Schulker is a certified occupational therapy assistant working for Children’s Medical Center.
“What an occupational therapist does is work on what currently is their occupation and, for children, their occupation is play, self-care skills and academic skills like writing, cutting and learning the letters and how to form those letters,” she explained.
Two major events occurred while studying at Sinclair Community College: she met her husband-to-be; and her final clinical experience was in pediatrics at Children’s.
“They offered me a job,” she said. “I was so blessed. A lot of my classmates wanted pediatrics, but had to go into geriatrics and they rotated jobs I don’t know how many times. Out of my graduating class, I am probably the one who has been at the (same) job for four years.”
Schulker works three 10-hour days at the Dayton campus of Children’s and one day at the Springboro satellite office.
One day a week and some weekends, she works part-time in a nursing home.
“I do get a wide variety and sometimes it is good to go outside your realm every now and then.
“I like working with adults, too, but sometimes they can just be a little serious. I like to be fun. I love kids — that’s where my heart is.”
Adult patients may have suffered strokes or have been in accidents and the OTs and OTAs help them regain their skills.
“(For kids) a lot of them that I see right now, they just need some fine tuning in what are their developmental skills. They just might be in need of some extra assistance. Every child is at their own pace but sometimes they just need that extra technique just to learn,” she said. “Sometimes it is all about educating the parents. I always tell the parent that it is important that you carry it over — the hour or 30 minutes or however long I see the child won’t help carry those skills through. We all have to work as a team — not just as one person.”
Schulker added that sometimes she even asks parents to inform the child’s teachers of techniques being used.
“Usually I have kids every half hour so a typical day is me seeing all my kiddos — just finding play time and getting them to make their goals,” she said.
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