Well then...
It has been a LONG week!
I spent most of the week at work, of course, and managed to make it through an entire week without crashing (well, until now!). I saw all of my groups and went to all of my places according to my schedule. Last week I inadvertently changed my schedule for two of my groups, and NO ONE said anything. By the time I figured out what I had done, another person changed her schedule to accommodate mine - I apologized to her once I knew what was going on.
I have lost more things than I have found this week, and I really am getting a bit disgusted with myself. I set something down, turn around, turn back around, and it is GONE. So far I have lost my cell phone (found, thank goodness), my lunch bag, three flashlights, and my constellation cups. I think I lost my brain around Wednesday. If you see it, would you please send it home?? I miss it!
It is a great turn of events to report that work is the least of my concerns right now. What a great sensation!!
I am starting to settle into new routines at work - shuttling from building to building, accommodating a new intern's learning style, keeping track of all of my materials when they are spread out around all of the buildings, session planning FAR in advance. My morning starts with a trip to drop off my car and pick up the van for classrooms to use on a daily basis. Once that is done, I go into my office and try to get organized. That has been my biggest struggle so far over the past two weeks. ORGANIZATION!!
(Now, in the interest of appropriate self-disclosure, organization is always a struggle for me, but this has been compounded by the fact that stuff is strewn everywhere.)
I am trying hard to coordinate myself into a smooth routine. Right now, the plan is to make a list of materials and TMEs for an entire week, put together all that stuff, and tote it to the main storage area for each week. Then, the next week, I flip-flop all of the materials to the other area. So, I am planning two weeks in a row. This is not my usual way of doing things. I have always been more of a "Go with the flow" type of music therapist - lots of improvisatory ideas at every session. I'm still improvising, but I do not have all of my instruments, visual aids, songbooks, and other things with me at all times. I am good at finding new things to do with old materials, but this is something that now happens all of the time.
One of the other new things happening is that I have increased the amount of treatment time for each session to 60 minutes from 50 minutes. I haven't quite been able to plan appropriately yet. I still need to be thinking about planning more than I need, but I am still limited to how much I can tote from place to place (physically - nice aftermath of surgery), so I have to limit what comes along when I move from place to place. This is where my insistence on being able to use all of my materials in at least 6 different ways or TMEs comes in handy, but it's been a long time since I had to do itinerant therapy, so I'm a bit rusty.
So, next week, we will be playing drums on one side of the facility and we will be doing lots of singing on the other side. We'll be doing some Mad-Libs. We will be singing Man In the Mirror by Michael Jackson and will be doing some word substitutions to the song Downtown by Petula Clark. There will be lots of other stuff as well.
Speaking of, I need to start making my visual aids for next week. Anyone for Down In the Meadow visual aids? Also, I need to make some rhythm wheels and pictures of fruit. Busy day ahead...
I spent most of the week at work, of course, and managed to make it through an entire week without crashing (well, until now!). I saw all of my groups and went to all of my places according to my schedule. Last week I inadvertently changed my schedule for two of my groups, and NO ONE said anything. By the time I figured out what I had done, another person changed her schedule to accommodate mine - I apologized to her once I knew what was going on.
I have lost more things than I have found this week, and I really am getting a bit disgusted with myself. I set something down, turn around, turn back around, and it is GONE. So far I have lost my cell phone (found, thank goodness), my lunch bag, three flashlights, and my constellation cups. I think I lost my brain around Wednesday. If you see it, would you please send it home?? I miss it!
It is a great turn of events to report that work is the least of my concerns right now. What a great sensation!!
I am starting to settle into new routines at work - shuttling from building to building, accommodating a new intern's learning style, keeping track of all of my materials when they are spread out around all of the buildings, session planning FAR in advance. My morning starts with a trip to drop off my car and pick up the van for classrooms to use on a daily basis. Once that is done, I go into my office and try to get organized. That has been my biggest struggle so far over the past two weeks. ORGANIZATION!!
(Now, in the interest of appropriate self-disclosure, organization is always a struggle for me, but this has been compounded by the fact that stuff is strewn everywhere.)
I am trying hard to coordinate myself into a smooth routine. Right now, the plan is to make a list of materials and TMEs for an entire week, put together all that stuff, and tote it to the main storage area for each week. Then, the next week, I flip-flop all of the materials to the other area. So, I am planning two weeks in a row. This is not my usual way of doing things. I have always been more of a "Go with the flow" type of music therapist - lots of improvisatory ideas at every session. I'm still improvising, but I do not have all of my instruments, visual aids, songbooks, and other things with me at all times. I am good at finding new things to do with old materials, but this is something that now happens all of the time.
One of the other new things happening is that I have increased the amount of treatment time for each session to 60 minutes from 50 minutes. I haven't quite been able to plan appropriately yet. I still need to be thinking about planning more than I need, but I am still limited to how much I can tote from place to place (physically - nice aftermath of surgery), so I have to limit what comes along when I move from place to place. This is where my insistence on being able to use all of my materials in at least 6 different ways or TMEs comes in handy, but it's been a long time since I had to do itinerant therapy, so I'm a bit rusty.
So, next week, we will be playing drums on one side of the facility and we will be doing lots of singing on the other side. We'll be doing some Mad-Libs. We will be singing Man In the Mirror by Michael Jackson and will be doing some word substitutions to the song Downtown by Petula Clark. There will be lots of other stuff as well.
Speaking of, I need to start making my visual aids for next week. Anyone for Down In the Meadow visual aids? Also, I need to make some rhythm wheels and pictures of fruit. Busy day ahead...
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