Session Contour or "How to Arrange Your Sessions So Your Fellow Teachers Don't Hate You When You Send Your Students to Them"

I had to apologize to several teachers this week.

I am going to take about 55% of the responsibility for these apologies, and I am going to blame the full moon for the 45%. (I love when I can blame SOMETHING on moon phases!) My session contour was really poor this week. I tried to find an arc to my sessions, but my students went up and up and up and did not come down again, no matter what I tried with them!

I first heard the concept of "session contour" from one of my music therapy professors. If I wanted to do so, I could probably figure out who first used the term, but I don't really want to delve into layers and layers of research at 5:14 in the morning, so I am just going to stop with the person who first told me about the concept. "Session contour" refers to how a therapist organizes the musical elements of his/her therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) to move clients from one emotional/behavioral/energy/arousal level to others during the session time. 

For me, it's always easier to understand with an example. Let's see. A client enters the music therapy room in a state of high anxiety and aggression. It is the job of the music therapist to assist the client in decreasing feelings of anxiety and calming the aggression (at least, that is often my job in my facility). This can be (and should be) done with music and musical elements in the music therapy session.

Most of the time, I can return my clients to their classrooms in a state that is more conducive to learning than when they arrived in my music therapy room. I didn't do this very well this week, but no one had to be removed from the therapy room or caused major damage for long periods after the music therapy session, so my contour wasn't too bad. I just ended up sending kids who were in high energy states rather than in concentration states back to their classrooms.

Here is my session plan for this week:

Opening TME - I use this to assess the activity level of group members

Musician of the Month reveal - for some, this was a story; for others, this was a continuation of the guessing game we've played for the last several weeks

Ball Bouncing Game - we used music selections from our MotM (see above) to bounce balls to peers. Two rules - bounce the ball on the ground and say the name of the person you are bouncing to BEFORE the ball leaves your hands. (This is where the session contour starts going up dramatically.)

Some groups used graduation song rehearsal as a cool-down, followed by singing from our songbook. Other groups participated in measured breathing for their cool-down.

Closing TME - again, assessment of the success of the session.

Session Contour when things don't always go as expected!

This week's sessions never really went down to what I consider "optimal educational attention." This is a term that I use to describe the way I would want students to enter a classroom of my own. It is difficult to qualify, but includes students who are able to sit and listen to the teacher. My clients did calm down a bit from the melee of throwing balls all over the music room (we use between 1-4 balls during this TME), but that calming was only momentary. As soon as the structure changed (during transition), that energy returned in full force! By the time we had walked to classrooms, the noise, the energy, and the interaction were back in full force!! My fellow teachers had to figure out how to calm their students - something I do for them on a pretty regular basis.

More often than not, I can run a session with session contour that works for my clients. I know how to manipulate music, musical elements, children's engagement and interest in what is happening, and many other things as well. There are times, however, when things just don't go as planned, and I cannot keep up with the changes no matter how hard I try! Them's the breaks, and I don't stress about it... much.

This is just a long-winded way of saying that I feel it is important to make sure that you return clients in a better mood/space/attention level/participation/you-name-it than how you found them. If I do my job well, my fellow teachers don't know what has gone into the session, and my clients don't really know it either. If not, then teachers have to do the calming that I usually do within the session. (It's good for them to do this every so often!)

Long story, short (aren't you glad that you waded through all of this, just to find out that I've encapsulated this into a short statement at the end?), session contour means using the iso-principle and the elements of music to assist your clients in reaching their social/emotional and behavioral optimal levels.

Happy Saturday.