Breakfast club lessons: staff perspectives on a yearlong collaborative teletherapy initiative during COVID-19

Abstract

Due to social distancing mandates during COVID-19 pandemic, school-based staff no longer shared physical spaces, necessitating resilience and resourcefulness in recruitment of unique models to engage school community (Baker et al., 2021; Brown, 2021). In a northeastern public elementary school, related service and classroom staff sustained engagement remotely through a novel yearlong interprofessional initiative known as “Breakfast Club.” Objective of this research was to explore, via phenomenological approach, lived experiences of three educators and two therapists who participated in the yearlong interprofessional initiative. Upon qualitative thematic analysis, five themes emerged: (1) Technological Literacy (2) Consistency (3) Role-Blurring (4) Social-Emotional Benefits (5) Challenges/Advantages of Scheduling. Findings of this study support an intentional approach to sustained tele-therapeutic interprofessional efforts for school-based educational teams.

Keywords:

• Interprofessional collaboration
• teletherapy
• COVID-19
• speech therapy
• occupational therapy
• physical therapy

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zahava L. Friedman

Zahava L. Friedman, PhD, OT, BCBA is an Assistant Professor of Occupational Therapy at Kean University, Hillside, N.J. Research interests include interprofessional practice, trauma-informed approaches and rigorous clinical experiences.