Oh, No! I Just Remembered That I Didn't Do Anything for My "NTM" TME Challenge
I haven't done my purposeful "NTM" TME development this week. Now, I did do some new TMEs with my groups, but I haven't written them down or acknowledged them other than using them with my clients. Way to go, MJ!! First week out!
That's not the only thing that I haven't done this week, but bogging myself down in those types of thoughts will not help me out. I need to realize that I've actually accomplished quite a bit lately, and think about the things that are crossed off the list.
All of my group sessions are finished for the week. I keep my group treatments on Monday through Thursday so I don't have to change my schedule during our summer sessions. We do not work on Fridays, so if I have group sessions on Fridays, then I have to smush (VERY professional terminology, there!) the Friday sessions into a Monday-Thursday schedule. If I can get all my group sessions in on the Monday-Thursday schedule in the summers, then I can do them on that schedule all the time. That leaves my Fridays as non-group days and for the planning time that I am entitled to as a certified staff member at my facility. It works out well because I also have to fit all the classes into my room to shop at the store. I cannot do therapy with an audience, so this allows me to do my planning time and have kids doing something in the music therapy room. It is a pretty good system (at least, I think so!).
We did an instrument petting zoo this week. I took out all the instruments that I don't use very often and clients moved from instrument to instrument, trying them all out. It was a bit loud and at times. chaotic, but clients seemed to enjoy playing the electric bass and the violins and the marching lyre and the dilapidated keyboard. They did an excellent job of sharing and tolerating the noises made by others and by themselves. The kids who always struggled, struggled, but there were no major incidents.
Once everyone had a chance to play the instruments, we did some abstract thought exercises and indicated places we would like to visit. I have a bunch of landscape pictures that I've collected over the years. Sometimes we use them for soundtrack exploration things, but this was simply a song about going someplace, so I asked clients to select a picture that they enjoyed. Sometimes I would sing about a specific element of a group of pictures (I'd take you to a beach, or I'd take you to see lots of people), and they had to identify a picture that satisfied the request. It was a little, simple song with a repetitive guitar accompaniment that I was able to sustain with some fingerpicking patterns, and it worked really well. I changed the tempo to assist clients in decreasing their extraneous movements, and the repetition appeared to help them become less distracted and more focused on relaxation. Good old ISO-principle at work!!
Today's plan is to do lots of thinking and lots of organizing. As you know, my "clean out the office" plans were thwarted by a bunch of bicycles in my music therapy clinic last week, so today has to be "clean out the office" day. It may be a bit difficult with the entire school tromping through my room, but I can get it finished. I hope to take everything out, clean everything up, and then reorganize everything. That's the goal. I can do that in eight hours.
I will facilitate the thinking thing by having several pieces of paper hung up in my room where I can jot down ideas as they arrive in my head - while I am doing the rest of the stuff that I need to get done. This is the best way for me to process information - as it arrives. My ideas will have to wait until after I finish the primary goal of CLEARING OUT MY OFFICE (sorry for the shouting, I have to keep it in my head that this is the goal). Once things have been settled, I will spend some time sorting through my ideas and getting them arranged into categories like "Can be done now" and "Needs some more information" and "Idealistic ideas."
Ooh, I also have peer supervision today. We haven't been doing that for the summer session because we don't have time during the summer. We have the time now, so the Art therapist and I will go off-grounds to have some discussion and goal-setting as a team. Supervision day is always a good day.
It is time get started - the rest of my morning routine is waiting for me. (By the way, the morning routine is going SO much better than the evening routine...more on that later!) I hope your music therapy day is a good one for you.
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