TME Tuesday: Session Outlines and Why I Do Not Bother Writing Session Plans

As a well-practiced music therapist who has been a professional for 28 years (yep, I am THAT old), I no longer write session plans. I gave up that particular assignment as soon as I possibly could after finishing my clinical practica because it never worked out the way I wrote it so it was an exercise in busy work for me.

NOTE: Now, if you are currently a student and having to write session plans, please continue to do so to get your grade and please your music therapy supervisors. Just know that there will be a time, after you get your degree, where you can do what works for you instead of what others tell you to do.

I do not write session plans. Instead, I focus all sorts of thought and energy on my therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) and develop them well past what I did during my undergraduate years. This means that I have TMEs that I can print off to show other people what we are doing in music therapy if they ask for them. I don't have to have a session plan.

I encourage my interns to use their TMEs the way that I use my TMEs. I am now the person assigning things, so I make my interns do what works for me. Hmmm. In my defense, I also ask my interns to adapt things and make them work for her rather than just doing exactly what I ask. I am not nearly as severe with my evaluation of others' work as my supervisors were with mine. Enough justification? I think that's enough justification...

So, when I am developing my sessions, I make session strategies rather than plans. This is mostly due to my resistance towards the words "session plans" due to my repeated difficulty writing things for my supervisors. I know that strategy is a synonym for plan, but it works for me to rename what I do to something related. So, my session strategies are outlines.

I will write down as many ideas or TMEs as I think would work with my clients. Sometimes that means that I have five things on my "possible" list. Other times I have ten things. I have thought out all of my TMEs and how I can change the musical elements to best support all the possibilities for my clients. I enter most sessions feeling prepared and ready to take my clients wherever they need to go in music therapy. 

That's it for the TME stuff for this Tuesday. I am getting myself ready to move into my newest office space. My principal finally told the group of people who are moving into my current offices that they are moving, so I am taking today off from therapy to move from my office into the closet. I figure that this is the prime time to throw things out and consolidate my stuff. I hope that the internet connection works in the closet. We will see. So, I have a bit of time before I head off into the sunrise this morning to get to work.

Yesterday's sunrise was beautiful and had a bonus rainbow as part of it. I am really glad that I listened to my intuition and left when I did. If I had waited, I would have missed one of the most wonderful things that happen during a rain - seeing the rainbow stretched across the dawn sky. I tried to take pictures, but they didn't really turn out. I still was able to see that splendiferous beauty yesterday morning.

I do not think that this morning's sunrise will be as gorgeous, but it will be beautiful just the same. I feel the closest to God during sunrises and sunsets. Today's sunrise will be a reminder that things change but the sun still rises.