazing to just hear what everyone's doing. So with that said, trying to figure out what to do a podcast on has been a little tricky because everyone's in a different situation. You know, a year ago, we were all in house for the most part, and and I knew what to plan for, but with everything going on now, it's it's making a little tricky. So I'm trying to get the best of both worlds between those of you who are working with kids directly in the school and those who are working online. So this week, I'm going to talk about something that I hope can help you, whether or not you are providing services online or in person, and that is screenings, and how it relates to RTI, Response to Intervention. Before I jump into that, though, I want to real quickly say that the OT school house podcast is an extension of the OT School House website, and over at the OT School House website, I am kicking off a special sale on the OT school house A to Z school based ot course. The A to Z school based ot course is the first comprehensive professional development course for school based occupational therapists. In this course, we cover everything from screenings and RTI like what we're going to cover today, but then we go way beyond that to do also look at evaluations. We look at determining the level of service a student might require, and how to determine that level of service. We look at intervention planning to help our students meet their goals, and then we kind of finish everything up with graduating students from occupational therapy services in an ethical way when they're ready. And that's just the highlights. We also cover everything in between that it really is a comprehensive course, from what you need to know the day you step onto that campus, all the way through to when a student is ready to graduate, and everything in between, my personal favorite part of the course, and maybe the part that ends up being the most helpful for you, is actually our live Q and A sessions that I hold with Members of the course every Thursday evening. It has just been so much fun and so informative to get to know people that have taken the course and be able to answer your questions directly. So if there's something that maybe isn't actually in the course that you want help with, that's what our Thursday night Q and A sessions are for. It's just been so great getting to know everyone in the course and answering questions. I love that part of this course, and you get that with the course lifetime access to the Q and A sessions every Thursday. All right, so if you'd like to learn more about this, A to Z, school based ot course, head on over to OT schoolhouse.com. Forward slash A to Z, A, the number two and then the letter Z. And also stay tuned until the end of this episode, where I'm going to share a special promotional code to get $50 off when you purchase before October 23 All right, so let's jump into the topic of screenings. Today. I'm going to start off by just sharing what happens when you first start off as a school based OT. And you know, when you first get a job as a school based OT, there are a few things that you begin to learn quickly, and screenings is not one of them. Typically, you likely started with getting your caseload and trying to figure out what that will look like, right? You try and figure out how what kids have to be seen for how many days a week, or how many days a month. Trying to figure out what schools you have to be at on what days in order to make that even possible. And then, of course, how you're going to be in multiple schools at once, because there's just more kids that need to be seen than there seems to be time in a day. Or if you're in the teletherapy model right now, and you're just getting your first job, you're trying to figure out all the technology and how, again, you're going to fit all those kids into a one week period. And then just as you start to get a handle on your schedule, the invitation to IEP meetings start to come, and you realize you have no control over what time they start, what time they end, how long they occur, and how many sessions you will have to miss in order to attend those IEP meetings, you start to figure out what an IEP is. You start to understand that you need to input your progress on levels, your goals and your services. Maybe extended school year services as well. Maybe you even need to update the notes page a little bit, even eight years into occupational therapy, knowing that an IEP is scheduled at a time that I'm supposed to be providing services still causes me anxiety. And so that is one thing that you have probably come to realize, if you've been in the schools for even a few months, or especially if you've been there for several years, you don't have all the control that you wish you had when it comes to scheduling IEP meetings, and then your first referral pops up, and you know, you are now a full fledged school based occupational therapist. You are providing treatments, you are attending meetings, and now you have to figure out how to complete an evaluation. All of that can be really overwhelming, and that's also why most occupational therapists never make it past those three key aspects of being a school based OT, you know that saying that you'll often see on T shirts nowadays, it goes, eat, sleep, fill in the blank, repeat. I mean, I know from my experiences back in college, our favorite one was eat, sleep, rave, repeat. Well, in school based OT, it is easy to helplessly fall into the eval, meet, treat, repeat trap, and it can take you years to move beyond that. There can be, and there should be, so much more to occupational therapy in schools than evaluation, meet, treat and repeat, and that's what I'm here to talk about today. What is a screening in school based OT? What is the purpose of a screening, and why should we spend more time doing them? They can be very helpful when we do them the right way. Now, I know some of you might be a little bit confused about the difference between a screening and an evaluation, so let's start there. In some settings, screenings and evaluations might mean the same thing, and if you use the term screen or assessment or evaluation when talking to a parent, they might kind of think that they're all exactly the same. But I want you to understand that these are two very different tools that you have at your disposal as an occupational therapist in the schools. I'm actually going to do something here that most speaking coaches would probably say is pretty stupid. I'm going to start with the most important thing to remember here at the beginning of our discussion. And really, if you only remember one thing during this episode, remember this evaluations support individual students while screenings, support individual classrooms. One more time, evaluation, support individual students while screening, support individual classrooms. Now that may sound a little shocking to some of you that that are out there listening, especially if you are stuck in that eval, treat, meet repeat cycle, and never have a minute to stop thinking about those three areas, and aren't able to really move beyond and outside of that to think, what could I potentially do? You know, you kind of get stuck in that working with one or two students at a time for eight hours a day, and when you're not working with the students, you are doing an evaluation, or writing up the evaluation, or attending an IEP. And like I said, that's like the three key areas that we end up spending most of our time. Some of you may even be saying in your head, well, you know, I do use screenings, but I screen individuals to determine if they need an evaluation, not to look at the whole classroom. And for those of you that are saying that, bear with me. I'm going to address that and why you might want to reconsider that in a little bit. Now, in that phrase, I want you to remember evaluation, support individual students, while screening, support individual classrooms. Each word was very precisely chosen. I did not say that screening support groups of students or special education students. I said individual classrooms, and that's because each classroom is a small community complete with a leader. Hopefully that's the teacher, right, not a student that's leading the classroom. Or maybe an aide. But there may also potentially be a sidekick, and that might be the teacher's assistant in the form of an aide, or maybe even a parent that just happens to be able to help out quite frequently. You also have all the citizens in the classroom, which are the students, right? But beyond that, you have more. You have more than just the people in the classroom, you also have the environment and the expectations, both the social expectations and the academic expectations. Like I said, it's a whole mini community in the classroom, and they are then part of even a larger community that is the school. That's a whole nother topic, but today we're focusing on the individual classroom and the screening that supports those classrooms, all right, so let's take a step back real quick to the second part of that phrase, screening support individual classrooms, which I just established, are little mini communities. And in case you haven't had a chance to look at either the incoming or the outgoing. OT practice framework from a, ot a, ot a makes a point that ot practitioners can support communities, just as they can support individuals and families. Thus OTs can support classrooms as a whole. In the educational field, they do tend to call this RTI or MTS, S or simply collaborating with the teacher or collaborating with the classroom. Now the reason I'm laying all this out for you is because I know the last thing you want me to tell you is that you need to do more work. And I know no matter how great I make this sound, how great this episode is you won't carry this into practice unless I show you the benefits, right? So why might we want to support an individual classroom, as opposed to an individual student? Well, there are many answers to that, but I kind of want to narrow it down here. And first, I'll say, you know, supporting a classroom does not require a formal evaluation. Like supporting an individual student does require that initial evaluation for you in order to bring that student onto services. Sure you're going to want to collect data in some form to show that progress was made among the students eventually, but there's no 60 day timeline or standardized evaluations to worry about. So in that sense, there may be a little bit less stress for you. The second and probably more important benefit, at least, according to me, is that by supporting a classroom, you can support 30 kids, or however many kids are in that classroom, and a teacher in the same amount of time you might have supported only one student in that classroom. And then beyond that, the teacher will have the strategies he or she learned from what you have taught them, and that they incorporated with their students this year, and they'll carry that on to next year, and all the students that that student or that that teacher will have in the future. So by supporting that one classroom for maybe 10 weeks or three months or whatever it might be, you are supporting not only those kids, but you're also supporting the teacher who will go on to support countless kids in the future. Quick bonus reason for supporting the classrooms, especially your primary grades and special education classrooms, you're going to like this. You will eventually likely see a reduction in the number of OT referrals over time, because you are supporting your teachers with strategies they can use. Now. Don't get upset with me when you first see a bunch of referrals come in, because there probably will be an OH MY GOD phase where teachers finally understand how valuable you can be to them, and they might submit a few more referrals. But over time, those referrals are going to be reduced, because the teachers and everyone at that school site is going to know exactly what you would do in a certain situation, all right, so there will always be students that need an OT evaluation, but through this way, you might be able to cut down the number of referrals, especially referrals that may be unnecessary. Oh, and I almost forgot, because I don't want you to go to your administrator and say, Hey, Jason from the OT school house podcast that we can do screenings. Now I want you to have some evidence to back that up, and so I have here a direct quote from idea section 300.3 OT, three. OT, three ot two that provides a definition for screenings as it relates to special education. Here it is the screening of a student by a teacher or specialist to determine appropriate instructional strategies for curriculum implementation shall not be considered to be an evaluation for eligibility for special education and related services. Did you get that? I'm going to read it one more time, because I know when someone. Read something sometimes we tune out, so I'm going to read it one more time. The screening of a student by a teacher or specialist to determine appropriate instructional strategies for curriculum implementation shall not be considered to be an evaluation for eligibility for special education or related services. Again. If you need to listen to it again, go ahead and hit that little rewind 15 seconds button, and you can hear it again. What this is saying is that screenings should be used to determine appropriate instructional strategies for curriculum implementation. It does not say that we can use screenings as a way to determine if an evaluation is necessary. Remember, I said I was going to address that earlier. I know some of you out there are doing a screening of a specific student for a teacher to determine if they need an OT evaluation. That's not what IDEA says a screening is to be used for. It's to be used for curriculum implementation and instructional strategies. All right, some of you may have pointed out in that definition that it does say the screening of a student, not group of students, like I am proposing, can be used. I am hesitant to use a screening for an individual student, because I don't want it to at all appear like an evaluation is being somewhat used. I don't want it to look like that. I went into the classroom to look at Johnny, even though I don't have an assessment plan, because at that point I am well, I already know there's a concern with Johnny. Otherwise, why would I be going in to look at Johnny as an occupational therapist? And so it gets a little muddy, and if you're going in to look at one student, it should probably be for the purpose of an evaluation. I am hesitant to do that for any one student, because it might look like an evaluation. I just want to clarify that, because in 2008 there was actually a lawsuit against the School District of Philadelphia in which the occupational therapist did something similar, the therapist completed only, and I quote directly from the lawsuit, a cursory screening of the student and determined that the student did not need occupational therapy services based on only that little screening that they did, without getting into All the details I can tell you that that eventually came back to haunt the district. In fact, the student eventually did qualify, or I shouldn't use the word word qualify. We don't qualify students for occupational therapy. We make a recommendation, but the judge did order compensatory services to be provided for the student when later, that student was evaluated for occupational therapy services and found to need those services. So again, I just want to reiterate that if you're going to be doing screenings, especially if you're going to be doing screens of individual students, be very careful, because you do not want that screening to look like a poor evaluation, and you do not want to base a determination of whether or not a student needs occupational therapy services based upon a poor evaluation, because if an IEE or something like that is requested, it's very easy to say that, well, I mean that IEE is obviously better than your little observation for 15 minutes that you Did of a student to say that they did not qualify for ot services or that an evaluation wasn't even needed. Remember, IDEA says that a screening is for instructional strategies and curriculum development, all right, okay, so I think I've established the reasons why I think OTs need to be using screenings to look at whole classrooms. But what does a screening actually look like? Well, it's kind of like an evaluation, except with less formality, as I kind of went over earlier. First you're gonna start by having a conversation with a teacher. If you are trying this for the first time, I highly suggest that you find a teacher who has already seen the value of occupational therapy at work. Maybe they've had a student that you worked with and and saw the benefit that you were able to provide with that student. And hopefully they are open to new ideas, given that they've seen what you can do, hopefully they're open to ideas that you might have. I actually have a very basic form that I use to have the teacher identify areas of concerns for the class. But let's be honest, typically, it's handwriting. Sometimes it might be behavior or lack of student attention in class. Those are the three big reasons that teachers are typically reaching out to us. Maybe, if it's in kindergarten, then maybe using scissors might be part of that. So from there, I set up a time to chat, get a little more information from the teacher. You know, many times a handwriting concern, there's a lot more detail into that than just handwriting. You know, what is the real problem is it difficulties copying from. The board difficulties, copying from a book, learning, formation, sizing, spacing, so on. You know, as occupational therapists, we know how to break down tasks versus, you know, maybe a teacher, they're just going to tell us handwriting, but we really need to know what part of handwriting is, the difficult part. The same can be said for behavior, attention, using scissors and so on, right? What is the real problematic behavior, or behaviors? Why do we think attention might be limited and so forth, right? So once you do have a little more information from the teacher, then you can set up a time with the teacher to observe the class. Preferably, you want to do this when you will actually have a chance to see the concern, right? There's no reason to go in during PE if the concern is during handwriting time. So this would be similar to an observation you would complete for an evaluation in the classroom, except instead of looking at one student, we're looking at the entire community, right? We're looking at the whole classroom and how it works as a whole, or even potentially individual. Again, we're not going in there with the idea of looking at one student, but each student is a part of that community, so you might have to look at an individual student. Some important things to note may be about trends. You see that students are performing in the classroom. Do you notice anything about the environment. Are the kids seated in a way that's conducive to learning, or are they simply spending half of their time trying to figure out how to sit so that their feet can touch the floor? Just remember to keep the concern of the teacher on your mind as you do this, you may see things in the classroom that do cause you concern, but in this moment, your job is to focus on the support the teacher needs. We don't want to overwhelm the teacher potentially with ideas that may not actually be a part of the solution for the teacher's concerns. Okay, so now you've done your observation for the class. What comes next? There are a number of possibilities, but first, I would start by collecting your thoughts and debriefing with the teacher as soon as you can, while that that period of time that you were in the classroom is fresh for both of you. Share what you saw and what your clinical reasoning is leaning you towards. This is your time to share, and if you have some good advice, the teacher may even be open to some constructive criticism if warranted. What most frequently comes from these screenings, I find is that a I provide a few simple strategies, such as providing the students with different pencil options using adapted paper or adapted scissors, maybe with a handful of kids in the classroom, sometimes we have to get the custodian involved to help lower some desks or find new chairs. But there's other there's other things that might come out of this, other potential outcomes, and that could be that you and the teacher move forward with some form of collaborative handwriting program, or a movement program, a typing program, or maybe even some form of an emotional regulation program. Maybe you really know the zones of regulation well, and so you want to implement that into the classroom. One of the handouts that I actually provide as part of the A to Z school based ot course, is a sample 10 week handwriting program that could be replicated with the whole class. It's something that I did a few years back, and I keep on hand for when I do think there's a general education classroom that I could support through a collaborative handwriting program. If this is a younger grade classroom, maybe Kinder or first grade, maybe you could even just set up shop once a week in the morning and run a fine motor center. If they do centers, there are really a lot of options here, basically anything that you can come up with, and if your teacher is on board with you, you might need a little bit of support also from the administrator. But if you guys work together, you can come up with many different collaborative options to help. There's actually even some research out there that OT and teacher collaborations can lead to success when it comes to handwriting, that's really where the research is. I'm sure we could see success in those other areas that I mentioned, emotional regulation, using scissors, other fine motor aspects. But there is actually some research out there where they looked at an occupational therapist and a teacher collaborating. This was back in 2016 and they use the Size Matters handwriting program. And yeah, it's definitely worth looking into. In fact, the title of that article is effectiveness of a handwriting intervention with at risk kindergarteners. And it is in the Asia, the American Journal of Occupational Therapy that is published by a ot a and it was written by I'm not going to butcher their last names. It's Cheryl and Beth. And I will provide a link to that article in the show notes at ot schoolhouse.com, forward slash, Episode 59 you. Will find a link right there, in case you would like to print this out and have it for your own records. All right, so I went over to the possible outcomes, which is simply providing strategies to the teacher to try in the classroom. And the second outcome being potentially having some form of collaborative approach between you and the teacher that you work together maybe once a week, or however often you decide to do it, but there is one more potential outcome of a screening, and it doesn't happen often, but I want you to know about it, because it can happen, and that is, maybe you went into the classroom to observe, and remember, we're there to observe the community, but the community includes individual citizens or individual players, individual students, and maybe one of those students in particular was really struggling. It is possible that after your screening, you meet up with a teacher and you guys talking about this, you know, the entire community, you discuss this one particular student. And maybe this one particular student really does need more support than the rest of the classroom, and in that case, it may be beneficial for you to help that teacher go through the referral process for whatever service you and the teacher think that that student might need. Maybe they already have special education services, and you think that they could benefit from individual occupational therapy services, well, then you can help that teacher make an appropriate referral. I don't know about you, but I'd much rather have a teacher making a referral for a student who I have kind of seen through this, through the screening process, as as opposed to the teacher just making a referral for a student, they they don't really understand how occupational therapy will help them. Again, just to reiterate, that is not why the screening should happen. You should not be doing a screening simply because the teacher had a concern about this one student. So you're going to go in and observe the entire class as kind of a disguise for looking at that one student. No, that's not how this should work. You went into that classroom to observe the entire community, and in that you did end up finding a student that needs more support. If the teacher beforehand already had concerns for that student, then this should not be happening. You should not be doing a screening for that one student that should then be an official referral. Or maybe you start off with just some simple strategies for that student to the teacher without really knowing that student, but eventually that would turn into a referral anyways. So helping the teacher to submit a referral for either OT or maybe just special education in general should kind of be that last resort. Remember, we always want to t we always want to keep students in the least restrictive environment, and so we want to do everything in our power to help that community so that all students can benefit in the classroom. But I would be remiss if I didn't tell you that, yes, sometimes it is appropriate to go ahead and make that referral. Okay. So that wraps up the three primary outcomes of a potential classroom screening. One thing that I did forget to mention is that if you are going to do some form of a program, you're going to actually want to somehow track it to see if it's working. And so if you are going to do a handwriting program, do some form of simple data collection, it doesn't have to be using the ths for every student or the, I don't know, the edge for every student, but do something simple, even if it's as simple as a work sample of every student. Just so you have that before and a potential after comparison, so you can actually see if that handwriting program that you put into place, did it work? Did overall, did you see a reduction in words squeezed together, or did you see more kids writing on the line? Or whatever it might be whatever you and the teacher decide that you really want to focus in on, did that program make a difference? Because then you have the ability to say, hey, look, it worked for this first grade teacher. Now can we replicate that with this other first grade classroom and go from there? That's how your RTI program can continue to grow, but you need to have something that supports that what you did actually worked all right. So to recap, providing strategies to the teacher, collaborating with the teacher and or making a referral for a student to the right services are kind of the three primary outcomes of a screening or of a potential screening of the classroom. And most importantly, you need to remember that evaluations support individual students while screening support individual classrooms. If you can get to a point where these screenings become a part of your yearly participation with that school, you're going to enjoy your job more. I guarantee. It, you are going to enjoy your job because you're going to have more interaction with the teachers. You're going to see teachers using the things that you actually taught them. You're also just going to get to know them. You're also going to, like I mentioned earlier, I think you're going to see a decline in individual evaluation referrals. So I know this might sound counterintuitive, but by getting into the classrooms more helping more students, helping more teachers, you're going to have less teachers bugging you for referrals, because you're going to be in there and they're going to be seeing what you can do and how you support the kids. And that is especially true if you are able to support younger grade primary teachers, you know, K through 2k, through three, as well as your special education classrooms. By getting into those classrooms more the teachers are again, are going to see what you can do. They're going to see the strategies as well. Are the other adults in the classroom, be it aids or adults, they're going to see those strategies, and they're going to incorporate those strategies every day, as opposed to you working with a student once a week to incorporate those strategies. So again, this can really be beneficial for you, and I highly suggest that you look into incorporating screenings to get out of that, that evaluation, meet, treat repeat cycle and get into the classrooms a little bit more and screen those classrooms and work collaboratively with the teachers. Now, there's one more thing that I do want to address, because I know many of you are thinking, how would I do this virtually? And to be completely honest with you, I think it would look very similar. You would, of course, start off by having that conversation with the teacher to determine what concerns there are. Then after that, you follow up with an observation of the online classroom, where you can see all of the students and the teacher. And of course, the environment is going to be completely different, but one thing you might actually need to do to actually get this collaboration going is that you might actually have to have students submit their work somehow. Obviously, that's a big difficult area right now is actually turning in work, and so the students and the parents are going to have to somehow get the work samples to you, especially if you are working on handwriting or something. Another barrier might be that it is very tricky to see the students hands on camera right now, most of the cameras are pointed at the student's face, and so you won't be able to really see those fine motor skills unless you are working with a student one on one. So that is a barrier that if fine motor skills is a concern, you will have to address, and it might be a little tricky, just like if you're doing a screening in person. After you do that observation, you would go ahead and set up a time to talk with the teacher and go from there, debrief with that teacher and figure out a potential solution and work from there, determine if you're going to simply provide some strategies for the teacher. Are you going to collaborate with the teacher, or are you going to make a referral for any individual student. Obviously, the recommendations may look a little different because you're on a virtual platform, as opposed to in class, and you don't really have the ability to recommend, you know, environmental changes at home, really. I mean, you might be able to do a little workshop for the kids and the parents about what the what the environment could be optimized for, per se, how they could change the environment up at home, if they have the the option to do so, but things are going to look a little bit different. Maybe it's something about reducing screen time and sharing with the teacher different ways that maybe they can have activities where the student isn't relying on staring at the screen to do maybe it's as simple as saying, Hey, I know that we're trying to do a lot of typing because, well, everything's on the computer right now. But what if we actually have them do some writing on pencil and paper? Because a eventually they're going to come back onto campus and they're going to have to write and B, it's going to help reduce screen time. And then maybe you have to actually help teach the parent how to or, sorry, not the parent. Well, yeah, the parent too, but also the teacher and how to turn work in digitally, even if it is a written assignment. Another way that you might be able to collaborate with the teacher is on implementing some form of a movement program where there is movement incorporated into the academics or or spurs in between. Some of the academics that way, the students are actually getting up out of their chair. You know, it's surprising when you go into a general education classroom, they actually move around a lot, whether it's moving to form groups or whether it's moving to get up and get paper or to go get tools. Across the classroom, they actually move quite a bit. But, I mean, I don't know about you, but I don't move once I sit down at my work in my office, like I'm there and it's. Unfortunately, we're not moving around at all. You know, even those five minutes from walking from one classroom to another classroom or walking to the lunchroom, some of that just doesn't happen, and it's not happening for the students as well. So implementing some form of a movement program might be beneficial. I also think that some teachers are struggling to figure out how to how to provide academics the entire day through this medium, and so several of them may actually welcome you into their classroom to provide that program, because it's minutes that they don't have to focus on academics, which is a lot for them. They are not used to doing this online thing, just like we aren't, but they're being asked to do this with the same group of students every day for hours a day, and that is a struggle for some of them. So they may be more than welcome to have you come in and kind of take the lead for a few minutes a week. And you know what? Hey, there you go. You're now teaching a class of 30 students and a teacher how to make their life better over a long period of time. The hardest part to establishing a screening process is getting started. And so again, I just want to, I just want to help you get started. And so find that teacher who's going to be open to ideas that maybe you already have a rapport with, and start there. Where can you help that teacher? If you don't feel comfortable doing this virtually right now, that's okay. Don't feel like you have to do it right now. Wait until students come back. That's perfectly fine. I just want to give you options for both, whether or not it's virtually or in person. So I think that that is a great start for you to understanding screenings. And if you've listened this far. I really appreciate you being here and just listening to what I have to say. I want you to know that this is just the tip of the iceberg. When it does come to understanding screenings and RTI as a whole, there's so much to RTI and really, screenings are kind of a tier two system within the three tier system that is RTI within the schools, what we talked about today and with screenings and how to go ahead and move beyond screenings, is laid out in so much more detail and broken down, along with a lot more in the A to Z school based ot course that I have on the OT School House website, which right now I'm Running a special promo for $50 off until October 23 2020, using promo code ot 50, as in October 50. If you would like to dive in further with me to learn all the ins and outs of being a school based OT, I'd love to invite you to join me for this course. The course is a self paced course, complete with eight modules and an extra bonus module that lead you through the entire process of being a school based occupational therapist. Along with the videos, you'll also receive more than 25 PDFs and editable Word documents, including my evaluation template, as well as several templates related to RTI screenings and intervention planning, and as I mentioned at the start of the show, you will also have an open invitation to join me every Thursday night for our live Q and A support sessions, where we're going to get to know each other, know each other's concerns, difficulties and strengths. And it's not just me that provides feedback for everyone, the entire group comes on and helps each other. So it's a fantastic opportunity, and again, I hope to see you there sometime during those Thursday night calls. Again, you can learn more about this course at ot schoolhouse.com forward slash A to Z, or you can also head over to the show notes@otschoolhouse.com forward slash episode 59 and find the link to head over to the course page. All right, don't forget to use promo code ot 50, as in October 50 for $50 off before October 23 that's going to wrap up today's episode. I hope you all enjoyed this talk about screenings and about what we can do after we do our screenings. You know, collaborating with the teacher a bit. Remember, if you want to learn more about screenings and the entire process of being a school based. OT, check out the A to Z, school based. OT, course. All right, I will see you all next time on the podcast, take care. Have a great week. Bye, bye. 

 

Amazing Narrator   

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



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