Welcome, Friends!

Welcome to my blog!!  My name is Joleen, and I am a school based occupational therapist.  I have been an OT for 21 years, and have been working for a special services unit in the public school systems in central ND exclusively since 1998.  I work with a variety of little friends who have a wide range of diagnoses:  autism spectrum disorders (ASD- autism, PDD, aspergers), sensory processing disorder, cerebral palsy, developmental delays, Down Syndrome, ADD/ADHD and learning disabilities, to name just a few.  Basically, any diagnoses or issue that adversely affects a child's educational performance that also requires OT as a related service in order to benefit from special education services.  Whew!  I think that about covers it!
This blog was started for several reasons...
1.  To share OT related information/activities with the parents of my little OT friends, to help those parents further enhance their kids' skills,
2.  To provide resources for parents and other educators/special services staff as I come across new material (and of course share some of the resources that I already know of and have available),
3.  Reach/have a format for parents/families that I previously would only have been able to interact with on a limited basis due to schedules, lack of availability, etc.
4.  Reduce the number of paper copies and make home programming ideas more readily available to parents, and
5.  As a means to an end for my capstone that I am currently working on for Eastern Michigan University, thus finishing my master's degree in autism special education.

My goal is not to necessarily target a specific population of kids, but to provide information regarding sensory processing, fine and visual motor skills, bilateral coordination, oral motor skills, environmental supports, etc. that can benefit a variety of children, including regular ed kids.  Keep in mind that I have not blogged before, and I am not tech savvy, so I will be learning along the way...it may take me a while to get things figured out on here (how to upload things, make the page user friendly, etc).  But, if I can make things work out the way I would like them to, this could be a very useful blog to some of you, and very worthwhile for me to have as part of my OT practice.  So, here we go...