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From: Kathleen Whitmire
Date: 10/22/02
Time: 5:13:29 PM
Remote Name: 65.216.246.2
"Educationally relevant" should apply to the goals of therapy, not the type of therapy. The goals of intervention should be linked to the child's school experience, and intervention should support the child's participation in school in direct ways. Yes, one could argue that building discrete skills separate from the child's school context would indirectly help the child be more successful in school; but how much more effective it is to use materials and situations directly related to or taken from the child's school day and to collaborate with other educators to infuse those goals into the school day! We've always struggled with transfer and carry-over of skills that are used in "therapy" but not in other contexts. The point here is to connect intervention with other daily activities. This is a matter of quality and relevance, so it isn't that a district decides that a type of therapy is or isn't relevant, but rather that the professionals involved in providng the child's educational program believe that they're providing a program that is in the child's best interest.