Cultural Considerations: Looking at Small-ish Cultural Climates That Can Make a BIG Difference

I had some thoughts this week about culture in institutional terms.

I've always been interested in small cultures - you know the ones, they happen when you join a club. There are specific rules and expectations that are part of being a club member (some even have fancy handshakes!). If you join another club, those rules and expectations from club #1 may be part of membership in club #2, but there will probably be differences as well. That's the type of thing that I think of as small cultures. There are some folks who use the term "microculture" which I also like.

This is something that I see demonstrated in the school where I work. Each classroom has a completely different cultural climate. This is partly due to the nature of the teacher, partly due to the nature of the Behavioral Health Technicians that support students and the teacher, and partly due to the students in each classroom. There are remarkable and apparent differences when you walk from room to room.

Some of those differences are environmental. Classrooms are set up in different ways - some have desks in rows, others have tables, yet others have small student carrels for working with limited distraction. Some classrooms are loud. Others are very quiet. Some have lots of electronic sounds happening in the background. Others do not.

Some of those differences are human-based. Some people in the microculture of Room 16 do not get along well today, so there are difficulties with how the classroom functions. Tomorrow's Room 16 culture may be completely different, but the basic rules and expectations should still be the same.

Part of cultural competence is learning how to change your personal behavior to reflect the expectations of each place that you go and each group of people that you encounter. Some of us are good at this - some of us are not good at this at all. I have both types of responses in my repertoire - I'm good in some areas and lousy at this in other areas. Many of my clients also seem to have difficulties navigating these often unspoken expectations in different parts of their lives.

Recently, I've been spending time thinking through trauma-informed care concepts, and I realize that many of the things that are part of my thoughts about cultural appropriation and considerations have some parallels when thinking about working with clients from a trauma-informed viewpoint. Can we expect clients to be able to pick up on the often subtle cultural expectations if their brains are reacting to trauma memories? It is often easy to expect learning by osmosis without remembering that the internal stimuli that we all bring to various situations can be the most powerful - the internal often overwhelms any type of external stimulus trying to get in. Cultural expectations and norms are always an external and shared experience - persons in trauma responses are not often able to attend to the external situations happening or they experience them in ways that are not inherently apparent to others. This impedes the person's learning process - you cannot learn something that you cannot access or experience in some way.

In my music therapy clinic, I have established my own cultural expectations. Some of those are directly taught to students and staff members. Some of them are inherent. I will spend some time this week thinking about what I want to be more blunt about teaching to my students and staff members, and then thinking about whether some of my expectations are unreasonable, outdated, or just important to me. One of the best things for me with this process is working with interns because their expectations are often very different from my own. Intern-led sessions give me an opportunity to see small cultural changes and to decide whether those changes are something that I want to adopt into my own classroom. Some I do, some I don't, and that's also part of considering culture.

Here are some of the expectations that I have for clients when they enter my music therapy room and session.

• I expect communication of wants and needs - no thank you is an appropriate response to every choice.
• I expect that clients will act safely towards themselves, others, and materials.
• I expect that clients will ask to use materials before they touch them. (This one is difficult for many of us!)

I also have some expectations for myself when clients are in the music therapy room.

• I will support client choice in all areas except for areas of safety.
• I will offer multiple opportunities for engagement in music and music therapy interactions. 

I'm sure there are many more expectations, but I've pretty much ended my attention span for this topic on this chilly spring morning. It's time to make some visual aids for my intern and to get going on some of my chores.

I'm curious, though. What types of expectations do you have for your clients/students/consumers that make up part of your music therapy culture? Let me know in the comments...I want to know.

Happy Cultural Considerations!!