Wednesday
I do not like it when the therapy week starts on any day other than Monday. This is mainly because my brain just cannot remember what day is what on these weeks, but also partially because it means that my students do not all have the same information offered to them. I can either start the year by doing a Wednesday-Tuesday schedule of TMEs or just treat these days as extras and not do any sort of structured music education topics or all-school experiences on these days. I tend to do the latter.
Just in case you are wondering about whether my clients get the same amount of music therapy during the year, the last sessions I ran before break were on Monday and Tuesday, so this is sort of the rest of that therapy week being finished up. Make sense? The problem is that the TMEs that I used during the first part of this therapy week do not fit with coming back from break - they were very much focused on heading into break. So, I have to find some things for my clients to do to get them back into the routine of music therapy and school.
Not having a clear idea of what I am going to do with my clients for the next three days is not something that really worries me. I have plenty of things we can do and that are within my reach at all times, so it just means that I need to make some clinical decisions.
I do write session strategies every week. This typically looks like a list of TMEs and optional TMEs for each of the different types of groups that I lead. I try hard to have some sort of linked TME for all of my students - it may be a specific instrument that I introduce to them all or it might be a website or application - you get the idea. At one point, I had a rotation of topics going - I liked that type of interaction for my own planning purposes, but my clients didn't really seem to get into it, and I don't like forcing interns into my way of doing things, so I stopped with that sort of programming because I had interns doing most of my caseload at the time. I may start this up again now that it seems we are a bit more consistent in how we are progressing in this pandemic.
My old rotation was an instrument focus one week, a music theory concept another, a Musician of the Month (with clues to figure out), and something else that I can't remember - my planning book from that time is still packed away somewhere. Each full week of the month followed one of these structured ideas. I may look back at that format for the next couple of months to help me get into a pattern. I might not. I know what I can replace the last week with - new applications or websites or my digital files that I am working on. That would be a way to make sure that I continue to make digital resources for my clients to access when I am gone.
I go into this Wednesday with five groups ahead of me and one individual session. I have a brand new intern who is ready to go and who is very excited about being in this experience. We will see many different kids today. Some of them will be very excited about being back at school. Some will be very angry that they are back at school. It will be interesting. Perhaps I will take out the guitars and do a quick review of the parts of the instruments before handing them out to people to use. That will mean getting my visuals together, tuning everything to an open D chord, and reviewing the "rules" of guitar play. All of those things are doable.
One idea! Whoo-hoo!!
Seems like a good place to stop so I can get ready for the sub-zero temperatures and this day ahead. Have a wonderful Wednesday!
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