This month’s Guest Blogger is Mary Cariola Center Occupational Therapist Seth Werlin. After college he worked in group homes for adults with disabilities. There, he loved hanging out with the residents, working on goals, and doing creative projects with them. He became aware of the Occupational Therapy field where it seemed like a way to build from the work he was doing. Seth returned to school and received his graduate degree in Occupational Therapy from Ithaca College. Seth has been applying those skills at Mary Cariola for the past 10 years. Seth has subsequently specialized in assistive technology, and uses his creativity to find or create assistive technology solutions for his students as part of his work.
There are some questions that have nagged at me throughout my career as an Occupational Therapist. One of them is this: what is Special Education for? More specifically, what am I offering the students I work with? Of course, therapists and teachers have educational and therapy goals we are helping students achieve, but is that it?
My current thought is that those benchmarks of success are just a part of the picture. What I hope is that we are making the improbable, achievable. Giving a voice to students who don’t speak, mobility to someone who doesn’t walk, an alternative way to interact when fingers don’t move, drives us. But what do we want students to do with those skills? I think it’s so they have as many opportunities as possible. Opportunities to have the same rich experiences that we would want for ourselves. This is a goal that I bring to my occupational therapy work.
I find the best way to do this is to share what I find exciting and fun. This can be music, art, storytelling, cooking, sports… anything that ignites my passion could do the same for my students. And maybe it won’t, but that’s okay too because they get the chance to try and to find out what they like. And when I know what they like, we can infuse that to inspire new activities and goal work. Students might create a comic strip, or an original short story, make a puppet show with Disney characters, record a lego stop motion animation, produce a music video, or make their own textured sensory board to play with.
These projects allow the kids to persist and experience a process that can involve the use of a wide range of skills. It can be challenging, fun, and occasionally frustrating. The process is rewarding itself, but persisting with projects like these can also result in a deep feeling of pride.
Seth and Hal created a collage. Seth offered many options while Hal made a variety of choices…body, head, hands and feet for his creation. Seth helped Hal guiding his hand with the glue stick and securing it onto the poster board. They were both quite proud of the finished project. And they had quite a bit of fun in the process!
So, my question is: what makes you excited? Because there is a good chance that you can share it with the kids we work with at Mary Cariola. And if it’s exciting to you, maybe it will be exciting for them too.
What’s your passion? Check out our Mary Cariola careers. You may find YOUR skills and OUR passion are a perfect fit.
