Finally...A Planning Day!!!

I am going into work on a regular Friday!! I am going to work a regular Friday!! Today is a regular Friday!

Why all this enthusiasm for going to work?? Why am I emphasizing a regular Friday?

Well, readers, for the past two weeks, our Fridays have been inclement weather days which means that I have had to do extra music therapy groups for our residents. They still have to come to school on snow days because we only have the school staff available to coordinate their care on those days. So, I trudge through the ice and snow (when I can) to go down and do music therapy on those days - sessions that are completely different from our regular therapy - these sessions are more geared towards energy expression and fun than our usual sessions because, hello, SNOW DAY!

Most of my students live at the facility full time. It is not something that they choose - they have to be there. Since they don't get much choice in whether they come to school when the rest of the world gets to stay home and watch the snow fall while cozy and warm in pajamas, I try to make our sessions really unique. Last week, we played paddle drum baseball. We don't do that in our regular sessions (mainly because it WIPES ME OUT).

The problem with having snow days on Fridays, though, is that I have to do therapy rather than getting my planning and preparation and intern supervision time in. I do those things on Fridays during the regular school year, and I give up my planning and preparation time during the summers. We only work four days a week during summers, so my therapy times don't have to change at all. I like that. I do give up individual treatment sessions to accommodate the need for intern supervision during the summers, but I don't often miss the plan/prep time.

This month, however, I have really needed this time. I supervise the student incentive store, and I've been trying to go shopping for new stuff for the past three weeks. Things are getting a bit sparse in the store because I haven't had a time to get things put together. Kids haven't had a chance to shop in school because of snow days, so they will have LOTS of points to spend this time around. This is good and bad because so many of the things that are in there are starting to be depleted. I try really hard to keep food items stocked, but I haven't been able to sit down and write out my purchase orders for three weeks now.

This ends today!!

Do you remember the post that I wrote about my time management challenges? (It was on Monday). I am going to try to fit in three weeks of planning and preparation tasks into one day. Here's my plan for the next several hours:

• now until 6:00 - finish up my home things to do - finish laundry, get the roof water towel from the dryer, put on clothing, you know - home stuff. Oh, let me get the cardstock that my intern needs for her project right now why I am thinking about it...
• 6:00 until 7:00 - drive to work. Listen to The Good Place, Season One as I drive on clear, non-icy roads.
• 7:00-8:00 - Documentation - I have two days of clinical notes to complete, some intern audition information to organize, and intern assignments to grade. I also have to wait until the accountant who has the credit card arrives.
• 8-10 - Shopping for fun stuff with my interns. We are going to head to our local big box store to find things to put into the student incentive store. I'm hoping that we will be able to get lots of fun stuff to keep in the store for a bit of time.
• 10-12ish - Intern Supervision - Two interns, two hours of supervision.
• 12ish-1 - Cataloging all purchases. We need to take pictures, find storage, and send emails to people with the pictures included.
• 1-2 - Peer Supervision - the Art Therapist and I go to lunch on Fridays for our peer supervision sessions. It is nice to move into discussion about Creative Arts Therapies with someone who shares some of the same situations and questions about them. I value our discussions and miss them when we don't have time to do them.
• 2-2:30 - Continue with cataloging.
• 2:30-3:10 - Bus Duty.
• 3:10-4:00 - Cataloging and topic discussion with interns. We're going to make music today, learning and sharing opening and closing songs.
• 4:00-5:00 - driving home from work.
• 5:00-6:00 - preparing for the Online Conference for Music Therapy
• 6:00-7:00 - Starting OCMT and then bowing out to get some sleep.

After OCMT gets started, I'm heading to bed so I can take my turn being moderator and secondary moderator at 4:45am. I will be doing my shift from 4:45am until 2pm, flip-flopping back and forth between being the primary moderator and the secondary moderator. I still need to finish up the course evaluation before I leave, but I'm not sure if I will get to that before 6am, so some of that preparation time has to be used for that task. I will get to that now, though, so I won't have as much to do when I get home.

There we go. A glimpse into the type of Friday that I have most weeks (with the exception of OCMT - that only happens once a year!!).