How to get volunteer hours?

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I am a current health/physical educator at a school district in New York and after 1 year of teaching I feel that I would be better suited as an Occupational Therapist. With my special education master's I have a majority of the per-requisites completed, although I may take some online courses to improve a few scores. I had a 3.24 undergrad GPA. The one thing that seems to be missing are my volunteer hours. How many should I have for a school that requires 20 or so volunteer hours? How should I approach a current OT to let them know I need volunteer hours for an application?

As a 25 year old, is anybody in the same boat as me in terms of just getting into this field? My biggest worry are student loans, as I am about 30k in debt with my undergrad loans. I know my interest in the field will get my through the schooling if I can get accepted. I just don't want to keep teaching and regret not making this decision several years down the road.

Be careful not all OT schools are taking online courses. I know someone that they wouldn't take any of them. Do you mean observation hours you want way more than 20 or 30 hours you want to do more than the required I'm talking 100 or more. You also will want to take the GRE, and get together recommendation letters. On the observation hours I just called OTs at hospitals, schools, nonprofits, nursing homes and asked if I can observe that's really all to it, they will either say yes or no. Debt can range but with 30K plus say 50K or more for the masters and interest your looking at 70K-100K debt. If you stay a teacher you get teacher loan forgiveness. If you work at a school as an OT you can get the public loan forgiveness this should cut your debt down this way otherwise possible high debt.

Originally Posted by cdoody

As a 25 year old, is anybody in the same boat as me in terms of just getting into this field?

LOL! I've got ten years on you, and am starting an MOT program this fall. I think a lot of people go in to OT well after their bachelors degree is in the rear view mirror.

With shadowing/volunteering, just call and ask to shadow! I found OT's to be very receptive to these requests.

Babycheeks, I don't mean to be a pain, but how would a school know that a course was taken online? I took a couple of classes online and they appeared on my transcript exactly as they would have had I taken the class on campus. There is no way to tell which classes are taken online and which are not, at least on transcripts, which is the way that schools know what courses have been completed. Of course, not every class CAN be taken online, nor would it be advisable, but I'd hate for someone new to this forum and searching around for information to be dissuaded from taking one of the prereqs that works well with an online format when it may not be an issue.

Who knows she told me they didn't accept her online courses maybe it was anatomy or something like that.