I have worked as a school based occupational therapist and then have worked with education administrators in developing occupational therapy role in supporting children and youth's academic and social development.  My current practice and a great deal of my current scholarship is focused on school-based occupational therapy practice.   Attached are the handouts from the last two workshops that I co-presented at the  National Conference of the American Occupational Therapy Association, as well as a keynote address about RTI that I gave at the 11th Annual Therapies in Schools Conference. In August 2011, I recorded the webinar, Response to Intervention: Understanding the Challenge and Transforming Your School-Based OT Practice.  It is available at http://ot-advantage.webex.com and on the New York State Occupational Therapy website at http://nysota.org/v_professional_development.  

 I believe that it is very important that school based occupational therapists take an active role in leading and coleading groups.  Group process and development is part of the core Graduate Occupational therapy curriculum.  This puts occupational therapists in an excellent position to collaborate in the development of groups as well as provides a solid foundation for therapists to further develop their group skills.     In 2009, I co-presented  the 3 hour workshop, Addressing Children's Social Participation: Reflecting on the Content and Process of a Few School-Based Occupational Therapy Group at the national conference of the American Occupational Therapy Association in Long Beach California. 

I have also been active in articulating and developing occupational therapy's role within the Response to Intervention Framework that is being adopted for public education nationwide.   At the 2010 conference of the American Occupational Therapy Conference in Miami Florida, I co-presented the 3 hour workshop, Embedding School-Based Occupational Therapy in RTI: Implementing a District-Wide Fine Motor Curriculum.  In November 2010, I presented the keynote, Meeting the Challenge of RTI at the Therapies in Schools Conference in Framingham, Massachuetts.