Lacey Roberts shares about her Summer 2020 externship experience:
“This summer, I had a fabulous experience at Kids Unlimited Learning Academy (KULA) in Searcy. My supervisor, Haylynn Moore, was incredibly knowledgeable and I learned an extraordinary amount from her about therapy and professionalism. KULA is classified as an early intervention day treatment facility. At first glance, KULA looks a lot like other preschools. However, the children who attend all qualify for developmental day treatment services in the classroom and therapy services in one or more of the following areas: ST, PT, and OT. My supervisor’s caseload consisted of about 25 children ages 9 months to 6 years. The majority of my day was spent treating children during their day at school. However, I did see new children coming in for evaluations and a few outpatient children in addition to the kids who attend the school. I started each day at 6:45 a.m. and saw kiddos consecutively until about 4:00 p.m. other than a 30-minute lunch. My days were incredibly busy but seeing each one of the kids grow both in language ability and overall skills made me excited to go every day. One of the most significant ways that my experience in the graduate program at Harding prepared me for KULA was the program’s emphasis on teamwork. Each one of my courses at Harding has highlighted the importance of multidisciplinary efforts in order to treat the whole client. Events like Nights at the Roundtable and the reflex lab helped me to better understand how to communicate and work with professionals from other disciplines effectively. Each day at KULA, I worked with classroom teachers. It was so valuable to be able to gather their input about a child because the clients I treated spent the majority of the day with the teacher. I also had awesome opportunities to observe PT and OT sessions and to discuss a client’s progress with those professions. I am so grateful that I had the chance to work at KULA this summer! Each day was an amazing chance to apply the skills I learned in the classroom and to gain practical experience working with the sweetest kids!”
Thank you for sharing, Lacey!