Thoughtful Thursday: The End of a Decade

It is almost time to move from the "teens" into the "twenties" of this century. This fact has been mostly lost to me until the start of this past month when I finally put together that not only is this the end of the year but the decade as well. Mind blown over here! You would think that I would be a bit more on the ball, but I haven't really been thinking much outside my own four walls lately. Now that I'm coming out of my fog, I am noticing those things that others have realized for years now.

I digress (but what else is new?).

This decade has been an interesting one, hasn't it? It has included all sorts of events and situations both in the bigger societal view and in the microcosm that is music therapy. We have weathered a storm of Master's Level Entry debates and debacles. In my opinion, we are on the verge of a split unless we reconfigure in a way that can sustain us as an organization. We have lots of people who seem to be focusing more on what they want rather than on what our clients need from us. Things are not really seeming all that solid in the bigger music therapy world. On the other hand though, music therapy as a profession (associations and in-fighting aside) seems to be growing in general public awareness and recognition. This is something that is phenomenal to experience - not having to explain what I do each and every time I choose to share it!

I want us to have an audacious leap in this next decade. 

I want to be writing about this decade exactly ten years from now and be talking about how our national association has solidified into an organization that has clear goals and a common viewpoint. I want membership to be something to be proud of, and I want the reasons for being a member to be much more than "you get access to research" and "it helps us all." I would like there to be a real renaissance in how we do internships - it would help if I could win the lottery between now and then so I can endow my internship scholarship idea. I want us to all feel that we have a voice - without being condemned for seeing things a bit differently than the loudest voices in the room. I also think that we, as a profession, must continue to strive to providing exemplary services to our most important focus group - OUR CLIENTS!

How do we get there? Oh boy. I've been spending lots of time involved in trying to corral a bunch of people who are unaware of all the little things that go into change and how to do things into a common understanding of all those little things. It's easy to have grand ideas, but there has to be a way to get from point A to point B - and most people don't seem to see all the cogs and gears and events that need to happen in order to get to point B.

Here's my very rough outline for how we might think about getting to a more unified vision...

• We need to agree what will and will not be part of the association's responsibilities - is it appropriate for association dollars to go towards the interests on one subgroup of members and not towards the interests of all subgroups of members?? We need some guidelines about what the association can and cannot address - there are some things that cannot be offered by our organization due to the rules, regulations, and laws that are present in this land of ours, and we need to recognize that there are some things that occur that can put our non-profit status into jeopardy AND then NOT do those things!
• We need to unify under a common vision of our profession. I wonder what a member vision board would look like - how does my vision of what I do differ from what Janice thinks about what she does? Is there anything that we share? (I know we do, but I also know that we have significant differences in our ways through this music therapy world - that's not a bad thing at all!) This goes back to my quest to find a Grand Unifying Theory of Music Therapy - the thoughts that connect us all.
• We need to know and share information about unpaid training regulations and requirements.
• We need to be able to discuss all of the things that we have to talk about as a group of people with rational mindsets remaining as logical as possible so emotion doesn't take over. We need to have places where different opinions can be shared without public shame and castigation. I have recently left Music Therapists Unite because I was tired of the constant imposition of opinions onto people who offered different opinions. We don't always understand each other through social media, and I think we often use our emotional brains to respond through feelings rather than rational thought. I get very frustrated when someone offers a service and then gets yelled at because they have the professional AUDACITY to charge for that service - all us poor, poor music therapists DESERVE to get whatever we want for free! Sorry - tangent...
• We do need to revamp our education and clinical training programs. That's something that should be done on a regular basis with a long-range vision. I don't think this is something that can be done by our association alone, so I believe that we need to be talking to committees of other allied health/related service associations to adjust and change in ways that support us all. I'm not sure how that would happen, but I would think it would strengthen us all.
• We need to use the tools that we already have in a way that is more effective. Do you know that there are guidelines for National Roster Internships? Do you know that there are no quality assurance mechanisms in place to see if internship directors are actually following these guidelines other than an optional six month post-internship survey? If we are not going to use the tools that we already have in a way that is meaningful and offers appropriate information on which to base our education and clinical training processes, why do we bother to have them?
• We need to identify all the stakeholders in every type of situation that is present. Changes in our educational system or curriculum affect so much more than just students and professors. We have to look at how these changes will affect employers, current clinicians, future students, and ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS our CLIENTS!!

So, this is my first foray into thinking on a big scale. Gotta love the end of a period of time - it always puts me into a thinking kind of mood. What do you want for us as a group of music therapists in the twenties?