TWG010: What is Community-Based Professional Development? with Jayson Davies

Show Notes

Last December, I had the privilege of speaking with Jason Davies of The OT Schoolhouse Podcast. He has launched something new and exciting for occupational therapists. It is a place to learn and integrate school-based practices. Even if you are not an occupational therapist, this podcast episode may trigger a way for you to design a community in your specialty area. Join a village of similar minds, celebrate wins, and get support for challenges. Present in the community to prepare your AOTA or Learning Forward presentation.

Intervention inside this podcast: Using the phone as a therapeutic medium

OT Schoolhouse Collaborative
The Writing Glitch Community

• (00:00) - Tempo: 120.0

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Creators & Guests

Host

Cheri Dotterer

Cheri is an international speaker, author, and consultant who helps teachers, therapists, and parents build clarity, community, and competency around the barriers to writing success. Her book, Handwriting Brain-Body DisConnect, has remained in the Top 100 on Amazon since publication in Handwriting Reference and Learning Disabilities. It was also a Top 10 Finalist in the Author Academy Awards in 2019. In addition, she was nominated the USA 2022 Dysgraphia Expert of the Year by Global Health and Pharma Magazine. She has worked in many concentration areas as an occupational therapist for 30 years. However, it wasn't until starting her private practice that she found her passion for helping others understand this disability. In addition, she has been an adjunct instructor at several universities. She lives with her husband of 32 years. They have two adult children. Her heroes are Evelyn Yerger, her grandmother, and Esther, Queen of Susa. Together, we can grow 110 million leaders and hack dysgraphia by building skills, applying knowledge, and transcending futures.

Guest

Jayson Davies, MA, OTR/L

Jayson is the host of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast and has been a school-based occupational therapist since 2012. With experience as both a contracted therapist and an "in-house" employee for two distinctly different districts, Jayson has had the opportunity to appreciate the differences between both small-rural and large-suburban districts. In 2014, Jayson earned his Certification in Sensory Integration and Praxis Tests (SIPT) to better serve his students. Recently, Jayson has put forth his efforts toward educating therapists on how they incorporate themselves into tiered, collaborative programming and managing their workloads. Jayson is excited to help build knowledge among school-based OTs and educators through the OT Schoolhouse podcast, conference & courses.

What is The Writing Glitch: Hack Dysgraphia No Pencil Required?

The Writing Glitch is brought to you by Dotterer Educational Consulting. Our Founder and Owner, Cheri Dotterer, is the host.

Build courage, compassion, and collaboration to help students thrive and grow leaders that transcend a lifetime, regardless of dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia, using sensory-motor processing and neuroscience-based instructional interventions. No Pencil Required!

We interview teachers, therapists, and parents about how they have seen a transformation in children having these disabilities and co-morbid conditions such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). They share how they help students grow and prosper.

We believe we can grow 110 million leaders together by building skills, applying knowledge, and transcending futures. Join us to hack dysgraphia. No Pencil Required.

Each episode contains one intervention to help you support students with writing challenges the next day you are in your classroom. These interventions are explicit, systematic, cumulative, and multisensory. They are designed to support ALL students through targeted, daily visual-perceptual, visual-motor, and memory interventions. These interventions benefit all students and harm none.

All students have access to writing regardless of their status in the classroom. The interventions were created to take up to 30 seconds to 2 minutes of your classroom time. Strategic lesson planning increases classroom engagement.

All interventions can be adapted for students with physical disabilities because they support the Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) and well-being of all students. In addition, these interventions impact all subject matter classrooms. Whether you are teaching English language arts, mathematics, social studies, science, music, or art, these interventions will benefit your classroom atmosphere across ALL grade levels.

You have put your blood, sweat, and tears into investing in your education and children. Don’t let a misunderstanding about this disability stop you from providing best practices.

In case you don’t know me. I’m Cheri Dotterer, 2022 Dysgraphia Expert of the Year. This honor was bestowed on me by Global Health and Pharma Magazine. In 2023, they awarded my company the Best Dysgraphia Professional Development Program.

It took challenges at home and on the job to wake me up to the impact dysgraphia has on all students. Struggling my entire life with communication issues, I was mistaken that only students with learning disabilities could have dysgraphia.

My thoughts shifted when my gifted daughter asked for help with spelling. My son struggles with handwriting. Then, a parent asked me why her child could read and have trouble writing. Finding answers became the drive that gets me out of bed in the morning.

It’s a big shock when you discover how pervasive writing difficulties are and how little people know about how to help–even OTs. I used to think I was the only OT who struggled with understanding dysgraphia. It turns out many have questions.

Occupational, physical, and speech therapists are not trained to teach. Teachers are.

Occupational, speech, and physical therapists are trained in neuroscience. Teachers are not.

Let this podcast be your first line of defense to help your students transcend their learning disabilities. Show your school district how much you genuinely care about all of your students by sharing it with your colleagues.

After each episode, I challenge you to share your key takeaway from the podcast in our FREE yet private community. Share your student wins. Get support on the challenges.

Join The Writing Glitch Community. https://thewritingglitch.com/
Connect with Cheri at www.cheridotterer.com or [e-mail]

TWG Jayson Davies
[00:00:00] Cheri: Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, depending on where you listen to the podcast. The podcast is available on several platforms, including Apple and Google, Spotify, and Apple Music. I'm Cheri Dotterer, occupational therapist and dysgraphia expert. You are at the home of The Writing, Glitch Hacking Dysgraphia. No Pencil Required.
We are talking with Jason Davies today. He has some new ventures coming up for 2023. How are you doing, Jason?
[00:00:29] Jayson: Doing very well today. I'm excited. We are here to do a podcast. Let's do it.
[00:00:35] Cheri: All right. All right.
One of the questions I ask is, how are you doing really,
first of all, thank you so much for having me, and that question, you're asking that at the perfect time.
[00:00:49] Jayson: Things are a little crazy right now. This past weekend was actually the first time I don't get stressed easily, but this weekend was the first time that I woke up, and I was just like, Just felt it on my shoulders. There's a lot going on between running a business OT schoolhouse and then I have it at eight months old.
He turns eight months tomorrow, or maybe two months ago by the time that you're hearing this. And just between a new family member and or just a family, in general, is no longer just my wife and I having the business, having things go on just in life in general. With all the holidays coming up, trying to figure it out.
Where we're gonna, be, how we're gonna be in multiple places at once on Christmas Day and Thanksgiving, all that good stuff, so in general, I'm good, but right now, just this micro-moment of time, a little stressed, but overall pretty good. How about you?
[00:01:36] Cheri: I've been here at Alvernia all day long.
I'm a little bit calmer now, but you know that getting out of the house into the car and traveling to somewhere one day a week or twice a week. That adds this dimension of stress. It drives me absolutely crazy. and I talk about that often when I'm, when I do these podcast episodes, that yeah, man, Alvernia again, and it was a stressful drive-in.
I'll tell you what, the drive-in is not like it used to be.
[00:02:06] Jayson: Ain't that the truth? Yeah. It's funny cuz similar to you, right? I work from home most of the time and get out and about. It's like I crave it because I'm home all the time, but then I get out, I'm like, why did I do that? Like man driving, why did I want to drive to Orange County here in California?
And now, getting somewhere isn't too bad. But getting home always seems like an adventure cuz. I don't know. Traffic builds up whatever it is. It's just like you're done with what you actually did, and now you're like, oh, I gotta drive home. What do you mean I have to drive home? Can't I just snap my fingers and be in my chair or something?
So yeah, I get it.
[00:02:43] Cheri: I guess it's not Star Trek yet, .
[00:02:47] Jayson: Not yet. Not yet. The power of yet. .
[00:02:51] Cheri: Yes. That power of. Star Trek may be a little bit different if the whole virtual reality world comes to pass the way they keep talking about it.
[00:03:02] Jayson: Don't get me started on meta and Metaverse, meta Facebook, all that good stuff.
Ah, yeah. Alright, let's talk. Let's talk about school-based OT.
[00:03:11] Cheri: Okay, we could do that. What was that? You told me right before we hit record that we met on your podcast three years ago.
[00:03:22] Jayson: Yeah. Actually a little over three years ago cuz it was 2019, but it was back earlier in the year, so I had to do the math cuz, you know, COVID only counts as one year.
The time just flew by during Covid, so I only counted as like one block at a time. But yeah, three years ago, it's pretty crazy.
[00:03:37] Cheri: Yeah, that's absolutely crazy.
[00:03:38] Jayson: You had just published your book. Yeah. Yeah, I did. I did. I just published my book, and now I'm. I've got three more that are gonna go out in 2023.
It's been an absolutely crazy year on my end, but crazy. Yeah. Amazing. But I'm really glad that we've been able to stay connected over the last three years because you are a wealth of information, and I know that every time that we connect, you're going Okay. , let me pick your brain about because you always are coming up with other adventures in school-based ot.
I'm really glad and excited that we're able to share some of the things that you've got going on here coming up next year.
Absolutely. I'm excited to talk.
. Before we do, I wanna talk about Dotterer Educational Consulting for a moment. We hack dysgraphia from the inside out.
Dysgraphia is a Disability in writing. From the students learning to write letters to shapes through completing a dissertation or anywhere in between, people have difficulty. It impacts one-third of the population. That's the thing that blows my mind every time I read that.
Being a sister to dyslexia, it's not the same thing. In fact, some people with dysgraphia are brilliant readers. Our role is to help teachers, therapists, and parents build clarity, community, and competency through the barriers to writing success. Did you know that we use neuroscience and research-based content to design interventions for the whole classroom that can be completed in two minutes each day to thwart this Disability?
these interventions are explicit, systematic, cumulative, and multisensory. Together we can change the lives of 1 million people in the United States alone with dysgraphia. You can find more information about our programs at thewritiingglitch.Com. That's TheWritingGlitch.Com. Jason, without further ado, tell us what it is that you're working on for 2023.
Yeah. Thank you so much for bringing it up. It's. Actually, it's a community for the school-based occupational therapist. But it's even more than that. The way that I best like to describe it is it is community-based professional development, and it's gonna be called the OT S for OT Schoolhouse Collaborative.
And so it's gonna be. I'm just super excited about it. We have our first few people in right now, and we are hoping to bring more and more school-based OTs together to not only learn together but to actually help each other integrate what we learn into our practice. Because I just find that too often, we go to professional development, and we learn knowledge for an entire day, two days, sometimes three days.
Or even if you're doing like. Sometimes sensory integration certifications are like four courses over the course of an entire year, and it's just a lot of information. But then we go back to our daily job, and we don't use what we learned. And so the whole point of the OTs collaborative is to provide this community of OT practitioners specifically that work in the schools.
To both learn together and then incorporate what they learn together in the schools. Super excited about it. It's just kicking off as we're talking today. And yeah, if you have any questions, I would love to help out.
You mentioned something that made me think about memory. Did you know that you forgot?
All but about 8% of what you've talked about throughout the day than by the next day.
I didn't know the 8%, but I totally believe it. For me, it might be 6%, but who knows? , everything. man. Especially now with the new kid, it goes in one ear and out the other. And I, we know that's true.
I'm sure you could cite it if you needed to, but, When you go to professional development, your eyes and your ears are all open, but it doesn't matter, right? Your body can only take in so much information. We know, especially as occupational therapists, the sensory stimulus that you can take in varies from moment to moment and over the course of time.
I'm not gonna use all the technical terminology cuz I can't remember it, but it's kinda like the sensation of touch, right? When you put, when you first touch your knee, you feel it, but then as you keep your hand there, maybe your hands are cold. That coldness slowly goes away. Partly because of the association of heat and how that all works.
But also partly because our sense of touch is designed. Not become numb, but to go away so that we can focus on other things. And that happens with most of our sensory perception. And so I totally believe what you're talking about, 8%. Yeah, I didn't notice 8%. That sounds like you're almost ex. When you turn that around and say 92%, we forget.
That's just hard to think about.
It's crazy, isn't it? You had mentioned the knee and feeling it changed over time. Our brains love this thing called novelty.
Yes.
And it loves to learn new things.
It loves to problem solve it. That's what it's doing while we're sleeping overnight. And if the people join your community, they can also join my community. My community is all just about dysgraphia. . I'm getting a lot of teachers in there and a lot. dyslexia therapist in there in addition to the occupational therapist because I'm focusing on that niche that really is impacting the classroom directly.
And one of the things about community is a village is a way God made us. We are meant to be together. I am excited that there is a chance for this community involvement from your perspective as well as mine because people can join both of them and get one heck of a continuing professional development going. I believe that you are gonna also have courses there.
Am I correct?
Yeah. Within the community, as a member of the community, you can actually earn professional development from listening to our podcast, OT Schoolhouse podcast. Not every single episode, but episodes that we have worked on together with the presenter, and we know that there is some research behind it.
We know that it kinda adds up to what we think is professional development, and we have a pretty high standard; we're not making every episode, we have 115 episodes, and only about 12 to 15 of them are professional development because we know that not everything's professional development. As a member, you can get professional development units for those by listening to the podcast.
But we are also going to bring in specialists, kinda like what you just mentioned, bringing in people. From outside to talk a little bit, and that serves two purposes. One, some people prefer to learn from a podcast that they can listen to in their car. Other people prefer to learn while sitting in their computer, knowing that if they have a question, they can virtually raise their hand and ask questions.
And also, some states do require. Quote unquote, live professional development. That's another part of it why we're doing it both ways because it will give participants the opportunity to interact with the person and earn those live professional development that they may need in their states.
, where we're trying to make this in a way that can help everyone. Whether they like learning from the podcast, like learning from a live Zoom call, kinda like what you and I are doing for this recording. We're trying to hit all those different areas that someone may need.
Absolutely. Absolutely. love also the idea of community. It acknowledges where you're from. You're from Southern California. There are probably other OTs in that area. I am from Hamburg, Pennsylvania. There are other OTs in my area, but not all of us are doing school-based therapy. Not all of us are.
Concerned about kiddo with dysgraphia. . What the idea the community does is it can pull people in the community together. I could see a vision down the road of having clusters of therapists getting together live as part because they've met through community.
, absolutely. And any community, right?
You could have people in your dysgraphia, The, Writing, Glitch. It could be a teacher, an ot, and maybe another specialist meeting together at Starbucks because they all happen to live on a completely different side of the world from you. But they are connected via The, Writing, Glitch. And so they're meeting in Southern California instead of you in Pennsylvania.
. , they're meeting as a team in Southern California. And the same thing with our OTS collaborative community, same thing. I often find that school-based OTS, especially when you get a side of, outside of Los Angeles, in New York City, and the big cities, oftentimes an ot, whether they're in the schools or not, might be the only OT at their entire facility. Sometimes they're at multiple facilities, and they're the only ot.
The Writing Glitch and OTS collaborative gives OTs the ability to meet with other OTs that they might not have had the chance otherwise. Again, I like to call it community-based professional development because it's not just community. It's not just professional development. We're interweaving the two, which I really believe will help everyone.
It sounds like you're doing something similar at The. Writing. Glitch.
Yes, absolutely. I love it. I love it. Is there anything else that you'd like to share about the community that you haven't mentioned already?
There's so much more. But I think one of the other highlights of it is remembering that we are a community, and when one of us wins, we all win.
And when one of us suffers a loss, we all suffer that loss together as a community. Within the OT schools community, we're gonna celebrate the wins. We're going to mourn the losses together. We're gonna have places to share our wins together, even if it's. A simple win Hey, I rocked that IEP earlier today, or woo. Or at the end of the school year, having a little celebration. We got through this tough school year together. And I think that a big part of the community is being able to celebrate together and shared difficulties together. Get answers from not just one person, because as I like to tell people, I'm a school-based ot.
I've been a school-based OT for over 10 years now, and I am an expert at school-based ot, but I don't know everything. The community allows me to share what I know, but it allows other people who have other expertise to share their pieces. I don't know everything, and I will absolutely lean on some of my community members when I know they know something better than I do.
Talking about celebrating is also celebrating individual members who do have that expertise and allowing them to come up and maybe allowing a member to present to the rest of the community for the very first time. That person may not have. A medium to present otherwise. And now you know what?
They have expertise in sensory, and so they get to present to the community, and who knows what that leads to, right? Maybe they present for the community, and then they go write a book like you did, or they go present at A O T A or something like that. Yeah, just celebrating together and keeping up with each other.
. . That was a gold moment, everybody. Present in the community, prepare your A O T A presentation. Use it as a practicing medium.
Exactly, yeah. Or even to figure out what you want to do. As school-based OTs or as OTs in general. There are so many different ways that you can go, and it's a safe place.
Any community hopefully, if you are, I think every community should be a safe space. But I'm going to assume that there are some communities that probably aren't safe space. I know yours is. I know mine is. But hopefully, you find a community that is a safe space that allows you to open up to adventure outside your norm.
Whether that's presenting or maybe trying a new evaluation tool, Yeah, open up, be willing or not be willing, but find a community that allows you to open up and just promotes your best interest and your best self.
Love it. Love it, Jason, in every podcast episode I share.
An intervention. So it's that time in the podcast where I get to share an intervention to help teachers, parents, and therapists. And this week, I've decided I'm gonna be talking about the phone. So did how I used the phone. I use it to get the child's perspective. I usually use images as part of my interventions with my students.
I'll put up an image. I will hit record on whatever app it is that I am using. Sometimes I will use otter.ai sometimes I will use an audio version. It depends on what it is that the student needs, but let's say I've chosen Otter ai. AI is going to transcribe what the student and I are talking about.
It will actually separate out the conversation, speaker one and speaker two,
We talk for five minutes about this image that's in front of them. Then we need to con transition and have them doing some writing right. We can have them copy that from the transcript. I could hold the transcript in front of me so that they can't see it. I could dictate the words to them and have them write them down, or we can take a look at what the transcript says.
Listen to it again. Put it to the side, and they can self-generate their own sentences. So I use the phone along with images of whatever it is that I'm choosing to throw an image up there about that day to help students improve their ability to interact with their environment. Try trying to, A situation where they can actually share their thoughts.
One of the pictures that I use a lot is a picture of a pool that's built at a home, which is basically on the beach. You live in California, I don't know how close you live to the beach, but in having that beach line home with a pullout back, I've already. Kids with autism say I don't like that picture at all.
And then you get into their perspective a little bit, and it's, I don't like sand, I don't like cold water. I don't like red chairs. I don't like it. And it's things that you don't even know that you were okay. I didn't even have any clue that you didn't like that. So on it not only helps you, With the actual writing task, but it also tells you something about a little bit about their sensory processing depending on the situation of the picture.
Yeah. And if I can add, I had never thought about using Otter AI in therapy before. I use Otter AI for my podcast to transcribe, but I never thought about using it in therapy. Great idea. And I also wanna point out that. Recently, if you are an Apple iPhone user or iPad user, they just updated their voice recognition software for speech-to-text just for sending out text messages and whatnot.
And it is on point. I used to get frustrated with Siri, but since the iPhone 14 right, just came out, they did a new iOS update, and it is on point. So if you have an iPhone and iPad, it's all the same. Definitely recommend using that. It's right there in front of you. Or if you have an Android, I know they use it, I believe it's Google software for trans for transcribing, and Google Docs does pretty well at voice two and speech-to-text as well.
Great ideas.
Thank you. Thank you. Do you have anything else that you'd like to add before we close for the?
No, I think that's it. If anyone wants to find out more about myself and the OT schoolhouse, I would say head on over to ot schoolhouse.com. You can find everything there, including all about the OT Schoolhouse Collaborative community.
It is probably launching, or right as you're hearing this if you're listening to it right when it comes out we do it. We, Every quarter we bring people in. So you can't sign up anytime. You can be on a waiting list until the next time that we come in. So check out the waiting list, sign up.
It doesn't cost anything to just sign up for the waiting list so you can learn more about it. As soon as we start accepting some people in. So yeah. Ot schoolhouse.com. Perfect.
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