Dotterer Educational Consulting of Hamburg approved as ACT 48 provider
Dysgraphia expert's methodology is interventionbased and supports teachers, therapists, parents
The Pennsylvania Department of Education approved Dotterer Educational Consulting of Hamburg as a provider of ACT 48 Continuing Professional Education on Feb. 15.
Dysgraphia expert Cheri Dotterer, MS, OTR/L, founded Dotterer Educational Consulting in 2018. Dotterer is an OT, educational consultant, keynote speaker, and workshop facilitator who designs pro- fessional development materi- als to help students overcome the social-emotional trauma associated with dysgraphia and support teachers to cultivate successful students.
To receive approval, the Department of Education requires a Professional Education Plan designed to meet the continuing education needs of the school and its employees in order to meet the specific needs of students. Professional development must be based on sound research and promising practices of educator effectiveness and must be part of an approved plan for building educators’ skills over the long term, according to https://www.education.pa.gov.
“As an approved provider, teachers and other school professionals can attain the much-needed continuing education required to maintain their certification. Dotterer Educational Consulting has completed the peer review and can now support school districts with the topic of dysgraphia,” said Dotterer.
Dotterer explained that dysgraphia is a specific learning disability categorized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Health Disorders, fifth edition as a developmental delay in the ability to write efficiently.
“Delays are in grammar, punctuation, capitalization, sentence structure, paragraph organization, spelling errors, and clarity,” explained Dotterer. “Many students with this disability reach a capacity for the writing activity that is developmentally below their peers. This disability also interferes with activities of daily living. It is more than handwritten material, it is all aspects of writing from the first time a child places a crayon in their hand through writing a dissertation. There is a huge social-emotional component that prevents a person from writing.”
Her clients are the teachers and the occupational therapists, and occasionally a parent.
“Many of them have 20 years of experience treating students in school settings,” she said. “Because this disability is misunderstood and occurs many times alongside comorbid conditions such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), there wasn’t a protocol for evaluation, intervention, and outcomes measures to support it.”
Research into this disorder has occurred over the last 15 years with a focus on academics, she said.
“My methodology is intervention-based and supports the regular and learning support teachers, therapists, and parents to clarify symptoms so they can clearly define interventions to support students,” she said. “The CROWN framework examines the social-emotional components interfering neurologically with a child’s access to writing.”
CROWN stands for
C — Connect disability attributes (sometimes invisible) to design effective communication across the lifespan
R — Reward awareness and advocacy for dysgraphia
O — Own responsibility for the social-emotional impact imposed on the community by dysgraphia
W — Wield empathy and sincerity for people with difficulty writing, no matter their age
N — Normalize innovative methods that streamline evaluation, intervention, and outcomes
“My dream is classrooms across the Commonwealth and beyond that notice the subtle nuances in early writers that prevent them from developing a dislike for school because it is too hard,” said Dotterer. “My interventions streamline the trial and error process to intervention by more definitively screening and evaluating students so that interventions are proactive and outcomes remain positive and not negative.
“Students with this disability demonstrate high anxiety and frustration due to visualspatial and memory issues. Understanding dysgraphia is essential to student success and ultimately career and college success. These strategies can unlock a potential hidden inside.”
Dotterer is the author of the award-nominated book “Handwriting Brain-Body DisConnect.”
For more information about the Dotterer Dysgraphia Method, links for handwriting and computer-generated writing as well as the symptoms, and other resources for parents and educators, visit https://www.cheridotterer. com/.