OTS 60: 2020 Review & 5 Resolutions For Any School-Based OT
- Jayson Davies
- Jan 4, 2021
- 19 min read
Updated: Jun 28
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Welcome to the show notes for Episode 60 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast.
In episode 60 I am looking back at what I learned from 2020 and sharing what you can expect from the OT Schoolhouse in 2021. We will also review 5 new years resolutions fit for any School-Based OT and one special announcement.
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Well,
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Episode Transcript
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Jayson Davies
Hey, ot practitioners, the conference that your colleagues are calling the most valuable event of the year is returning just in time for the 2025 2026, school year. Join me and over 600 other school based ot practitioners this August for the fifth annual back to school Conference featuring 12 hours of practical a, ot a approved CEUs and resources from expert guests later in today's episode, I'll share with you about our incredible speaker lineup and a special discount just for our podcast listeners like you to learn more about the conference, visit ot schoolhouse.com/conference and secure your spot today.
Amazing Narrator
Hello and welcome to the OT school house podcast, your source for school based occupational therapy tips, interviews and professional development now to get the conversation started, here is your host, Jayson Davies class is officially in session. Hey
Jayson Davies
there, everyone, and welcome back to the OT school house podcast for episode 60. This is the very first episode in 2021 and I cannot be more excited for you to be here with me today, and for me to be here with you guys. I really enjoy this part of my day, this part of OT school house. And yeah, I'm just excited to be here. My name is Jayson Davies. I am the host of the OT school house podcast, as well as the kind of, the name, the face behind the OT School House website in all so thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate it. Today, we're actually going to go ahead and kind of recap a little bit about what was in 2020 and then talk about moving forward. I'm going to go over what I'm calling, calling the 3c as well as, um, talk about a few new year's new year's resolutions for any school based occupational therapist. So we're going to get into that. But yeah, I just want to again, say thank you so much for being here. Whether this is your first time ever listening to the OT school house podcast, maybe you made a resolution to find some some occupational therapy based podcast, and you stumbled across this one. Thank you so much for being here. Or if you've listened to all 59 now 60 episodes and you're just a ot school house super fan. I appreciate you being here. Thank you so much. So let's go ahead and jump into a quick 2020 recap. It was a year. It was a true, difficult year that felt like three years. I feel like sometimes, maybe four. But you know what? We made it through it. Congratulations and happy. New Year to you all. We are in 2021 we learned so much from 2020 that we are going to apply to 2021 and into making us better therapists. So the first thing I want to talk about, actually, is a, I don't want to call it a weakness, but a struggle, a struggle I had, and that was in the final quarter, I guess you could say, of the year, October, November, December, my motivation for getting up and doing these podcasts, or really doing a lot, anything, really, anything much for the OT school house podcast and OT School House website, I struggled with that. It was hard to get the energy to hop on here and talk to a microphone, talk to a camera, talk to you all, even through social media, I didn't post a whole lot. Basically, from the time of the presidential election, like from there on, I just didn't do a whole lot. And so first of all, I want to say I'm sorry for that, because I know a lot of you do look forward to a new episode every two weeks, and that's going to be part of the seas going forward. I'm going to get to that, but I just want to take that moment to, you know, say, just like you all probably struggled this year with schools going virtual and back into class and virtual again. I went through the same struggles with you all, and you know, it was about that time when we started to bring students back on the campus, and that took so much energy. It was only our special education students that came back onto campus, those in the moderate to severe cases or classes. Sorry, but that was, that was a struggle. I mean, trying to figure out all the PPE, not only that we had to wear, but also that they had to wear when we could or could not go into classes, how many students we could or could not pull in a day. It just took a lot out of me, and it was hard to get into the OT school house podcast when I got home from work. But it's 2021 I've got a lot of things going on, and now got a lot of plans. Things are changing so that I can have really more time to invest in the OT school house podcast. So big things are happening. And yeah, 2020 was tough, but we're moving forward. Also in 2020 I released the, well, actually, three iterations of the A to Z school based ot course, which you can learn more about at ot schoolhouse.com, forward slash A to Z, the number two. And, well, I started. Back in March, right around when the pandemic actually happened. Actually, I got used to zoom right before the pandemic happened, because of the A to Z school based ot course, our first cohort of about 30 people, we went through. And it was fantastic. The 30 people that got in sold out this course in just a few hours. And then the reviews from it were fantastic. It was an eight hour course spread out over eight weeks, and it was just amazing. We walked through everything from RTI to evaluations in the schools to even some of the laws and the logistics of being a school based OT. And then we go through how your evaluation guides your treatment planning, your treatment planning itself and the treatment, and then eventually to where you can exit students from occupational therapy or graduate them from ot in an ethical way. Like I said, we had about 30 students in the very first cohort back in March over an eight week period. I did it again in that time, the second time we actually had about 120 occupational therapists and occupational therapy assistants go through it from all over the world. Actually, that time, yeah, we had a few in Australia, and I think one in the UK, which was amazing. So thank you so much for being a part of that. But we did it a little bit quicker, since it was in the summer. We actually did it in a four week time span, two two sessions a week, and it was amazing, again, great reviews, to the point where I then made it a recorded course that anyone can take at any time on my website or through the website. It is called the A to Z, school based ot course. And like I kind of alluded to, we really go through everything from start to finish. What it the knowledge that you need to be a school based occupational therapist. I've had new, brand new school based OTs that have gone through it. They love it. And then I've had therapists that have been a therapist for 1015, years go through it, and they just, they tell me that they feel, not only does it validate kind of what they're doing, but it also kind of rekindles their spirit for school based occupational therapists. So thank you to everyone who has taken that course, and if you haven't, I still want to say thank you so much for listening today, and it is always available to you if you'd ever like to learn more about it. It is at ot schoolhouse.com forward slash A to Z in 2020 I also released a total of 17 episodes of the OT school house podcast, which is amazing we're now at. This is episode 60, so we're now at episode 60, and I cannot be more thankful for all of you for taking time out of your day to listen to the OT school house podcast. We've been doing this now for about three, a little over three years, and it is just amazing. I am again, so grateful. It has been a pleasure getting to know all of you. You get to know me through this podcast, but also I get to know you through social media and through the A to Z school based ot course our Live Office Hours that we do, it's just been a pleasure getting to know all of you. I really appreciate it. Some of my favorite episodes of the podcast from last year include episode 49 which where I interviewed Sarah Collins. She is an occupational therapist working specifically with students and parents of homeschooled students, and so she's really found this unique niche, and she is just killing it, helping so many people all over the United States. It's just amazing. Definitely check that out if you have any interest in homeschooling or helping students who are being homeschooled. Another fantastic episode was with Annabeth and Mara of the fanny pack therapist. That was episode 53 we talked a lot about AAC, augmentative communication and just how we can help our students to be successful with using AAC. Another one which is very unique, because it wasn't an occupational therapist. It's one of the few times that I don't have an occupational therapist on the show. It was with Tony Ty win of K 12, Ed law.com he is actually a special education lawyer down here in Southern California. He's a parent lawyer. And so it's very interesting having him on the show to kind of kind of see things from the opposite side of the table, if you will, during an IEP, right? Sometimes you have that table, that big table, conference table, in between you and the parents. Well, it was kind of nice to hear his side, what he's looking for when he comes into an IEP, what he wants to see the occupational therapist dotting and crossing, you know, those i's and T's, what does he want to see us doing in order to make a nice, strong IEP? I also did three episodes that I think helped a lot of you. Maybe there's more, I don't know. We did several episodes on teletherapy. We also had a few special guests on that talked about what their plans were coming up. And we did it back in August, kind of when school was getting started, what their plans were or what they intended to do as the school year got started. But of course, all of 2020, from. March on was really focused on teletherapy, and I hope I was able to help some of you through, through getting to know zoom or Google meets or just any teletherapy platform with the podcast. So that kind of wraps up 2020 and now I'd actually like to move forward into 2021 by talking about what I'm calling the three C's, I actually have these 3c listed up here. You can't see them, but they're on my wall, and it's just big bold, these three words that start with the letter C, that I want to focus on this year, and by myself focusing on the on the 3c this year, I hope to help you actually focus on these 3c whether or not you're cognizant of these. Of these 3c not you can forget about them. You don't need to remember these 3c for the rest of the year. Maybe you want to, but I want to help you with consistency, confidence and community, and I want to help you with those 3c by myself, using those 3c in my own practice, not only in my own practice as a therapist, but also in my own practice as being the host and owner of the OT school house. I want to be consistent for you all. I want to be confident and feed you confidence. I also want to help build this community. So I'm going to break this down just a little bit more, because in November, December, I wasn't consistent. This podcast, kind of like I said earlier, we took a short hiatus, about a two month hiatus where no ot school house podcast came out, and that not fair. I want to say sorry. I mean, I was burnt out. But at the same time, I want to continue and looking forward into 2021. I want to be consistent for you. More importantly, though, I want you to be consistent in your practice, and I want to help you be more consistent in your practice. I want to help you put habits and routines into play that will make your job easier but also more effective, right? It's not always about working hard, but working smart. How can we make our lives easier to help more kiddos or more teachers or more whoever we need to help? So that's where it comes down to consistency. I want to be consistent for you so that you can be a consistent practitioner. The next one that I want to break down a little bit more is confident. I want to help you feel more confident as a school based OT, and I also want to be more confident as my or for myself as a podcaster, as potentially maybe dabbling into the YouTube world, and also as a overall presenter. For you all, I want to be more confident so that you can feel confident as a school based occupational therapist. I don't want you to feel the imposter syndrome. I don't want you to be unsure about the future of school based occupational therapy in the schools. I don't want you to feel unsure about knowing what school based ot really is and whether or not you're doing the right thing. And so throughout this year, I want to focus on answering some of those questions for you and building up your your base knowledge of school based OT and really why? Let you know why you should be confident in this profession and as a therapist, there is no one way, one right way to provide therapy within the schools, but there are a ton of, a ton of correct ways. And so we really want you to find what works for you and feel confident in that to be, be the confident therapist that you need to be in order to support your your clients. And I think we've talked about this before in the podcast, your clients include your kids, your teachers, maybe other occupational therapists that you supervise, or codas that you supervise. But as well as did I say, teachers, parents, everyone that really works with that student that you also work with. We'll be back after a quick break while it may be summer break now, the school year will be here before you know it. Get ready for it. At the fifth annual back to school Conference coming August, 23 and 24th of this year, join hundreds of school based ot practitioners online for this two day transformative learning event where you can attend live or catch the replays. Don't Miss Amy and Jack from autism level up, sharing neurodiverse strategies to support autistic students or expert handwriting instructor Peggy Morris as she shares the most up to date research on handwriting and how to put it into practice. Don't miss this impactful event for school based ot practitioners. By school based ot practitioners as a thank you for listening to this episode of the OT school house podcast, use promo code. Podcast, 25 for $50 off your registration at ot schoolhouse.com/conference I'll see you there. Finally, the third C, we have consistency. Confidence, and then community. I hope to build consistency and confidence through community. I want to build up the OT school house community. I want us to be there for each other. I want us to be able to share ideas, get together and talk about it, maybe not live. That can't happen yet, but I want us to be able to be a community. My favorite part, I think I mentioned it a few minutes ago, of the OT school house podcast. OT school house in general, is the the opportunities that I get to meet all of you. I have met therapists from around the world in the last three years because of this podcast, opportunities that I would have never had before as a result of this podcast and getting to know all of you, through Instagram, through Facebook, um, through, through the office hours in the A to Z, school based. OT course, it's just been amazing. And I want you all to feel that too, if you don't already. And so I'm going to really focus on community within this 2021, calendar year. And I won't stop that. I'll continue it into 2022 2023 and so forth. But right now community, and I'm actually going to tease just a little bit about community coming up later this year. I won't release all the details, but it will be in August. I am planning a virtual ot School House conference for all of you. I'm laying the foundations for it, finding the presenters for it, but you can guarantee that. Well, if you know me, if you listen to the OT school hub podcast, you know that I put function first, and I really think it's about helping kids where they are. And so this conference is going to be exactly that. We are going to bring in special presenters from all around the nation. Some have been on the podcast, some have not been on the podcast, and you've never heard from them before, but we're going to talk about helping students be independent in the education environment that they are in. And I think that's what really OT is about in the schools. And so we are going to put together a full two and a half day conference about that. Can't wait to release more information to you on that in the in the coming weeks. It won't be it won't be long before I'm able to let you know more about this. I'm excited to share that with you, but I don't want to jump the gun yet. I've got a few more things that I got to put in place before we can really announce that. All right, so those are the three C's, consistency, confidence and community. I hope those resonate with you a little bit again. You don't have to remember these. You don't need to write them down in your journal, put them up on your wall, like I have over here. But I would, I think as you listen to the podcast in the future, later this year, you're going to see how I am trying to help build consistency, confidence and community within this community, within the OT school house community, but also for you individually, I want you to be confident. I want you to feel like things that you are doing are working, and that you're doing those things consistently to make yourself a better therapist. All right, so moving forward, I wanted to give you a little bit more in this podcast. And so I've got five new year's resolutions for the school based OT. Gonna go over these fairly quickly, and I'm gonna help you with fulfilling these resolutions as we go through the year. Okay, and so the first one that I have, I think every school based ot needs support with this I do as well, and that is to stay up to date on our treatment notes. This is like, you know, when they do in the, if you're actually in a real, like, live environment conference, they do the whole, you know, keep your hand up until, well, keep your hand up if you falling behind more than two weeks. Keep your hand up if you've fallen more than three weeks behind, yeah, and so forth, right? We've all been there. We've all done that. We've all been behind on our treatment notes in the past. So I'm going to try and try and help you with that. I think it's a great new year's resolution. In fact, I'm going to try and make sure 24 hours is going to be my period. I'm really going to try and do them in the last few minutes of each session, if not right after the session. But I think that's a great resolution for any school based OT, maybe any ot in general. Next one provide teacher trainings. And I did some, actually, I did two, one for parents and one for teachers in November and December, and it was fantastic. I've already gotten a lot of great feedback that teachers are implementing some of the things that I suggested. And so I highly recommend that you do the same, put together a teacher training and present that for your teachers, let them know how you can support them. That is one way. Remember, we talked about confidence up in the 3c by providing a teacher training. That is one thing, to help build your confidence, to let these teachers know that you are valuable, that you have great information to be shared, and so I do want to encourage you to at least do one type of training, whether it be for teachers or parents. Maybe it's for your own ot colleagues in your department, but do some sort of training, not only does it build your confidence, but it is really something that you. Helps you to be a better therapist in general, because you're going to have to do some work. You're going to have to look within and see, okay, what do I what do I know? What am I good at, and maybe what do I need to do some research on in order to to present this training? So I highly recommend that you make a resolution to provide at least one training of some kind this year. The third new year's resolution that I have here is become familiar with at least two new evaluation tools. If you've been a seasoned therapist maybe five years or so, you get set in your ways. You use the same three or four evaluation tools over and over and over again, and at some point I know you do this, because I do it. You're almost going through the MO, through the motions. You kind of, okay, kid, color in the circle. All right. Coloring the star. I don't even need to look at you, because I know I can score it later, and things like that. You know you don't want to get set in your ways. You want to keep life challenging, and one way to do that is to keep yourself on your toes by learning new things. Learn. I put two new evaluations here, but the next thing I'm actually gonna jump ahead, actually into my fourth resolution, is partake in 12 hours of meaningful professional development. And I say that because maybe you don't wanna learn new evaluations, but maybe you do have new treatment strategies that you can learn, and most of us need about 12 evaluation, sorry, not evaluation, professional development hours every year. So that's why I made this number 1212, hours of meaningful professional development that can be through the OT schoolhouse, A to Z course, that can be through occupational therapy.com that can be through med bridge.com. You can get a if you use med bridge, use promo code ot schoolhouse, and you get a discount. I get a small kickback from that. But honestly, I don't even know what it is, but use do something that's going to make yourself a better therapist. There's the training by Meg proctor on autism, learn, play, thrive.com. A fantastic training if you work with students with autism. Highly recommend doing something like that. There's vision trainings with Robert Constantine and Miss Jamie ot on her website. Miss Jamie ot.com, check those out. Make yourself a better therapist. It is an investment in yourself to be a better you highly recommend doing as much professional development as a your provider or sorry, your employer might allow you to and pay for and B go above that a little bit. Invest in yourself with some of your personal income to learn more about being a therapist, especially if you're a young therapist, a newer therapist, get out there and and learn. And then my final new year's resolution here, number five, is take care of yourself. And I have a few sub points here, because it is so important. The first one I have here is leave work on time. Yes, leave work on time. I know that sounds crazy, but yes, do that leave on time, whatever time you're supposed to work until leave on time. I know there might be some days where an IEP goes a little long and you have to stay that's okay. I get that, but try and set a plan for yourself to leave on time. Maybe, right now, you're leaving work every day an hour after 430 or whatever time you're supposed to leave and well, make a plan. You don't have to leave on time starting day one. Make a plan to gradually reduce that time. Maybe, if you get to a half hour by March, that's a win. And then maybe when you start up in August again or September, maybe you're down to where you are leaving work on time. Make that plan to focus on yourself by leaving work on time. I'm actually in the process of reading a book right now where they talk about your hourly wage and what your hourly wage really is, after you take into account all the extra time that you put into work, even that travel time that you spend that you don't get paid for that, but it's still required for you to work, right? So just keep in mind that after whatever time you're supposed to leave should be your time. Physically leave work, and also mentally leave work, try not to bring work home, try to figure out how you can fit it into the time that you have at work. And if you absolutely know that you don't have the time at work, then that's when you might need to ask for help, ask your supervisor, let them know, Hey, I did this time study. I can't physically fit all of this duties that I have into this seven and a half hour day, or whatever it might be. So ask for help if you have to. Also, what can help is celebrating the little victories, whether it is standing up for yourself and a student at an IEP, celebrate it if it's. Uh, your birthday. Celebrate it a holiday. Celebrate a day off from work. Celebrate it. Take the time to celebrate the little things. It makes life a lot more interesting. And I mean, come on, we all need more things to celebrate these days, especially after 2020 so you know, this is what I have for you today, five new year's resolutions. Stay up to date on your treatment notes. Provide teacher trainings. Become familiar with new evaluation tools. Spend some time energy and money on meaningful professional development opportunities that are going to make you a better therapist. And finally, take care of yourself. Get that Starbucks on Friday when you are just feeling like you had a good a good week, you know, take that time to celebrate it. And don't just get the Starbucks because you want Starbucks actually make it meaningful. Make it like a celebration. You know, you earned that Starbucks. You got through a tough week. You earned it all right. So that is going to wrap up this very first episode of 2021. Episode 60 of the OT school house podcast, I want to say thank you all so much for being here with me today. I am excited for 2021 I'm excited for the three C's, consistency, community and confidence. I cannot wait to help you, and also for you all to help me, as we have a great 2021 as always. Enjoy the rest of your day and thank you so much for listening. Have a great well. Have a great start to 2021 Take
Amazing Narrator
care everyone. Bye, bye. 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 OT schoolhouse.com. Until next time class is dismissed.
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