A Game Plan For the Right Now

My four-rooms ago music therapy room - the one I loved!

I start moving today!

The current music therapy room

More of the current music therapy room

In a facility where I have had eight different rooms, I am ready to find another "forever" home. I am absolutely positive that this will not be the last place that music therapy is placed at the facility, but I would like this to be my last music therapy room move at this place. We shall see.

I had a perfect music therapy room at one point. It had built-in storage, custom designed to accommodate my drums and guitars, and was large enough for movement by entire groups but small enough to feel like things were contained. We could use ribbon sticks without risk of tangling up our neighbors. It was wonderful and taken away from me for the room I'm in now.

In between those two rooms, I had three other rooms, but I eventually was able to move into the gray music therapy room three Novembers ago. Some of the cabinets came with me (not all of them fit in the new room), and I got used to the space "given to" me - (not my words).

Shortly after I moved into the new space, the COTA at work came in with (her words) "a BRILLIANT idea!" She wanted my space and wanted to put me in yet another room (oddly, the room I was in at the beginning of my tenure at the facility). I went to administration and reminded them that I would need my cabinets moved (yet again), carpeting on the floors of the newly tiled room, and the guarantee that I would be able to stay in the room longer than the first time I was assigned to that space - 9 months - before having to move to accommodate another classroom. That's the pattern. Music therapy is the space that has to move when we start to expand. Not art therapy. Not speech or OT, but music therapy has to move.

They didn't want to do all that work last time around. This time around, though, there are other things going on. We are increasing our residential census, so classroom sizes are getting exponentially bigger. My space is finite and not at all adequate. I cannot accommodate one classroom in its entirety - there are eleven clients and six classroom staff - we just cannot fit in the room. Secondly, there are places in the facility that are empty most of the time, used only for occasional training sessions. The new set of administrators decided that my space was too small for what I wanted to do (which the old set of administrators knew VERY clearly during the design process) and looked around at the spaces available. The first room that I was in at the facility forever ago is still available, but it is better suited to a classroom format than a therapy space. So, I get what used to be known as the "Safe Crisis Management Training Room."

I don't have any pictures of the new space, but I will. The room was painted by a very talented friend of mine and has all sorts of murals on the walls. I'm going to try to keep those murals visible while arranging my materials and (squeeee!) center stations.

At this time, this is all potential and possibility. That's such a great way to stimulate creativity. Since I've been told about this move, I've been spending lots of time thinking about music therapy possibilities while doing music therapy in the small room I'm in right now. It's been difficult to concentrate while thinking things like, "In the new room, I could separate them into different center groups and they wouldn't be able to see each other," or "Can't do the parachute, we don't have enough space."

Right now, my focus is on cleaning the new room, moving stuff from the old room, moving more stuff until I can clean the old room (leave every place you go better than how you found it), and then figuring out what needs to go where in the new space. I've been told that I can order some new cabinetry to replace the custom built cabinets that I have to leave behind, so I think I'll be able to figure out a floor plan that will work for me. Maybe the cabinets will arrive before the start of the new year. Probably not, but maybe.

It is time to head out into the cold and get started with this process.

I'll post pictures of the room once it is empty of the stuff of others. Happy Friday!!