"NTM" TME Challenge - Summer Edition

If you have no idea what this title means, then please go check out this link and this one before you start reading this post...These posts will explain my strange acronyms and what's actually happening right now.

Some setting information for this particular post - I work 12 months a year in a school for students with various diagnoses. We have a week between the "regular" school year, a week off to cover the Fourth of July, and then a bit under two weeks at the end of our summer session before we start our "regular" school year up again. So, I am back into the pattern and routine of daily music therapy groups.

Since I am always working during these summer months, I am continuing my personal "NTM" TME challenge. Yesterday's TME was a lazy one. I led only one group (the other scheduled group for me to lead is a brand new intake room - there weren't any students in the room at the time, so they canceled on my), and I hadn't remembered to develop anything new, so I improvised. I think of improvisation as an extremely valuable therapeutic tool, don't get me wrong, but when it comes to strengthening my TME file, improvisation is the easy way out for me.

Yesterday's morning work routine was completely interrupted by an unforeseen complication. I just sat and stared when I walked into my music therapy room. There were twenty-seven brand new bicycles sitting on my singing and dancing carpets. There was also an industrial air compressor, a box of tools, twenty-seven bicycle boxes, a strong smell of rubber in the air, and various and sundry extra bike parts sitting in my room.

Bam! Instant tension headache. 

One of the disadvantages to being an early bird (to everything, all the time) is that there is no one who can offer an explanation when things like this happen (and they seem to happen to my room and me ALL THE TIME!). I had to wait for 40 minutes before I was able to find someone who could communicate with others to find out what was going on! We finally got word from someone and then moved all the non-music therapy stuff from the room to the gymnasium or to the maintenance department.

I started my summer session in a bit of a frustrated dither, let me tell you!

As a result, I wasn't really thinking about TMEs or setting things down on the computer or in my bullet journal. I will (hopefully) start to re-establish this routine this morning when I arrive at work.

So, all that to explain why I improvised a simple song about things we do in the summer that we don't do at other times of the year. I think I'll take that idea and flesh it out - it won't be the same as it was yesterday, but that is fine. It's the way most of my improvisations go - they are in the moment and I forget them as soon as I move on. So, I'll take the idea and formalize it into a full therapeutic music experience (TME) plan for my file.

If I can get a TME written for each day of this summer session, I will end up with 24 TMEs to add into my repertoire and into my session song rotation. 

Here I go!!