Dana Jonson [00:00:09]:

Welcome back to Special Ed. On Special Ed, I am your host, Dana Johnson. Thank you for joining me today. I’m very excited about my guest today. Today I have Cheri Dotterer, who’s a renowned handwriting specialist and dysgraphia consultant and has a rich background in occupational therapy. Cheri has dedicated her career to understanding and addressing the challenges of dysgraphia, helping students, educators and parents navigate the complexities of written expression. As an author and educator, she’s distilled her extensive research and hands on experience into practical strategies and interventions that empower individuals with dysgraphia to overcome obstacles to writing. Cheri’s approach combines the latest in educational neuroscience with compassionate, tailored support, making her a sought after expert in the field of learning disabilities.

Dana Jonson [00:00:57]:

Hello Cheri, thank you so much for joining me today.

Cheri Dotterer [00:01:00]:

It is fabulous to be here. Thank you for the invitation. We had a conversation a couple weeks ago in preparation for this and I got so excited about what you’re doing here at Special Ed on Special Ed. It is such a needed podcast and so I am just honored to be here. Thank you.

Dana Jonson [00:01:21]:

Oh, wonderful. I’m so excited. Well, let me first do my disclaimer because I can’t do anything without my disclaimer, so we’ll play that quickly.

Disclaimer [00:01:29]:

The information in this podcast is provided for general informational and entertainment purposes only and may not reflect the current law in your jurisdiction at the time you’re listening. Nothing in this episode creates an attorney client relationship, nor is it legal advice. Do not act or refrain from acting on the basis of any information included in or accessible through this episode without seeking appropriate legal or other professional advice on particular facts and circumstances at issue from a lawyer or service provider license in your state, country, or other appropriate licensing jurisdiction.

Dana Jonson [00:01:50]:

Alrighty, I am ready to get into it. Sheri, I would love to start with your background. How’d you get to be the person I’m talking to about dysgraphia?

Cheri Dotterer [00:01:59]:

It was a very long road, but it, it started out with I really didn’t know what I wanted to do when I grew up. How about that one? And.

Dana Jonson [00:02:08]:

And I’m still working on it.

Cheri Dotterer [00:02:09]:

Yeah. So I started out my life thinking I wanted to be a lab tech. And when I got into college, I’m going, yeah, maybe this isn’t for me. And I was really stuck on where I wanted to do with myself. And then a PT assistant said after I was kind of describing where I wanted to go and she’s like, you sound like an occupational therapist. I’m. Is that. But what I was dreaming at that moment in that conversation didn’t happen for a very long time.

Cheri Dotterer [00:02:39]:

I made my way through most of the medical field of occupational therapy. I did acute care, subacute long term care, I did home health. And it wasn’t until I went back and got my master’s degree that I was just like, I’m determined to get into this other avenue and really start working in peds, which is what I wanted to do in the first, first place. And I actually started my business without cold, cold turkey, without any understanding of special ed. And all because a friend from church said to me, I need an OT there, can you help me out? I’m like, sure. And we, I started a business, went cold turkey. I walk in my first client and mom says, help my kid with executive function. And I went, what are you talking about? And so that started this.

Cheri Dotterer [00:03:38]:

What am I doing here? And around 2013, I took a course on educational advocacy. And I’m sitting in the fifth week of that course and she’s talking about related services. And I’m thinking, I know everything about related services. That’s what I do. I knew nothing. I felt like when I left that class by the end of the day and it was started me on this a different journey. And that was what is going on in the classroom that I can really help and make an impact, even though I’m not a teacher. And I really felt like, where’s a gap? And I saw this gap that teachers, therapists and parents didn’t understand each other.

Cheri Dotterer [00:04:29]:

And so I was looking for one niche to help fill in that triangle, that gap, whatever you want to call it. And I landed on dysgraphia and it started a snowball. That yes, other people have taken that snowball and they have done much better at describing dysgraphia than I ever could. But it was, it was a door that opened that has just taken me on this journey of self reflection and professional development and how do I grow from here? And so my journey really wasn’t one that I started out thinking I was going to be a podcast host and an author. As a matter of fact, I was terrified of writing, I was terrified of speaking. And now look at me. That’s what I do.

Dana Jonson [00:05:20]:

That’s everything, right? That’s how it goes. I love what you said though, about thinking that you knew everything about related services and then walking into the advocacy class and realizing, oh my gosh, I don’t. Because I do run into that a lot with service providers where they believe that they do understand everything about special education and how it works because the students they work with are in school and have special education needs. But it’s not, you know, you don’t learn that through osmosis. And I think that is sometimes where some of our service providers can take a bit of a left turn because I’ll find them advising clients on things that aren’t accurate. And I’ll say to my client, you know, I’ll tell you what, I will stop seeing students for therapy if you’ll stop asking your therapist for legal advice like that. You know how that works. It’s just, you know, let’s stay within our niche.

Dana Jonson [00:06:16]:

But I do think that’s a really important thing for any kind of outside provider to understand because it’s true their students are engaging in these services or their parents are advocating for them. And you guys have so much to offer and provide that we need as an IEP team that it only helps us when you know what we’re talking about and you understand where a related service fits in and where it doesn’t. Otherwise it just makes our. I can make our life more difficult. How did your world of dysgraphia evolve?

Cheri Dotterer [00:06:47]:

Well, I went and I tried to figure out what it was myself. And as I kept writing notes, kept writing notes and really trying to apply what I understood about sensory processing to those notes, I really went down this path of really trying to help the parent understand. So that was my mission. And that’s the handwriting brain body disconnect book. That’s who I was writing to. I was writing to parents who had kids who were struggling with writing and trying to share some of the non academic parts that go into writing handwriting specifically. And what I’ve realized is there’s even more than just those components. There is so much more to writing than just that physical component, that visual spatial component.

Cheri Dotterer [00:07:40]:

There is this big language component and this cognitive component. But there’s also another part, and this is the part that I think we forget about a lot. And that is the emotional part. The emotional part is the part that I think that we are addressing the least. And so as I’ve been doing more research and working with teachers, I really started exploring how that emotional feeling connection impacts their social awareness. And so I have a six part framework that I teach and that is called impact. And impact begins with interoception. And interoception is one of those words that people go, what are you talking about? Because no, nobody hears about it.

Cheri Dotterer [00:08:32]:

They hear about proprioception, they hear about vestibular, they hear about kinesthetic not as many people are hearing about interoception. Interoception is your eighth sense, and that is where your emotions and feelings get connected to the physical world. It’s a sensation, so it’s sensory, so it’s coming from the body to the brain, and it’s making those connections where I am not liking this. I’m in get. So the butterflies in the stomach start happening. And it could also be, oh, my gosh, best thing that ever happened, and all that excitement that goes with it. And then you have changes in your stomach with that emotion as well. So what I’m really starting to focus on is that barrier that prevents writing from happening.

Cheri Dotterer [00:09:26]:

I also do still teach a little bit about the dysgraphia, but I’m really trying to teach about that barrier that is preventing the writing from happening and how emotion and feeling are impacting it.

Dana Jonson [00:09:39]:

So let’s just back up a second, and let’s. Let’s describe dysgraphia, because I think I’m jumping ahead, but I realize some people listening might not understand where we’re. Where we’re starting, which is dysgraphia. So how would you describe dysgraphia to a parent?

Cheri Dotterer [00:09:52]:

Yeah, thank you for backing me up, because, you know, I’m on this. On this. This trajectory of going beyond the actual dysgraphia. And I know it confuses people sometimes. So what is dysgraphia? What I try to do is I try to decipher the Latin or Greek or whatever the derivative is of the word. So dys, which is the beginning, means disability. Ia at the end means condition. And then the words that are in the middle are the ones that tell you what it’s all about.

Cheri Dotterer [00:10:24]:

So we have three that fall under this specific learning disability category, and that’s reading, writing, and math. And so lexi means to read, so that’s dyslexia. Graph means to write, so that’s the dysgraphia. And calc means math. So that’s the disability in math dyscalculia. And so what I was doing initially was trying to really decipher what the dysgraphia was. So what is it? It is a disability in being able to put things on paper. But it’s more than just letter formation.

Cheri Dotterer [00:11:05]:

It’s punctuation, it’s capitalization, it’s sentence structure, it’s spelling, it’s paragraph organization, it’s clarity of speech. So all those things together make up the DSM 5 definition. Now there’s this whole conglomerate of what it is not And I think that’s where we get a lot of confusion about dysgraphia, because if you read it, you go, wait a minute, I thought. And I’m not finishing this sentence intentionally, so let me go on and say what it is not. It is not a visual disability. It’s not an auditory disability. It’s not a mental health disorder. It’s not a neurological condition.

Cheri Dotterer [00:11:49]:

It’s not psychological adversity. It has nothing to do with lack of proficiency in language skills. Skills. And you go, wait a minute. So I get stuck on the neurological. Because that’s where my background has always been. I, when I was working with adults, I was always on the neurological team. So stroke team, dementia team.

Cheri Dotterer [00:12:07]:

So I’ve always done a lot of research in the connection and sensory processing of. Of what happens at that age. And when I get stuck on the neurological, I went, wait a minute. Where did ADD ADHD come. Come into play here? What I discovered is ADHD is described in another chapter of the DSM 5. And so I went, huh? So how does a psychologist do that? What I found was, as I was starting to read reports, is the ADHD or the autism or one of those other neurological conditions is the primary diagnosis. The specific learning disability is the learning disability, and that falls in the secondary. So when we’re trying to bridge the gap between the medical and the educational, we’re focusing on that functional part, which is the dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia.

Cheri Dotterer [00:13:06]:

And basically anybody who’s writing that you can’t understand it has some form of dysgraphia. And, like, there’s this whole spectrum of autism, there’s this whole spectrum of dysfunctional dyslexia, there’s this whole spectrum of dyscalculia. And if somebody really doesn’t have one of those other neurological conditions, with time, they can create compensatory strategies and be functional, may not be up to somebody else’s standard, but they can at least be functional. And I know we, we talked before that you struggled so much with reading in years past.

Dana Jonson [00:13:43]:

Yeah.

Cheri Dotterer [00:13:44]:

But you’ve gotten to a point in your life where you’ve created compensatory strategies that you can be a functional adult.

Dana Jonson [00:13:52]:

Yeah. And some of that is the benefit of not being serviced. I’m joking when I say benefit. But, you know, growing up in a time where I wasn’t really serviced, it was sort of. You had to figure it out yourself. So some of those compensatory strategies don’t always make life easier, but it gets the job done, you know, you sort of learn how to force yourself to do it, I guess, in some cases. So I was fortunate that I could do that because not, not everybody can. That’s also another skill.

Dana Jonson [00:14:21]:

But yeah, that’s what I was going to ask you was how does dysgraphia, what does that look like? I mean, I understand like it’s any, any writing we don’t understand. But what does that look like in a student who’s experiencing it? Or how would you identify that, say, as a parent or teacher?

Cheri Dotterer [00:14:37]:

Sure. So what it looks like on paper is letters might be reversed, Words might be the letter. The letters of the words are put in the wrong order. There’s letters missing, there’s added letters. So you have the. Like in the world of religion, you have the sins of omission and the sins of commission. It kind of happens in writing, too. You have the letters of omission and the letters of commission.

Cheri Dotterer [00:15:04]:

So hopefully you can get that analogy there, because some kids will put words together. You might, you know, might have a kid who’s copying, and all of a sudden what they’re copying, they’ve totally skipped a line and they’ve totally lost the context of what they were trying to copy. They have difficulty creating a sentence. They can maybe do it orally, but they have trouble doing it on paper.

Dana Jonson [00:15:30]:

So is that if you’re asking a student, you know, write. I have this image of, you know, when teachers say, oh, write down. Just write what you did over the weekend. You know, it’s just sort of this broad what have you. And then is that where a student might get stumped? I mean, would they be able to wrangle those thoughts and get them on paper? Or is it once they’re putting them on paper or maybe both, that they get confused? Where does that impact them?

Cheri Dotterer [00:15:56]:

Kids with the dyslexia probably have trouble with both. They probably have trouble making the whole world come together. They can orally tell you if they have got a neurological condition. That’s a different scenario where they might even have trouble telling you. But kids with specific learning disabilities are often these really high level intellectual kids who can tell you a book now write it down, and the deer in headlights look comes at you and you’re going, okay. And then we get behaviors such as throwing pencils, putting your head down, crying, all those scenarios that can go along with that frustration and that anxiety. And it’s because if you look at it from a neurological standpoint, the oral path to getting communication completed is pretty much intact. We’re still working on the writing one.

Cheri Dotterer [00:16:53]:

So we still have to develop those neurological pathways. So one of the ways that I encourage everyone that I talk to is to do voice recordings. And if you can get a voice recording that you can keep the recording and have a transcript. One of the only program that I know that does that really well is Otter AI, which we talked about a little bit before we started here in that you and I both use that.

Dana Jonson [00:17:22]:

Yes.

Cheri Dotterer [00:17:23]:

But I have tried Google typing, I’ve tried Microsoft. Microsoft does a little bit better than Google, but we’ve, we got kids who are just going to ramble. There’s no feature in that voice typing in Google to create sentences. So if you have a pregnant pause all of a sudden, it doesn’t know what to do and it’ll just kind of sit there, but it never finishes a sentence. What’s nice about Otter is it kind of generally makes sentences for you. So I suggest the Otter AI to almost every parent that I talk to. And I keep getting reports back where that is so different than Google. It’s so different than Google.

Cheri Dotterer [00:18:08]:

And the. Because I’ve tried them all, it’s the only one that really creates the sentences. So it depends on what you’re working on with the kid. Are you working on just getting that information out? And they can create the sentences from what they see or do. They really need that sentence structure in front of them. So there’s three stages to getting the work on paper after you learned how to create the letters. And that is copying dictated or self generated. So copying is pretty much easy.

Cheri Dotterer [00:18:43]:

You’re copying the transcript in front of you dictated, you kind of hide the transcript from the student and you let them hit the auto record the record the audio file and do a couple words at a time. Or self generated is okay, this is what you said. Now can you create your own sentence that you directly put on paper? So a self generated sentence, it takes a long time to get from step A to step Z in that scenario. So one of the things about kids with an actual disability in reading, writing and math is as a comparison to kids that are typical, a typical kid say they have no iep, no nothing. General ed classroom, the teacher’s teaching, they can absorb what the teacher’s teaching in about six lessons. A kid with a disability takes closer to 100, sometimes more, to get that same assignment completed. So that’s why the idea of multi tiered system of supports was created to create those additional experiences for kids who need a little bit more help and.

Dana Jonson [00:20:02]:

Then they Created the pre teaching and the post teaching. And that. Yes, plays into there.

Cheri Dotterer [00:20:07]:

Yes, that plays into there. So then we’ve created the whole classroom which is tier one, the small group, which could be a pre teaching or a post teaching. It could be. This is what we read in class. This is a little bit different, but can you see the connection? And then tier three is one on one. And as an occupational therapist, I was seeing most of my kids as a tier three, taking them out one on one, maybe two on one. And I was getting a lot of rolling of the eyes from the teachers. And I’m going, what is why I’m supposed to be helping these kids? What? And so what got me really looking at making a shift to the pull out model of related services is how can I do what I’m doing with a kid and do it in the classroom so that they’re not missing their education? The teacher seeing what I’m doing and can she then incorporate that for all the students? And so that’s where I’ve been doing a lot of my research right now, is trying to look at what is it that we can do to create tier one collaborative environments for students.

Cheri Dotterer [00:21:23]:

Yeah.

Dana Jonson [00:21:24]:

And I think that’s one of the hardest things to do because to teach a large group of students. Right. I mean, right now the group we teach to that range has widened over the years, but it’s still pretty narrow. So you have children on either end, whether it’s the higher end or the lower end, who are not grasping what’s being taught. And is there a way to teach all of them as opposed to just some of them? And I think that’s where, you know, we talk about inclusion and differentiating of instruction. But you know, there are always going to be students who do require to be removed from the regular education environment to learn those skills before they can generalize them back into the regular education. But I do think that there’s more we can be doing to address more students within the classroom. Are there specific strategies that you find work generally or is it more student specific or teacher specific or.

Dana Jonson [00:22:27]:

All of the above?

Cheri Dotterer [00:22:29]:

All of the above. So I’ve been looking at the connections to writing.

Dana Jonson [00:22:33]:

Mm.

Cheri Dotterer [00:22:34]:

And so I’ve been trying to narrow down and not do a whole big broad thing because there’s a lot of stuff out there. Brain Gym is a whole classroom activity that, that you can work on with the kids. Zones of Regulation is a whole classroom activity and it can be brought down to tier two and tier three as well. But I’ve been Looking at what is it that’s going to spark a kid’s engagement level in writing. And I really come to look at what are the movements. And the reason I was thinking about standing up to do this interview is because it makes it so much easier to demonstrate this one when I’m standing up. But we’re going to back up from the microphone a little bit and share with you an activity that I do, and that is bilateral integration. It’s one of those buzzwords that anybody in special ed has heard.

Cheri Dotterer [00:23:30]:

But when I looked at it and I looked at the idea of writing. Writing is an asymmetrical bilateral integrated system. Okay? One hand is holding the paper, the other hand’s holding the pencil, touching the paper and doing a task with that hand. So that’s asymmetrical. Then we have symmetrical, where both hands are doing the exact same thing. And I describe this one like a lazy eight, where you’re doing a pattern with both hands doing a lazy eight. But one of the things that I’ve noticed with a lot of the structured literacy is they’re doing a lot of air writing, which is absolutely fabulous. Multisensory motion is involved, et cetera.

Cheri Dotterer [00:24:17]:

But they’re only strengthening the side of the brain that’s opposite the kid’s dominant. And if they’re right handed, they’re hitting the logical. If they’re left handed, they’re hitting the creative. But if the kids got a stronger capacity for the opposite, you’re not going to help make the connections from one to the other. So I was looking at how do we connect and do both? And I do it two different ways. One of them is I touch both index fingers together. And do what? The same activity as they were doing in structured literacy with the air writing. So whatever letters, whatever word they’re trying to put together, we deal with the same finger side by side.

Cheri Dotterer [00:25:04]:

The other thing that I do to try and get a bigger movement is I interlace my hands. But you can’t put palms together because what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to prepare your hands for writing. So you need to motor. Improve the motor planning for the writing skill. So by doing that, you have to have your palms away from you. So by putting your palms away from you, putting one behind the other, and interlacing the hands so that both the both palms are away from you so your thumbs are opposite. And then do the air writing and do it as big as you can. You’re going to get full shoulder move movement.

Cheri Dotterer [00:25:43]:

You’re going to get full elbow movement, full wrist movement. Well, you’re not really getting finger movement, but you’re getting full wrist movement. And if they’re putting their dominant hand in front, it’s going to encourage wrist extension, which is another area that kids have a weakness in when they’re writing. So the interlaced bilateral integration really has made a difference in kids. Retention of high frequency words, for instance.

Dana Jonson [00:26:14]:

That’s so interesting. I also just want to back up a second because we’re talking about tier one, tier two, tier three. And in case anyone’s listening who doesn’t understand what those are, we’re really talking about, well, what we call response to intervention. I don’t. It’s called slightly different depending on where you are. But they’re interventions that are provided in the classroom for students who do have learning disabilities who maybe aren’t completely falling apart, because if they were, we’d be referring them to special education, but to sort of catch those kids that usually would have fallen through the cracks. So tier one is, is in the classroom, typical interventions. And then it gets more specialized until you get to a place where you say, okay, this child does require some special education services.

Dana Jonson [00:26:56]:

And I don’t know if there’s a different definition that you have in your head, but I just wanted to clarify that. So when we’re Talking about Tier 3, those would be the more intensive interventions, correct?

Cheri Dotterer [00:27:07]:

Yes. And typically somebody who is in small group, like a tier two, could have some. Something on an iep. Tier three is usually more intensive and those kids are typically IEP kids.

Dana Jonson [00:27:24]:

Right. And I know that it came about because there are kids who can fall through the cracks because they have these struggles, but they’re not completely falling apart. And instead of waiting until they do, which causes a whole bunch of other issues, we intervene, we provide these interventions and we get to a certain place, we say, okay, yes, this child definitely needs those. That. That level of support. Sorry, I interrupted with that. I just wanted to make sure that was clear. So when you’re talking about the bilateral, and I’m going to get it wrong.

Dana Jonson [00:27:53]:

Bilateral. What did you say? Intervention. Not intervention.

Cheri Dotterer [00:27:56]:

Interlaced. Interlaced. Bilateral integration.

Dana Jonson [00:27:59]:

Interlaced. Bilateral integrations. You know, is that something that you recommend for teachers doing the whole class? Right. Because if they’re doing the air writing, that’s something that everybody could do, that everyone would benefit from, right?

Cheri Dotterer [00:28:12]:

Yes, yes. So you can be done with all three tiers. So if you’re doing it with a whole classroom, all the kids are doing it at One time, if you have a small group, you could do it there as well. Or if you’ve got a tier three, kiddo, you can incorporate that into that session as well. So it could be done with all three tiers. So one of the ways that I. And so everybody listening. I want you to pause, unless you’re driving, unless you can’t do this.

Cheri Dotterer [00:28:41]:

But I want you to do the interlace together, where you put your palms away from you. You interlace your fingers together. And I want you to start at the top, and I want you to write in full arm movement the number eight. So you’re going to start at the top and write the number eight.

Dana Jonson [00:28:57]:

I’m doing this. You can’t see it, but we’re doing it over here.

Cheri Dotterer [00:29:01]:

And that’s why we have the pause. So now that you’ve done it, what do you notice?

Dana Jonson [00:29:06]:

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to notice, but I mean, my whole body, my whole upper body was going with it. You know, I could feel the whole thing, each part. You could, you know, my shoulders going.

Cheri Dotterer [00:29:18]:

Yeah, yeah, you could feel it all. How did it make you feel?

Dana Jonson [00:29:23]:

I mean, it’s kind of satisfying, actually.

Cheri Dotterer [00:29:26]:

Okay.

Dana Jonson [00:29:29]:

It really is. I’m not sure. What am I supposed to feel? I get nervous when I’m asked questions like this.

Cheri Dotterer [00:29:35]:

No. And that wasn’t stressful.

Dana Jonson [00:29:37]:

It wasn’t stressful.

Cheri Dotterer [00:29:39]:

So the reason I ask you those questions is those are some techniques we use with the kids to find out what that is that’s feeling inside. So some of the things that. That I get responses when I do that with people is I felt my shoulders. I’m doing this with adults. Okay. So we’ve got adults who may have had shoulder injuries or they’re sitting or working all day, and their back hurts and they can feel their back hur. Hurt. So I get a lot of musculoskeletal kind of responses with adult.

Cheri Dotterer [00:30:15]:

Yeah, okay, okay. But there’s that emotional connection as well, and that’s why I add the highest. That make you feel. And with a kid, the awkwardness, the anxiety, that’s a way of writing that they can actually access that feeling. So the reason I do that activity is not just the physical, but to access that emotion and see if we can have the kids articulate. So what I do with the interlaced bilateral integration, especially if I’m just teaching it, I start with the number eight. And the reason I. Part of the reason I start with the number eight is he forces you to cross midline Twice.

Cheri Dotterer [00:31:02]:

And if you’re looking at it from a neurodevelopmental approach, you’re crossing midline here. I’m going to get a little OT on you in the neurodevelopmental proprioceptive facilitation patterns. So when you’ve had a stroke, there’s patterns that your arm goes through before it regains, if it’s going to regain motion. There’s a series of patterns that your arm will go through as it’s moving beyond the initial attack. And I relate those back. So ot’s understand what I’m talking about when I say that. And you’re not expected to. Okay? You’re not expected to.

Cheri Dotterer [00:31:49]:

But I say it because if you go back and you do it again, you’ve crossed midline twice. And what’s one of the things that a lot of kids with learning disabilities struggle with?

Dana Jonson [00:32:01]:

Right, crossing the midline. Yeah. So when you say that they’re feeling like, whether it’s that anxiety or the butterflies, that they’re also feeling that when they are doing this activity, that’s where they can identify that they’re, they’re struggling.

Cheri Dotterer [00:32:17]:

It’s another avenue of accessing, to articulate that.

Dana Jonson [00:32:22]:

Yes, interesting. So what is the emotional component? Because you touched on that at the beginning and we backed up to talk more about the dysgraphia itself. But what is that emotional. Emotional barrier? Because I know, I mean for myself growing up when we were asked to sort of open endedly write something and this might be the dyslexia which has my brain a little scrambled, but I mean there is nothing more panic inducing to me than just write something from scratch without any spec and I mean specific guidelines, you know. So I can only imagine with the dysgraphia piece that that also plays in for students with that, that, that writing from scratch without any organization, without any structure, that that would just be completely panic inducing.

Cheri Dotterer [00:33:06]:

Absolutely, absolutely. Even adults can find a panic inducing. And if they’ve had any neurological injury to boot, that can also add to that anxiety and that frustration. But if you’re stopping to ask the kids what they’re feeling, what they’re seeing, what they notice, you can start to then be a detective and start to decipher what’s going on. So let me just change the subject from the bilateral integration and let’s look at handwriting paper in first grade, it’s typically three lines. Some paper is two lines, some paper is four lines. Typically it’s three lines. The top line and the bottom line are solid.

Cheri Dotterer [00:33:50]:

The middle line Is dotted. Then there’s another set of solid line, dotted line, solid line, solid line, dotted line, solid line. And you’ve got a kid who might have a difficulty with being able to see or understand what they’re looking at. And you ask them, what do you see? And all they’re going to get is, oh, no, there’s just a whole bunch of lines on the page that some of them are solid, some of them are dotted. I don’t know what to do with it. And what we need to do is back up and say, okay, this is the top line, this is the bottom line. This is a section of where you’re supposed to write. How could we make it so that you can see that a little bit better? One of the ways that we can do that and see it a little bit better is color in with like a gray pencil, the space between the writing lines so that the writing line is in this box so it’s sticking out white.

Cheri Dotterer [00:34:46]:

Everything around it is, is gray with a pencil. Now what do you see? Oh, now I can see where I’m supposed to write. Okay, so if we want to write a lowercase B, which is one of the most difficult letters for kids, if we want to write the lowercase B, one of the parts of the B starts on the top line. Where does it end? It ends on the bottom line. And then we have another part, we have that circular part with a B. How are you going to be able to figure out if it goes on the left side of that line or the right side of that line? And then kids who have disabilities don’t know what left and right are.

Dana Jonson [00:35:27]:

I was just going to say you might have to back up even farther.

Cheri Dotterer [00:35:30]:

Uh huh. So getting to the point of them being able to decipher for themselves, so continually asking them those questions that are going to dig a little bit deeper to try and figure out where the gap is in their mind so that you can go back to be successful before you can move on to the get the academics completed. So it’s really trying to be a non academic decipherer detective.

Dana Jonson [00:36:02]:

So is that why B is so difficult? Because it could be the B or it could be the D. Is that the part that’s the most confusing for them?

Cheri Dotterer [00:36:09]:

Yeah, it’s the circle part and then with the P and the Q alongside it, it’s which part? Where did the ball go? Between all four of them.

Dana Jonson [00:36:17]:

Interesting. That is interesting. So I have a child. Yeah, okay. I have a child just another left from their right. So she still does this, and which is really frightening when she’s driving. But, you know, learning that back, you know, the B and the D or what gets flipped around so much by children. I mean, I guess that’s a natural thing to flip around at the beginning.

Dana Jonson [00:36:39]:

And if you don’t grasp that skill early on, then it just continues. So I want to talk a little bit about the Crown Wisdom Network and that mission.

Cheri Dotterer [00:36:50]:

Yes.

Dana Jonson [00:36:51]:

You want to give us an introduction to that?

Cheri Dotterer [00:36:53]:

Yeah. So that is something I will be launching later in 2024. So I’m not quite sure how soon this comes out, but there’s nothing published about it yet. But the Crown Wisdom Network is really a network of taking this world of specific learning disabilities and some of those associated disabilities, looking at it from a historical perspective, really digging into Proverbs and helping make connections with that. This all began because God gave me this download one day of you’re going to write a historical fiction book about the Book of Esther. I went, yes, right. I’m having enough trouble writing, handwriting, brain, body disconnect right now. God, come on.

Cheri Dotterer [00:37:42]:

What are you talking about? And the reason he gave me that is because at one point in my life, I was considering committing suicide. And I opened the Book of Esther and found her courage and realized that over time, after about two years, that I do have the courage to move on. And the reason wisdom is associated with each one of those words is because Esther, in my historical fiction book, is reading the Book of Proverbs secretly. Even though she’s not supposed to even have a Bible or anything, she secretly has some connections that she’s able to access the Book of Proverbs. And the Book of Proverbs is the Book of Wisdom. So the Book of Wisdom provides courage, which is for yourself. So with these kids that are struggling with the learning disabilities, it’s a way of accessing themselves so that they can come out of their shell. Wisdom.

Cheri Dotterer [00:38:51]:

Compassion has to do with talking to the others around them. It could be the other classmates, it could be the community. It could be kids on the other side of the world. It really doesn’t matter where they are, but it’s really gaining an empathy for others. But there’s an action involved with compassion. Compassion isn’t just empathy. It’s empathy with you doing something to help them. And so having kids create activities that are going to help others, and then collaboration really has to do with.

Cheri Dotterer [00:39:29]:

You can never do it alone. If you’re trying to do it alone, you’re not going to get anywhere. And so really helping kids Understand how to get along with their peers, the adults around them, kids that are younger than them, and really trying to help create a unified environment. Understanding that different cultures have different characteristics, and so really understanding others.

Dana Jonson [00:39:57]:

And you don’t have to be religious to benefit from this. Correct. I know that’s.

Cheri Dotterer [00:40:01]:

No, you don’t. You don’t.

Dana Jonson [00:40:03]:

But it sounds more like, you know, that’s its origin. But the wisdom of courage and compassion and collaboration, those are all appropriate. And. What’s the word I’m looking for? Relevant. I should say relevant to anybody seeking those components. And your current. Your current. The book that you’ve written, is it one or there’s more than one?

Cheri Dotterer [00:40:31]:

I’ve written Handwriting Brain Body Disconnect, which is out. It’s published. You can get it on my website at cheridotterer.com or you can get it on Amazon or anywhere books are sold. So you can go to Barnes and Nobles as well.

Dana Jonson [00:40:43]:

Okay. And that’ll be in my show. All this stuff will be in my show notes. So anybody listening, if you can’t remember it all, just go back to the show notes and we’ll have it there.

Cheri Dotterer [00:40:50]:

And last year, I contributed to an anthology. It’s called Becoming you. So in that I share a little bit about the courage and the compassion and collaboration, and as I was developing how I wanted to present that to the world. So there’s a little bit of that story and a little bit about that night that drove me to consider suicide. So I am one of 15 authors in that book. So it’s just a collection of everybody’s. And that’s also on Amazon.

Dana Jonson [00:41:27]:

And what’s it called?

Cheri Dotterer [00:41:29]:

That’s called Becoming you.

Dana Jonson [00:41:30]:

Becoming you. Wonderful.

Cheri Dotterer [00:41:32]:

Yeah. And then the third book that I contributed to last year, last year I spent a lot of time writing. So last one is a textbook. I am actually part of a new textbook that has come out for handwriting and special education. It is an international book. So there are authors from all over the world that are part of this textbook. It’s the International Rutledge Handbook of Visual Motor Skills, Spelling and Handwriting. And so I am.

Cheri Dotterer [00:42:03]:

Chapter 28 blows my mind. So I’m part of a nonprofit that is run out of Ohio. It’s called the Handwriting Collaborative. And so there are several chapters by members of the advisory board in there.

Dana Jonson [00:42:19]:

Very cool. You have a podcast, correct?

Cheri Dotterer [00:42:22]:

Well, there’s one more book.

Dana Jonson [00:42:23]:

Oh, one more book. I’m sorry, I’m jumping ahead.

Cheri Dotterer [00:42:25]:

Yeah, yeah, you’re busy. Two more. There’s two more books, but the next book that is gonna come out, the one that we’re trying to finish, is called Math Disconnected. And Math Disconnected is where we really start to reveal what impact looks like in a classroom that is actually written as a story along with a math teacher. And the focus is the dyscalculia and the dysgraphia and really trying to level the playing field for not just the kids with the disability and the writing, but also level the playing field so that we have a tier one approach to mathematics. And my co author is a secondary math teacher and an instructional coach who is, is really doing a lot more training in k to 6, k to 8 than she ever is in high school anymore. And what she has discovered is there’s 12 reference tasks, so 12 activities that will cover every math standard from K through 12 and teach math. And she had one class when she was first starting out.

Cheri Dotterer [00:43:38]:

This isn’t even lately. This was when she was first starting out. She had a sixth grade class and the state scores from fifth grade were like 27% of the kids were proficient. Now I might be getting my numbers, my stats a little off because I’m trying to remember what she said to me. But when they took the stats from sixth grade, at the end of sixth grade in math alone, these kids averaged 72.

Dana Jonson [00:44:07]:

Wow.

Cheri Dotterer [00:44:07]:

It was huge. She always says I broke the bell curve, but what she was looking for was what are the connections to cognitive availability for these kids. And so that’s how I got involved in her reference tasks. So I took time and I sat down and I analyzed them from a non academic standpoint. And so that’s part of what we’re sharing. We do a monthly workshop where we’re really delving into the math and we started a podcast. So you asked about the podcasts?

Dana Jonson [00:44:46]:

Yes.

Cheri Dotterer [00:44:47]:

Two years ago I started the Writing Glitch. The writing glitch is all about the dysgraphia. I’m interviewing people that are out there with technology or dyslexia, dysgraphia strategies and looking at what we can do to help these kids. Most of that is an interview based podcast. Earlier this month, I guess this is February of 2024, we started Tier 1 interventions. Tier 1 or interventions is the first part of that workshop. So the first, the first hour or first half hour of the workshop, we’re converting that, that segment to a podcast. So we’re introducing the reference task, we’re talking about some of the concepts behind it and looking at cognitive ability and trying to help others understand what students might be, might be burdened by.

Cheri Dotterer [00:45:50]:

So one of the, one of the examples of really messing up with cognitive ability is did they sleep the night before? And I know you’re a special ed lawyer and I might tread on toes saying this, but I really do believe that we can address sleep issues in a school based setting. No, we’re not going to encourage kids to sleep, but education and awareness, we can address that with the teachers, the parents, the students themselves. And look at why sleep deprivation will impact education.

Dana Jonson [00:46:26]:

Yeah, no, that’s so important. And especially when you get to the teenage years where students, you know, just physically can’t go to sleep as early as the rest of us, you know, then. And with devices, as we all know, the lights from the devices that cause them to stay up later and then, you know, whatever it is, there’s just always a reason and I know it. Left to their own devices, my kids would be up all night long and not even realize that’s what they were doing, you know, but it is, it’s like, you know, it’s the same as for an athlete. You know, not only is it your sleep, but your nutrition, all of those pieces can really play to your brain function and how you perform and being at your optimal self. So if you already have deficits to. Then you’re kind of piling on, really.

Cheri Dotterer [00:47:12]:

Right, exactly, exactly. So to summarize, all of the things that I have to offer is I have a couple books out now, I have two more on the way, which I didn’t even talk about the fifth one yet. I have two podcasts and there’s courses and stuff that you can dive a little bit deeper and you can access them through Cheridotterer.com wonderful. So that that fifth book is my dream book and that is that historical fiction book on the Book of Esther that I am working on. And slowly, because I want to get all the stuff for teachers out first before I start to interfere.

Dana Jonson [00:47:49]:

Weave that your passion project that you would call it?

Cheri Dotterer [00:47:53]:

That’s exactly what I call it.

Dana Jonson [00:47:55]:

Wonderful. Well, Cheri, thank you so much for joining me. I feel like we covered so much. Is there anything that you can think of that we miss? Did I not hit something?

Cheri Dotterer [00:48:05]:

No, I think, I think that we’ve covered a lot of information. I guess the one thing is if they really want to delve in a little bit more on some of the strategies that go along with impact, the second Wednesday of every month, I do a free webinar, so they’re welcome to register for that. That’s also on my website.

Dana Jonson [00:48:27]:

Wonderful. Well, I will have the links and access to all of those pieces, the books, the podcasts, your website, all in my show notes. So that should be easy for people to access. And thank you so much for being here and discussing dysgraphia with us because I think, you know, we’re so focused in dyslexia, I’m not sure we talk about dysgraphia or dyscalculia as much as we should. And this was really, really is helpful for me. So I’m hopeful it’s helpful for others as well. So thank you. Thank you again.

Cheri Dotterer [00:48:58]:

It’s been a pleasure to be here. We could talk for another three or four hours and still not hit the tip of the iceberg. So there’s a whole lot more that we can share, so we may have.

Dana Jonson [00:49:09]:

To have you back to do that.

Cheri Dotterer [00:49:10]:

Thank you for having me.

Dana Jonson [00:49:13]:

Thank you so much for joining me today. Please don’t forget to follow this podcast so you don’t miss any new episodes and leave a review when you have a chance. If there’s anything you want to hear about or comment on, please go to my Facebook page, Special Ed on Special Ed, and find me there. I’ll see you next time here on Special Ed on Special Ed. Have a fabulous day.

Disclaimer [00:49:32]:

The views expressed in this episode are those of the speakers at the time of the recording and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer or company or even that individual todayC