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Break Chronicles: Working From Home on Day 1

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It is the first day of the last break of the summer - what I like to call my Fall break even though Autumn is still two months away from officially starting. We get to work from home today, so I am going to spend my time putting together a new tool for my music therapy room - a visual schedule. I have never used a visual schedule for my group sessions because I do not often have a set session strategy for what I do with my clients. I often change my mind when each group walks into the room to accommodate how my clients are interacting with me, with the music I play, and with each other. So, I have never really had a good way of making a visual schedule that covers last minute adaptations. I think I have found a way to do this now. I am going to use generic terms for the types of things we do in music therapy. This will allow me to have a basic structure while still allowing for changes to occur in the moment. I will also use this format in a general manner for most of my groups. Being
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Last Day of ESY

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For those of you not in the "School-Based Therapist" know, ESY stands for "Extended School Year" and means that I have to work summer school whether I want to or not. Today is the last day of our ESY session, and I am more than ready. After tomorrow's  "progress note" day, we have 12 days before we have to report back to start the regular school year. I have one medical appointment, but that is the only obligation that I have for break. Other than that, I plan on working on my library and that is about it other than my usual self-care stuff. I have three groups today because there is an all-school movie during the last group time. Someone walked into my room yesterday to actually test the temperature and to tell me that there was someone else showing up to evaluate the computer system that controls the temperature. They interrupted a group session, but I am happy that someone is actually acting like they are doing something. Only three groups to run in
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What I'm Reading: Personal and Professional

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It is Wednesday, so it is time to talk a bit about what I am reading these days. To start, it is easier to talk about my personal reading than my professional reading because I have not been doing much professional reading lately. I will start with the professional reading, though, because there is not much to talk about. This morning, I walked into my library where I have currently stashed all of my professional textbooks. I selected one from the shelves that I have purchased but not even opened yet. The book that drew my attention was Group Analytic Music Therapy  by Heidi Ahonen-Eerikainen (sorry that I cannot figure out how to do the umlaut over the a on this program).This book was published by Barcelona Publishers in 2007, and it was part of a sale order that I made a couple of years ago. I picked it because it is part of analytical music therapy, a form of music therapy that confuses and intrigues me, but also because it concerns group music therapy which is my primary service mo
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The Thrifty Therapist

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Today, I am starting up the official post series for The Thrifty Therapist. I am trying my best to make all sorts of efforts to share tips and techniques for saving money as a music therapist. I think that there might be someone out there who will benefit from these posts, so here we go. I have some things that I have learned over the years about making inexpensive instruments, getting as much spending from every bit of my money, and making difficult decisions because I don't have much room in my budget for buying new things. So, my intention is to write a bit about these tips and techniques on Tuesdays. I almost forgot today - I was home due to being dizzy and not able to move around. I think I am better, so I plan on going to work tomorrow, but I did not do my usual morning blogging routine today, so here we go! Let's talk about being thrifty. Part of this consideration is the underlying fact that music therapists are not often well-paid. Many other professions are in a simil
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Being an Internship Supervisor - Chapter Two of Becoming a Music Therapy Intern

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I spent time working on Chapter Two of my internship handbook - Becoming a Music Therapy Intern: Preparing for Your First Day of Your Internship this weekend, and I released it yesterday. This is a project that I have been working on for a long time. I have wanted to do some sort of internship manual since I started supervising music therapy students and interns. It came out mainly because it seems that many interns (at least, the ones I have encountered in all sorts of places) do not know some of the specific rights and responsibilities that they have and that their supervising music therapists and academic faculty members have. I have been writing this resource for a very long time, and I finally woke up to the fact that I can self-publish bits rather than waiting for the entire thing to be released at the same time. So, I have started. I am using my TPT store as the initial platform for release because it is easy for me to use. As I get more chapters, I will either bundle them or
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Friday Review on a Sleepy Saturday

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I am proud of how I spent my Friday. Now, I initially did not want to do anything but stay in my bed and wallow in my down feelings, but I forced myself to leave my home. Leaving my house means putting on clothing other than pajamas, making sure that I have my phone and cash, and then heading out into the world beyond my home. Leaving my house means having to be in the heat and humidity. I did just that yesterday. I have been trying to use my unlimited movie pass often this summer. Since I do not work on Fridays, I try to go see something on Friday afternoons and again on Sundays. I decided to go see Fly Me to the Moon  yesterday, and once I had decided to do that, I got going... more than an hour before the movie start time. So, I was in my car and very early, so it was time to do something else. In June, I went downtown (not my favorite area of my town because it attracts all sorts of tourists) to the library to pick up my library card. At the time, I had three other errands to run,
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Fun Friday: More Intern Resources Coming Soon!!

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I am finally accomplishing something that I have been working on for a very long time. Isn't it interesting when you finally take a gulp and do the thing that has been on your to-do list for years??  Let me explain... For years, I have been offering webinars and networking with music therapy students and interns. One of the recurring themes that has happened over the years is that interns are not well-prepared for the experience prior to applying to internships. There are some folks who are surprised by the fact that they have to do an internship. There are others who feel overwhelmed by the entire experience from application to graduation. I don't think that any music therapy student should start looking for an internship without a foundation of knowledge about the process and the experience itself. So, I am writing an internship handbook to help students understand what is going on in this process. I released the first chapter, Becoming a Music Therapy Intern: Finding Your In
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