Carrie Hewitt talks about her visit back to her old school

In this International Occupational Therapy Week a final year Occupational Therapy student from York St John University, went back to her high school to talk about occupational therapy as a career.

I attended my old high school to inform the students of the Occupational Therapy profession. I presented in front of 100 students in years 10 and 11, students who are interested in working within the health service. My presentation showed my journey from Castleford Academy to York St John University and the events and opportunities I’ve had along the way. I introduced the University life and specifically York St John University to tell them of the important life experience University can bring. I then went on to tell the students about Occupational Therapy, the Occupational Therapists roles and responsibilities and the type of people they work with. I showed the children a video of Occupational Therapists working with Paramedics, displaying a different and relatively new role. During the presentation, I reminded the pupils that we take a holistic approach; looking at the whole person.

I went in to top set Biology class to further elaborate on the presentation and I also described University, highlighting the importance of it regarding life experience and living independently. Some questions asked were about the length of the course, my reasoning for choosing Occupational Therapy as a career and the different areas Occupational Therapists can work in.

In addition to teaching the Biology class, I attended a Health and Social lesson in which I recapped my earlier presentation in case any children had missed it. I involved the children in two activities – the children worked in groups of two or three – and the aim of the activities was to explore and challenge their thought processes. The first activity was to look beyond the physical image you see – two pictures showing two different people, which encourage the children to look at the obvious and consider the not so obvious. The second activity was to consider each little task within the activity of making a cup of tea and putting on a shirt. This got the pupils thinking about each step in our daily occupations we take for granted, and how an illness or disability may make these steps harder.

It was great to be able to share my passion for occupational therapy with pupils from my old school #otweek16 and recommend it to fellow students, it is a great experience to stand up and talk to an interested audience.