Lauren Podcast Interview

Corey Badaracko is a long-term substitute teacher for physical education. Their job involves leading warm-up stretches and physical activities for 6th to 12th grade students. They also teach fitness classes focused on daily living and physical fitness. Corey has a general understanding of occupational therapy as helping individuals with daily activities. In their workplace, occupational therapy would assist students with handwriting and physical barriers to learning. Employee wellness is prioritized through monthly meetings and group check-ins. Informally, there are group gatherings and lunchtime conversations to decompress and take care of mental health. Corey incorporates physical activity, such as yoga, into their workday to maintain personal well-being. They find it beneficial for staying active and building rapport with students. Okay, for the record, can you please state your name and your current job? Corey Badaracko, long-term phys ed substitute teacher. Okay, thank you. And can you give me a general description of what your job is and what your daily tasks and requirements are for the job? So I get 6th through 12th grade boys and girls that we do a warm-up stretch, some sort of physical activity and cool down throughout the day, as well as a couple fitness classes where we focus less on sports and more on activities of daily living and physical fitness. Nice. Okay, and do you know what occupational therapy is? Or what is your understanding of occupational therapy? My understanding of occupational therapy is that it is a job career where the therapist would help someone do things like not necessarily for sports, but for like their daily life. So helping with handwriting or like changing clothes, getting up, being active, that sort of thing. Okay, and what is your understanding of occupational therapy in the workplace? For my workplace, it would have to be, like I said earlier, like a student may need like assistance with handwriting or some sort of like physical barrier that stops them from being able to perform in their, like in the classroom. So they would come in and help with that. Okay, next question. Do you see employee wellness being prioritized in your workplace? And if so, how? Employee wellness, I do believe is prioritized in my workplace. We have monthly meetings and like group checkups where people of maybe the eighth grade team or the middle school or the high school faculty will all meet up and kind of check in and talk to each other. And in terms of things not like formally planned, I would say just like group gatherings and like lunchtime, hanging out gives us time to decompress from the day and chat and kind of take care of our mental health, like smack dab in the middle of the day. Nice. And finally, do you have any habits that you incorporate into your workday to maintain or promote your personal well-being? And do you think there are any you could add? For my personal well-being? So any habits like maybe doing yoga? Yeah, that's what I was going to get at. So we have, I have a physical fitness class in my seventh period. And usually like all through the day is like hands on teaching, supervising, whatever the case may be. My seventh period physical fitness class has like four kids in it. And that's combined with my other physical education teachers. So we actually get the opportunity to participate in the physical activity and the fitness aspect with them. So whether that's lifting or cardio or step aerobics or yoga, we get the chance to do that. And I think that really helps my personal well-being. It helps me be active, not have to yell or scream or direct as much and a chance to kind of connect and build rapport with these students in a way that I don't normally get to. And it's something I look forward to every day. So I think that would be a habit that we kind of incorporate for my personal well-being. I enjoy that a lot. That's great. Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions.