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Summer Travel Tips
More Than Packing a Bag: Preparing for a Smooth Summer Trip with Your Child Summer travel tips start here, because summer is a fantastic time for family adventures! If you have a child with special needs, creating a travel plan might seem daunting at first. But fear...
Middle School and Handwriting: Part 2 of 2
How to Improve Horrendous Handwriting When All Hope Is Lost PART 2 OF MIDDLE SCHOOL & HANDWRITING When I first learned that I was getting hired in the district where I currently work, I was beyond thrilled. A school district job! It's like winning the lottery!...
Middle School and Handwriting: How to Help Your Child Improve Their Legibility After Elementary School – Part 1
Middle School ANd Handwriting—Part 1 of 2 So many parents lose hope for improving their child's handwriting after elementary school. It definitely can seem hopeless at times. How do you change a habit that has been developed over so many years? There's always the old...
MTSS for School-Based Therapists: A Free Tier-by-Tier Breakdown
There's a shift happening in school-based therapy right now, and if you've been in any room where MTSS came up lately, you've probably felt it too. I got a front-row seat to just how big that shift is when I presented on MTSS at AOTA INSPIRE 2026 in Anaheim. The room...
Do Songs, Posters, and Visual Cues Actually Change How Kids Learn Pencil Grasp? (Yes — and Here’s the Research)
A few years ago I was doing a PD session for a group of first-grade teachers and I taught them the "Alligator Chop" — a grip cue song where children snap their fingers like an alligator's jaws before picking up their pencil (The TV Teacher, 2011). One teacher in the...
School occupational therapists at CSEA union contract ratification vote
It Took 23 Years to Become an Overnight Success.
I’m walking into our union ratification vote today to cast a resounding “YES.” And I’ve got company — our two newest district therapists are walking in right beside me.
But before we get to the celebration, I want to be entirely real with you about how we got here.
Why Vertical Surfaces Work: The Research Behind One of OT’s Best-Kept Secrets
Walk into most elementary classrooms and you'll see children writing flat on their desks. Worksheets flat. Drawing flat. Coloring flat. Everything flat. Walk into my OT class push-in session and the first thing I do is prop something up. I've been recommending...
Age-by-Age Fine Motor Milestones: What’s Really Normal 📈
A Visual Guide to Pencil Grip Development That Actually Makes Sense Last week, a kindergarten teacher showed me her classroom pencil grasp poster and asked, "Why doesn't this match what I'm seeing with my kids?" She pointed to five different children, each holding...
Busting the Ceiling: How We Made History for NYS School-Based Therapists (And How You Can Too!)
If you’ve spent any time in school-based therapy, you know the drill: you look at the teachers’ salary schedule, you look at your master’s or doctoral degree, you look at your stack of continuing ed certificates… and you feel completely invisible.
I lived that frustration for over two decades. So today feels different. Because the ceiling just cracked.