April 4-7, 2019
New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center

• Shabbat Meals took place at the Convention Center, not at one of the hotels as in the past.

• Shabbat after Shalosh Seudot was “bring your own and share”. The room at the Convention Center was ours from Candle Lighting Friday until after Havdallah Saturday.

“OT Travels to India Bringing Training and Receiving Connections”

By Shoshana Shamberg, OTR/L, Ms

President of Abilities OT Services and Seminars, Inc.www. AOTSS.com / [email protected]

Baltimore, MD 

Internet teaching brought me to an enlightening, inspiring, and exotic on-site teaching experience in Mumbai, India in January of 2010.  One year ago, Dr. Vandita Gupta, an OT living in Mumbai, India emailed Abilities OT Services and Seminars, Inc.  (AOTSS), requesting internet training on sensory motor strategies for continuing education to increase her professional skills.  Vandita’s private practice focuses on children with sensory processing disorders including ADD/ADHD, SI issues, reading and writing problems, and autism.  Obtaining training for OTs is difficult in India and often traveling for CE is the norm.  As a mother of two young children, she did not want to travel; preferring internet learning which she could do at home at less expense.

At the time, AOTSS trainings focusing on Sensory Motor Interventions and Strategies consisted of only onsite, 2-Day seminars. The learning in this training includes Brain Gym, Irlen Method, kinesthetic handwriting, vision training exercises, multiple intelligences, Bal-A-VisX and low-cost assistive technology with additional mentoring via the internet after the seminar. Vandita insisted on a similar training via the internet and was willing to pay for personal mentoring which would include.  She paid me to develop a personalized mentoring program that would include all topics in the 2-Day seminar. This began a one year relationship and learning experience which blossomed into the Sensory Motor Strategies on a Shoestring Budget Internet Training and Mentoring Program. 

I sent her training manuals and a box of materials, which a relative traveling from the USA to India brought to her, eliminating the high cost of international postage and handling.  From these materials, along with recycled and low cost items she could find in India, Vandita created treatment materials of excellent quality and creativity, as well as, learned and used the methods of intervention.  She received specific lessons via email with ongoing instruction and guidance, and excelled in using the skills learned, quickly observing positive results with her clients.  To document her work, she sent me original treatment plans and pictures of her creations via email, documenting how these were used in her practice and the benefits. Vandita’s ability to translate emailed lessons and instruction into practical, creative, and effective strategies for her clients was inspiring to me, her mentor.  New options for client treatment became so successful that she requested I come to teach others in Mumbai, India. 

Negotiations and preparation for the trip from the USA to India took 5 months of planning seminar details and marketing to local professionals and parents to obtain enough participants to make the trip financially feasible.  Judging from the excellent post seminar evaluations from 27 highly trained professionals who participated, the relationship is evolving into an ongoing one, with another multi-disciplinary training in the planning for next year.  Participants came from many different cultural and religious backgrounds, experience levels, special and regular education settings, private practice, and disciplines (OT, SLP, psychology, business management, educators, administration and parents of children with special needs.

Prior to the seminar in Mumbai, I traveled to southern India’s Kerala region to participant in therapeutic yoga training at an ashram, spiritual Hindu center, with over 400 people from over 30 countries. I learned the health benefits of breathing in a special way, as well as, the use of Yoga exercises for muscle strengthening, range of motion, stretching of muscles and joints for release of tension and limitation, and relaxation techniques for stress management for the mind and body.  I learned interesting massage techniques from highly trained auervetic medicine massage therapists and doctors.  I traveled through many low-income villages and communities traveling to and from the ashram, where people live in small shacks, with few modern conveniences like running water and electricity, and one dollar can feed a family for a day.   I saw infants, children and adults with horrible deformities and major disabilities begging for money on the streets, living where accessibility and independence is not feasible due to many social, economic and environmental barriers including ancient stone and concrete architecture, narrow dirt roads with no room for pedestrian movement or widening, and extreme poverty I never witnessed in the USA, even during my 25 years working in inner city ghettos.  

The good news is that awareness of educating special needs children and employing adults with disabilities is growing, as India becomes increasingly more affluent and educational opportunities expand, especially with the help of dedicated and highly trained OTs in India. Some of them received work experience in the USA after their schooling in India, and returned to work in India, bringing a fearless public awareness about OT, civil rights for people with disabilities, and the benefits to society of rehabilitation and independent living support systems. They are spreading the word about the need for trained professional and community supports and cost effective accommodations in work, home, school and community settings.  I met OTs involved in advocacy for OT services telling me their success in the last few years in obtaining media attention. Special education is not mandated by the government, as regular education is, so this must be raised from private sources in order to happen.

While in Mumbai, I was hosted royally and housed by Vandita’s family and the family of her husband, Vitkas, in two very different sections of Mumbai. One lives a mixed area of middle and low income Muslim, Christian, and Hindu cultures and the other mostly upper Middle Class Hindus.  In this affluent neighborhood I witnessed cows walking the street freely as sacred animals rarely killed for food, but used for their milk and dairy products.  The Indian food cooked in restaurants and homes was exceptional and vegetarian, making it very easy to be kosher during my entire trip. In fact I found it very easy to be Jewish in place where there were no Jewish people since spirituality and respect for those of other faiths is part of Hindu society and religion. I discovered the existence of an ancient Indian Jewish community in Mumbai, called the Benai Israel, but the location was too far to walk to synagogue.  Due to two community weddings there was no place for me to stay within the community but another other Shabbat I would have gladly been hosted by strangers in the Jewish community.  At Vandita’s parent’s home, I was able to have a peaceful Shabbat with ongoing attention and support for my special needs as an observant Jew.  Generosity, compassion and a universal spirituality and respect were major qualities of Vandita’s family and their hosting of me for over a week.  We shared our religions, cultures, family, professional insights and experiences with each other, her network of friends and therapists/educators, and her family of 3 generations, which included her 10 and 13 year old children.  Of course I went sightseeing, both into the magnificent Mumbai city center with museums, ornate architecture and gardens, the harbor and beach and the site of the Mumbai terrorist attacks which killed many Americans.  Traffic jams and crazy drivers of cars, buses, trucks, taxis, and motorcycles was frightening to my western experience living in the much smaller and less congested city of Baltimore, MD. In India it is common to see a mother holding infant, a small child and husband all riding together on a motorcycle without helmets in city traffic or on bumpy, dusty, narrow country dirt roads.  Seeing this was quite a shock, especially having worked in physical and cognitive rehabilitation with TBI, spinal cord injuries, etc from vehicle accidents.

Security is very tight which gave me a secure feeling.  There is a travel advisory warning from the US customs office for all Americans traveling to India after the December 25, 2009 attempted suicide bombing on an airplane in the USA, as well as, due to the after shock of the Mumbai Massacres last year.  I prayed at the sites of those terrorist attacks in hopes of helping to continue the healing for all families affected by the tragedy and visited a memorial inside the Taj Hotel made of a wall of falling water with the names of the victims.   Indians are still shocked and feeling the tragedy which shook the world for 4 days as Arab terrorists tortured and killed innocent people, especially foreigners and Jewish people. 

My OT host for my last day in India, Mugda, lived in the USA for 8 years as a traveling therapist and returned to Mumbai, her ancestral home and family, where she married and began a multidisciplinary therapy practice. She owns the building housing the clinic and hires a speech therapist, physical therapist, and psychologist to work as a team with special needs children and their parents and medical/educational support systems.

One of the most inspiring events of my trip was a visit to the SPJ Sadnana School, a privately funded special education program for elementary through high school aged students with autism, ADD/ADHD, developmental disabilities, dyslexia, and many other disabilities which prevent them from being included in regular education environments.  The students are happy, productive and achieve skills in both academic, life skills and vocational skills that were previous never thought possible by their parents and society.  Parents must participate in training and support the educational program in order for their child to participate in the program.

Teachers and therapists are provided ongoing training in innovative and low-cost interventions and learning programs, sending employees oversees when necessary for training if it will help students to learn and function better.  Mentoring and support are ongoing for professionals, students and parents.  The administrators are role models, demonstrating selfless and unconditional love, caring, and professionalism rarely found elsewhere in the world.  In my 35 year career in education, I rated this school with the best I have encountered in my travels and job experience in the USA.   Student vocational, self care, social, emotional, behavioral and academic skills are carefully evaluated and supported each and every step of their participation at Sadnana School. Sadnana administration paid for over 10 staff members to attend my training. One could see their professionalism demonstrated.  Sadnana School’s ability to accept students of all economic backgrounds depends upon private donations.  They do not turn away students if the parents cannot pay and many parents join the staff as volunteers and then become employees, encouraged by the administration to obtain professional degrees and training. 

Students participate in an half hour of Brain Gym exercises and other physical movements prior to beginning their academic program daily and later in the day as well. They use Brain Gym exercises embedded within their academic program when they began seeing behavioral and academic improvements with these simple neuromuscular and sensory motor exercises.  Their vice principal is an Irlen Method screener and Certified  Brain Gym Consultant, having to travel to other countries to receive here training

.Please help if you can by sending even a small donation to support their amazing work for children and young adults with disabilities to become productive members of society with the maximum level of independence. All contributions are tax deductible and they are a non profit with all funds utilized for the benefit of students. The Sadnana School’s building is simple yet practical, but the program is built on commitment to quality programming, professionalism, standards, and increasing knowledge, using low cost traditional and innovative techniques requiring minimal equipment such as Brain Gym, Irlen Method, auditory training, sensory integration, therapy, vocational skills training in crafts, office and computer skills, food/hospitality services, textiles/sewing/printing, diamond sorting, and many other vocations. They insure that students who are capable of taking national educational tests get accommodations in order to participate and succeed.

The Orthodox OT Boom

January 20, 2006

Tamar Fromm had planned to spend Shabbat in her hotel room. Friday night dinner would entail little more than a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich. An Orthodox Jew, Fromm, who keeps kosher, brought sandwich ingredients from home in New York to Long Beach, Calif., where she was attending the annual conference of the American Occupational Therapy Association.

By Friday afternoon, however, Fromm, an occupational therapist who treats people with multiple sclerosis, had met several other observant Jews attending the conference in May.  Fromm, 25, scrapped her plans for a sandwich dinner, in favor of a makeshift celebration with about ten Shabbat-observant OTs. They lit candles on the hotel pool deck, and then gathered in a conference room for dinner. There was schnitzel from a local kosher restaurant, salad prepared by one conference-goer, and a jar of gefilte fish picked up by another.

The dinner launched Orthodox Jewish Occupational Therapy Chavrusa (www.ojotc.org). The caucus advocates on behalf of observant Jews working in occupational therapy, a field that in the past decade has become increasingly populated by Orthodox women. Though this particular group has long been a presence in the profession, Orthodox women now account for more than a third of students pursuing master’s degrees in OT at several New York-area universities, including Columbia University, State University of New York-Downstate, and Touro College, according to anecdotal evidence.Occupational therapists teach fine motor and independent living skills to children and adults. An OT might show a wheelchair-bound sixth-grader how to maneuver the lunch line in the middle school cafeteria; coach a developmentally delayed adult on workplace-appropriate social skills; or help maximize hand use and teach personal grooming techniques to an elderly stroke victim who has lost the use of her right arm.

Fromm surmises that the flexibility many OT jobs afford accounts in part for its popularity among Orthodox women looking to balance a career with domestic responsibilities.

In recent years, physical and speech therapies, likewise considered to be family-friendly occupations, have also seen an influx of professionals who are Orthodox women.

“Part of my decision to go into OT was about being a woman, and wanting to be around for my children one day, God-willing,” said Fromm, who received her masters degree in the specialty from Columbia University, where she said Orthodox women comprised about a third of her class.

“If you’re a lawyer with a six-figure salary, you can’t leave the office at five o’clock, and you probably can’t leave at seven o’clock. … OT provides a great second income, but not a great primary income. It’s enough not enough to pay yeshiva tuition and raise a family,” she said.

Though six-figure incomes for OTs are not standard — they make an average of $48,000, according to a 2000 AOTA study — anecdotal evidence shows their earnings are on the rise, with some recent graduates commanding starting salaries topping $60,000.

The spike in pay is due to increased demand for OT professionals as the American populace ages, and as more children are being categorized as learning disabled and targeted for out-of-classroom remediation. The New York City Department of Education offers scholarships to pursue OT studies, in exchange for an 18-month commitment to work in public schools, underscoring the shortage of therapists.

Jim Hinojosa, who chairs the Department of Occupational Therapy at New York University, where he estimated that at least 20 percent of OT students are observant Jewish women. 

“It’s a female-dominated field that gives people lots of options to work while taking care of a family in a traditional way,” Hinojosa said, noting that an upwards of 90 percent of OTs are women. “I think the [career] choice is related more to gender and family, than it is to Orthodoxy.”

There’s a lot of available part-time OT work, said Estelle Breines, president of the New Jersey Occupational Therapy Association and the former director of the Long Island- and Manhattan-based OT programs at Tuoro College, where she said up to two-thirds of her students were Orthodox Jewish women.

“If someone wanted to take off a year to have a baby or care for an elderly parent, there’s less of a penalty in occupational therapy than there would be in other professions,” Breines said.

She added, “One thing about the Orthodox community is that they communicate a great deal with one another. If someone has figured out that this is a good career for young women, the word is out.”

But the livelihood is attractive to Orthodox women for more than merely
practical considerations like flexible hours and rising salaries.

“The ethical principals that drive Judaism are compatible with the profession,”
Breines said. “Some of the notions of tzedakah are strongly grounded in
enablement, and occupational therapists enable people to participate in this
society.”

One recent graduate of Stern College, who was active in the school’s
Occupational Therapy Club, agreed, adding, “I think the reason a lot of Jewish
girls go into it because they were brought up in homes where chesed was
important and they want to give back to their community and to the general
community.”

The woman, who did not wish to be identified by name, is now pursuing a master’s in occupational therapy.

“Every once in a while, people will say to me, ‘Oh you’re going into OT,’” she
said, mimicking an unimpressed tone. “But it’s much harder than people think.
Maybe at first glance, it just looks like we’re doing basic activities, like
coloring with children, but it really requires a lot of knowledge about the
body, about movement.”

Janet Falk-Kessler, the director of Programs in Occupational Therapy at Columbia University, which offers a joint program with six schools including Yeshiva University’s Stern College for Women, said the career’s popularity among Orthodox women “makes sense.”

“From my understanding of Judaism, and being Jewish myself, I know the
importance of community service and healing professions,” said Falk-Kessler, who said the program attracts a significant Orthodox female contingent, but did not want to guess on numbers.

Other OTs working in academia were weary about speaking about it on record, saying that it could fuel the stereotype that OT is a profession for Orthodox Jewish women and could hurt their efforts to recruit a diverse student body.

Devorah Gerber, a 25-year-old Orthodox occupational therapist from Cedarhurst, L.I., acknowledged that the lifestyle and income OT jobs afford are appealing to “a lot of Orthodox women with large families,” but agreed that these were not reason enough to pursue an OT career.

“I don’t want people to go into this field because they think it’s an easy way
out,” she said, noting that her training included a rigorous two-and-a-half-year
master’s program. “That would be unfortunate in a field where you can have such an impact on children and on families.”

Gerber received her master’s degree at Brooklyn’s SUNY-Downstate, where she guessed that about 40 percent of her classmates were Orthodox women.

Ruth Ann Meyers, who chairs the OT department at Jefferson College of Health Sciences, said she worries that too many people are choosing the profession for the lifestyle it affords.

“Thirty years ago, the first thing women would say is, ‘I want to help people,’”
she said. “Now it’s often, ‘I want a job.’ Occupational therapy can’t be done
just because someone wants a job, just because someone wants money. It requires you to be present emotionally.  I think that’s why there are so many Orthodox Jewish women in this profession. The have to juggle a lot of relationships, and can use their insights from these relationships to be good therapists.”

Meyers, who is not Jewish, first noticed the proliferation of Orthodox women in the occupation in the late 1990s, while heading up OT programs at New Jersey’s Richard Stockton College.

“Here were these bright and motivated women, who had so many things to juggle,” said Meyers. “They were managing all the requirements of an Orthodox life — raising a family, preparing for the holidays — all in the framework of a secular educational environment. It was quite daunting.”

Meyers became more familiar with Orthodox women’s balancing act after landing a job as the head of the OT department at Touro College, an Orthodox institution. Her experience there inspired her to embark this year on research project, called “The Education of Occupational Therapists: The Lived Experience of Orthodox Women.”

“I want to know what brought them into the field, what their educational
experience was like, and where they are employed,” said Meyers, who hopes the still fledgling project will shed light on how demographic groups choose their career trajectories.

When Peggy Gurock, an Orthodox Jew from Passaic, N.J. became an OT more than 30 years ago, it was not a popular career choice among her contemporaries.

“At the time, my mom asked me, ‘Why are you going into that cockamamie
profession?’” recalled Gurock, who heads up the AJOTC, which advocates for kosher meal plans and other accommodations for Orthodox Jews at OT workshops and conferences.

She said that over the past decade have Orthodox women become more aware of the virtues of an OT career: flexible employment, a booming job market, a certification that is recognized in Israel.

Given the choice, Malkie, a fervently Orthodox occupational therapist who asked to be identified by only her first name, said she would prefer to stay home with her six young children. But with skyrocketing housing costs and yeshiva tuition, her family needs two incomes to make ends meet.

Five years ago, Malkie, a former teacher at a Jewish school in Brooklyn,
enrolled in the two-and-half-year OT master’s program at SUNY-Downstate.
“I can take on as many cases as I need to, as many cases as I want to,” said
Malkie, who has a private OT practice.

She said she plans her day around her children’s schedule, working only while
they are in school.

“Occupational therapy is a very good choice because we get to use our expertise as mothers,” she said. “We have good instincts when it comes to children and, really, when it comes to adults, too. It really taps into our innate desire to nurture.”

This project to knit wool hats for Israeli soldiers went worldwide.  On behalf of OJOTC, Peggy Gurock (left) delivered a shipment of about 30 hats this summer to Chicks With Sticks founder Channah Koppel this summer in Efrat. It was the fourth shipment that OJOTC had sent to Channah since we became involved in the Chesed Project several months earlier. Channah reported that a total of more than 3,000 hats were distributed to soldiers the previous winter.  The hats came from knitters all over the world.  The hope was that by the following winter, she would have more than 4,000 more hats to distribute.

For more information, click here to read an article from Arutz7 about the project. It also contains the pattern to knit the hats.

Members were encouraged to get involved. Finished hats were shipped to Israel and members had the satisfaction of sharing in this mitzvah of helping an IDF soldier who is protecting our State of Israel.