Elastigirl: Therapist from New Jersey Finds Her Inner Superhero
Debra Em
This week I received a phone call from a parent who took the time from her busy day just to say thanks for how much S'cool Moves has helped her son. Now wait, don't start thinking I'm Elastigirl, stretching my arm out nice and long so I can pat myself on the back for a job well done. I'm stretching my arm from Washington to New Jersey to pat the occupational therapist on the back who took the brave step forward to integrate her practice with our Reading Moves materials.
The therapist and I exchanged many emails, back and forth, as she described the boy she was working with in her private practice. He was a bright boy but something was holding him back from grasping reading. The mother, a teacher, had tried just about every program you could name without success.
As the therapist began working with the boy, she focused on integrating Reading Moves into their sessions. The mother continued the activities at home on a daily basis. The collaborative partnership between parent and therapist, along with a ten-year-old boy still willing to try, created positive changes that everyone, including the boy's classroom teacher observed.
Due to the success, I've been asked to do an online training with twenty plus teachers from this child's school. I embrace opportunities like this to share my message. I can't teach a child to read without integrating therapy techniques into my practice. Well, that's not altogether true...I can teach a child to read without therapeutic interventions but it's slow. Really slow. As my son once said about my daughter getting out of the car, "You are as slow as molasses running down a tin can on a cold winter's day."
If you want to get the molasses flowing, warm up the environment and reduce the stickiness. When we keep to our own disciplines, I call this "stickiness." All our knowledge gets stuck within our separate disciplines.
This may be a stretch :-) but hey, stepping outside our comfort zones and learning some new, cool tricks from other disciplines is the stuff of heros. So toss your glasses, don your cape, and unleash the superhero within by stretching beyond discipline borders.
I end today's post by presenting an honorary Elastigirl supersuit to my therapist friend in New Jersey for stretching beyond her comfort zone and joining the S'cool Moves Superhero Club. Are you the next member?