1st Year Recap
As an entry-level practitioner, I had the opportunity to meet a retired occupational therapist when she was a patient, and I was helping in acute care. I had so many questions for her about her experience as an occupational therapist and asked for any advice she could give me. Her advice was to take advantage of every learning opportunity because I would never regret it. From that moment on, I did just that and progressed to being a specialist in treating sensory processing and integration disorders. However, I still hear her words and continually seek more information and knowledge. This led me to my latest life lesson while teaching.
I was so excited when I was asked to be an adjunct professor at the University of South Dakota for second-year occupational therapy students. It was an opportunity to give back as an occupational therapy provider and share my knowledge and passion. I wanted to inspire a culture of continued learning and an understanding of individual differences, family-centered care, the importance of ongoing assessment, and how to make sessions fun and motivate children while targeting challenged areas.
The jury is out on whether or not my participation as an adjunct professor did or will eventually impact these students, but I did try. I thought I would love my experience; however, that was different. As some wise instructors have informed me, I may need to teach a 2nd year to solidify any assumptions I have made. For now, here is what I do know:
- TRL – This is not short for “Total Request Live” with Carson Daily, which was popular in the late ’90s and early 2000s. The funny story is that only one out of 31 students knew what it stands for: Teaching and Research Lab.
- In my first session there, I asked the students if they had read the required reading for the session. None of them had read Chapter 7, the only required reading. I had hoped they had as I was excited to teach them all the fun little nuggets of information that fill in the gaps between textbook and actual practice instead of outlining the chapter for them. That was not my favorite. As a side note, I found out that “Cliff Notes” are also not a thing, which solidified that I have aged.
- Students no longer have notebooks. I had a wild idea for everyone to take out a piece of paper for an activity. There was legit only one notebook out of the 31 students.
- Although I’m very open to questions and wanted the students to ask questions related to clinical decision-making, my experience, kids with varying diagnoses, why did I do what I showed on the videos, etc., the only questions or inquiries that I received in the class had to do with break times and rescheduling a session due to President’s daybreak. Every time one of the students approached the front of the class where I was standing during the break, I was super pumped because I excitedly thought, “Here it comes. I wonder what the question will be,” only to be falsely excited due to the static candy dish stealing my thunder. 😐
The moral of the story is that I was so excited and ended up feeling deflated by the experience. I’ve been told that the students did enjoy it. Still, I just wanted to see and feel that excitement through active class discussion, inquiries during breaks, questions whenever they arose, smiling, and wondering about various aspects of practice. I love being an occupational therapist and watching children acquire newfound confidence in multiple areas of occupation. Will I teach again? I sure hope so, but I hope that when I do have the opportunity to teach future occupational therapists again that they take a more active part in their learning and take advantage of the learning opportunity.
