Last week you heard me talking about my BCBA journey. I wanted to follow up this week with a week in the life podcast. I shared this in my stories every day on Instagram but I wanted one central place to house all of the information for anybody who wants to check this out later on. I’ll walk you through exactly what I did every day towards supervision so you can get a better idea of how I am accruing all of my hours.
Before we dive in, I wanted to explain a couple of things. First, I am receiving on the job supervision. What that means is my actual paid job is to provide direct therapy with clients. When you hear me refer to restricted hours, that references the fact that I am restricted how many of my hours with clients I can count. You have to log 1500 of fieldwork. You cannot log more than 50% restricted or with clients. This is to ensure that you are learning all of the other parts of the job.
Basically, I very easily could get 1500 hours with kids in one year. If I were only to work with kids, however, then I would never practice giving an assessment, graphing data, leading trainings or any of the other parts of the job. The board wants to make sure that you have a well-rounded experience before you test, which is why they put that restriction in place. If you are in a research setting or a full-time student you might find that you have more like 80% of your hours be unrestricted or hours working on graphing an assessment and only 20% of your hours are direct therapy. That is allowed, it is just important that you do not go over 50% of those direct hours of clients. This is why we work very closely with a BCBA as a supervisor. Your BCBA will help you determine which hours are eligible and how to log them and they will be the person that signs off in the end so as long as you’re on the same page with them you’ll be fine.
Now that we’ve laid that ground right in. I’ll tell you what I did each day as well as what I was working on that counted as unrestricted hours. I hope this will give you a a clear picture of the pace. The board allows you to log a maximum of 130 hours each month. For me that means a maximum of 65 hours directly with clients and the other 65 hours have to be doing unrestricted activities. I break that down to roughly getting 18 hours of direct with clients and of indirect each week. If I were to actually get 18 hours in both categories each week I would add with 144 hours in a month. That is more hours than I can log but that’s where I want to be because it gives me a nice buffer. Let’s dive right in to how this week went for me!
Monday
On Monday I worked 3.5 hours directly with a client during therapy. That counted as my first 3 1/2 hours of restricted work for the week. I spent another 4 1/2 hours working on unrestricted activities. On Monday I created some differentiated materials that we will use in a social skills group on Wednesday. I trained two different staff members on a clients programs. I also observed a session led by a BCBA and took data for her. I was able to count all of that as unrestricted which is how I got to 4 1/2 hours at the end of that day.
Tuesday
Tuesday was a busier day for me. I ended up logging seven more restricted hours. They put me at 10 1/2 restricted hours for the week. I technically worked eight hours on Tuesday but for one of the hours I had a therapist pushed into my session and I was able to train her on programs while I was running them. Because there was a training component built and I was able to count that last hour as unrestricted. That put my unrestricted total on Tuesday at 5 1/2 hours.
Wednesday
Wednesday was a little bit unusual for me. Typically I have the entire day dedicated to unrestricted hours. I’m not typically scheduled with clients but I can spend the whole day doing the paperwork side of things. This week however we had a therapist out so I picked up a shift from 9 to 12. I got up early and I did two hours of unrestricted work from 6 to 8 AM that morning. I worked on making boom cards for my virtual therapy client as well as prepping errorless adapted books for a client I have in person.
I worked three hours with a client and logged that for restricted hours and then the rest of the day what unrestricted. From 12 to 2 I did some staff training and I got ready for our social skills group. I hung a scavenger hunt around the center that we were going to do during group and I prepped a craft. I also stayed in the group from 2 to 4 PM. This is a great opportunity because I spent two hours with my BCBAs. I am able to learn a lot about how they work with students and get amazing hands-on experience. I ended Wednesday at 13 hours of restricted supervision and 12 1/2 hours of unrestricted supervision which put me right on track.
Thursday
I was proud of myself on Thursday morning because I got up and worked for 30 minutes before I headed into the center. I continue to work on materials for my virtual client so I could count that as unrestricted. I ended up working 8 to 2:30 with clients but I was actually able to count 30 minutes of that as unrestricted because I was collecting baseline data for a new protocol. If you don’t know what I mean by a protocol it’s a way to teach a variety of skills. It’s a great way to make sure the entire staff is working on the same skill the same way.
I have worked on protocols that work on teaching a child how to wait, how to brush their teeth, how to use a communication device etc. For confidentially I’m not going to share what this protocol I’m working on is but this is the first one I’m doing from start to finish on my own. That means I need to go to baseline data so I know how to write the protocol. I also attended a virtual parent training meeting after my hours were over which I also counted as unrestricted. I ended Thursday with a 19 restricted hours and 14.5 unrestricted hours. I only needed 18 restricted hours in a week so it just means I no longer log my direct therapy hours for the week I will only log the unrestricted work that I do.
Friday
On Fridays I am only scheduled to work 9 to 2 so I’m supposed to be doing unrestricted supervision in the afternoon but this was a weird week and I got a shift added to my day from 2 to 4. It’s not a big deal it just means I have to work a little bit harder to get the rest of that unrestricted supervision in. On Friday morning I got up and worked for an hour. On Thursday I was doing baseline data for a new protocol. Protocols should be written with research in mind so I spent Friday morning researching case studies to help me guide my protocol. I then worked 9 to 4.
As a reminder, I did not log any of my direct therapy hours because I’ve already reached my maximum for the week for my supervision log but I did collect baseline data again during the session so I can log 45 minutes as unrestricted. When I got off work I went straight home and popped into a virtual therapy session for 45 minutes as well. On Friday I ended the day with 17 unrestricted supervision hours. If I had not had that shift from 2 to 4 I would’ve met my goal for the week but again it’s not a big deal. I got to make a little bit of extra money on Friday and I just have to work for an hour on Saturday to get the rest in. I already have therapy planned so I will get there in the morning!
Saturday
I was able to get two more unrestricted hours on Saturday morning! I spent one hour working on some new boom materials for therapy and the second hour was again observing and collecting data during virtual therapy. This officially tipped me over which was perfect. I am completely fine to be getting extra hours right now. Once I get to 65 unrestricted hours in the month I will simply stop logging but I would much rather be ahead of pace on January 16 then running behind on January 26 so I am in a great spot right now.
Sunday
This is my last day of the week and I got 30 more minutes of unrestricted hours in. I create matching boom decks centered around preferred topics for my client. On Saturday he asked me to make a Mickey Mouse themed deck. I just took 30 minutes on Sunday to get that ready for next week and logged it as my last bit of unrestricted time. When I sat down and calculated my hours I was doing well.
As of January 17 I have logged 87 out of 130 hours. I have 15.5 more restricted hours to log. I will have that logged by January 20. I will still work at the center the last 10 days of the month, it just means I won’t log any more hours again until February 1. I still have 28 unrestricted hours to earn but that is still manageable. In fact breaking it down across the two weeks I just need to get 14 hours this upcoming week. This previous week I got 19 hours so I feel confident I’ll be able to meet that goal.
I hope this podcast gave you a better idea of how I am earning my supervision. I’ll pretty much be repeating this process every week until May and hopefully I’ll have everything done and I’ll be able to start testing this summer. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to reach out and wish me luck as I finish up this process!