music, therapy, and me

One of the things that I always include in my sing about songs editions is a section with different lists. The first list is of silly or not so silly holidays or remembrance days for the next month (it's hard to describe how this works - I try to send out ideas three months in advance, so this list is for four months in advance). The second list is songs that work with a particular month. For theme packets, I add a list of songs that supplement the theme. I enjoy making these lists for several different reasons. I like finding new songs to listen to and to introduce to my clients. I am often reminded of songs that I have come across and later forgotten. I like having silly things to acknowledge when I am putting together things for my clients to do during sessions. A little bit of silly goes a long way when working with adolescents. It is also fun to challenge myself to design client-specific, goal-based therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) around unusual topics - like National Ch...

If you have been reading this week, then you already know that I am on a quest to organize things as much as possible in the two weeks that I have in my first break (one week is done, one week left of this break!!). I have been tackling the library room first of all because it is the space that is the most coordinated. I already had bookshelves ready for that room...but, they were too tall and very floppy. I cut those down, tried several ways of propping them up on the wall without success, and then I got brave and anchored them to the wall - they were still up this morning when I awoke, so SUCCESS! I have been moving books from one place to another over the past two days, and I found a box of music therapy stuff. I found four texts to start exploring. The first book that I have is one that I have read a couple of times over the years - Music Therapy in the Treatment of Adults with Mental Disorders: Theoretical Bases and Clinical Interventions . My edition was edited by Robert F. Unkef...

In the past week, I have made some progress on my continuing quest of getting my home organized the way I want it. I cut the bottoms off of two of my four hand-made bookshelves so they will fit in my library room - the apartment ceilings were taller than my house ceilings - and I have emptied a couple of boxes. In addition, I also started my bedroom clean up by putting off-season clothing into bags to put in my closet. I have rearranged bits and pieces of my craft area and have brought down a couple of loads of instruments to the room that will end up being my music therapy room. I have also taken several naps, cried in my bed all day over senseless deaths, finished a junk journal for a colleague, written two proposals for the World Congress for Music Therapy in 2023, gone outside my home to shop and to watch a movie, and despaired over the amount of things that I have and that I still want to do and the lack of money that I have that directly affects the amount of things that I can ge...

I have a positivity system that comes into full necessity for weeks like this. It is my Daily Happiness system that I use in my personal social media accounts. I woke up this morning in the throes of nightmares. I know that this is the direct result of the school shooting in Uvalde, the cumulative shootings happening around the country, and being alone during my break, but that doesn't make going through nightmares any easier. I never remember my happy dreams - just the ones where I am attacked and running away from danger. So, when the anxiety dreams rear their ugly heads, my positivity system comes in handy. Now, there are many discussions out there about toxic positivity and denial and all that stuff, but I have found that my system does me good, so I keep up with it. Without it, I tend to get overfocused on the negative things that happen around me and then that is all that I see - the negative. The negativity settles over my eyes and everything is viewed through my negative le...

I am going to do something that I rarely do on this blog. I am going to talk about politics, safety, and fear. I do not like delving into politics (especially) in any public forum because I feel that my opinions about political figures and systems are private and not open to argument, but I've been crying all morning about the school shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and I need to process all of these emotions in a way that will help me sort through my thoughts. I am scared. I am mourning. I am angry. My sister is heading to her school this morning for the last two days of her school year. It is a tradition that the local fire station comes over, gives the kids a discussion about fire safety, and then squirts the kids with the trucks. I am scared that she will be standing outside with her students. I am scared that she will have to be huddled in her classroom. I am scared that she will have to protect the students in her school in a way that might take her from my family. I am more scare...

I am formally announcing the newest part of musictherapyworks.com on this TME Tuesday, right here, right now, as I enjoy a couple of apple fritters and wonder how I can get rid of the ants that insist on liking my kitchen more than the rainy outside. I was going to launch my newest binder system this morning, but I do not have my jump drives so I will have to do some more steps before I can move forward with that project.  As a result, I have to figure out something to write about today, so here it is!  I have been offering my sing about songs for many years now. This is a collection of original therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) that I have produced for sharing with other music therapists. I have books, I have subscription series, and now I have thematic packets! Do you ever have a time when you are stuck for an idea for a specific client or group of clients? Do you ever have to work on diverse clients goals during sessions? Do you ever feel like you are in a rut doing the...

It is Monday again, so it is time to talk about being an internship supervisor and some of the joys and challenges of taking on that role as a professional music therapist. To protect the identities of all involved other than me, I do not identify my interns - if it was you, former interns, you may or may not know... [Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! - If you know, you know...] ANYWAY... Some of the things that I have noticed in my decades of being an internship supervisor are listed here - in no particular order... Each intern has something that makes them memorable to me. Some of those things have been interactions, some have been personality aspects, some have been specific words that kept coming up, some have been through the lessons that I've learned while working with those interns. I can remember each one of my interns through the songs that they wrote and through their assignments. It takes time to get to know each intern and how they learn. Some of my interns have not been able to underst...

Today is my second day of a 16 day break from working at my facility. I spent yesterday finishing up a course about music education for persons with special needs, and today, I have church obligations before two days of nothing for anyone else. I think I may go see a movie tomorrow and on Wednesday and possibly again on Friday. Ah, the life of a school therapist on break... My quest focus (not goal - I've got a strange difficulty with that word when it comes to myself) is to unpack as many boxes as I can in as many places as I can. Box living is not for me, and I do not feel like this is my home yet because there are so many things that I have not found. It is almost time for the church's rummage sale, so I have an incentive to get going as quickly as possible so I can get as much stuff out of here as possible. I also want to start going to garage sales to find things to store my remaining stuff, so I am going to work on this as my quest for this summer.  Take things out of box...

Today is the last day of school for the 2021-2022 regular school year. The kids were finished up yesterday, but we teacher-therapist types have one more day of professional development and progress notes to complete before we head off into the world to do things not at all related to our jobs. My interns and I will be making things today. I enjoy doing a full out creative experience with people who do not always explore their own creativity. I have led some CMTEs on creating visual aids and have just finished two projects for a course that I am taking that are part of the entire visual aid thing... I am trying to convince my anxious brain that I am able to wait to go to work until after my usual time. There is nothing at work that is pressing or time-framed at all today. I do not have to get to work early - I can wait and work at the regular times. I have gathered some of my "must have  materials for making things, and they are waiting on the stairs for me to go up. These "mu...

Yesterday, I did something that I should not have done, and now I need to fix it. Today is our annual "Let's hype kids up on sugar and forbidden caffeine and send them into a world of unstructured and forced fun" day, and I hate this day with a passion. Unfortunately, I shared that hatred of the day with my interns yesterday in a frustration-fueled rant that I think may have caused them to not be able to think of this day as fun at all. That's my goof and what I need to apologize for today. I got bogged down into the mire about my personal feelings about this debacle of a day, and I spewed that all over my interns who have not had a chance to experience this for themselves. I treated them more like long-time co-workers than like impressionable learners, and I am not feeling good about that fact. So, I will go in an apologize to them about my attitude yesterday. They will do what interns will do, and they will sat that everything is okay, but it isn't. I know that ...

I love creating therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) that have wonderful visual aids, sophisticated rhythms, and clever lyrics. I spend lots of time coming up with TMEs for all sorts of clients and therapeutic goals. The point of today's post, though, is that those things are not essential to any thing that I do in the music therapy session with any and all of my clients. I tend to get over-focused on my cute visuals and making things to look at and to help my clients understand what we are doing, and I lose sight of what my clients really need to regulate their bodies and prepare themselves for human interaction. (I'll tell you, cute visuals are NOT what I've found to be the most needed part of all of this...) Most of the time, what my clients need is a focus on tempo and rhythm, and of those two, I've always found tempo to be more important than rhythm. When what I am trying to do is ineffective during a session, I focus on how I am using tempo and rhythm with my clie...

It is almost the end of the regular school year for me. We have one more week to work before two weeks of time off. We will see groups today, tomorrow afternoon, and Wednesday. That's it. That is all the therapy that we have before us between now and the end of the school year. Tomorrow morning is taken up with graduation and Thursday is the carnival. We have an inservice day on Friday, so no contact with students on that day. It will be an interesting week, to say the least, but we are all ready. My interns are running the show now. I am doing very little therapy - in fact, I won't be doing any therapy this week. My group is scheduled for Thursdays and Fridays during the regular school schedule, so no therapy leading for me. This is the most difficult time for me as a music therapist and supervising music therapist. This is the time when I watch someone else do the job that I love rather than being in there myself. This is the time where I have to remove myself from therapeuti...

One more work week before 16 glorious days off to spend here at my home instead of having to go somewhere. One more week before I can use the recently pain-free spine that I have to unpack things and move things and mow things... One more week. Now, in my facility, we have an Extended School Year (ESY) to provide educational programming for our clients more than the typical 170+ days required by the educational powers that be in my state. So, I do not get a summer off. I have never had a summer off. I'm not jealous of those who have their summers off...grrrr. I do not think that I would do well with an entire summer to myself, but who knows. I've never tried it before. ANYWAY... My break schedule varies from year to year. This is the first time in about 10-15 years that we have had a two week break at anytime during the school year. Now, this happened because the administration decided to give us an additional week off in July that we did not have before. The reasons for this a...

I had my first in-person internship applicant interview since late 2019 yesterday. This is the type of internship interview that I really prefer because it gives me an opportunity to see the applicant interact with my students. It also gives the applicant an opportunity to see how I work and what my students and facility are actually like before they commit to a seven-month stint as my intern. I know that my insistence on such a visit is something that is financially difficult for some applicants. I may not get as many intern applicants because of this requirement, but I feel that it is better to know exactly what you are getting into with my facility and my students and, well, ME, than it would be to be completely surprised and find that my facility and program are not AT ALL what the intern wanted. Could you imagine? I clearly spell out the expectation of an on-site interview and audition in my fact sheet, but that requirement has still surprised applicants over the years. I can'...

One of the benefits to getting older in this profession is the ability to remember how things used to be and to compare and contrast them with how things are now. There is a bit of nostalgia that is included (sometimes), and there is also a bit of "history repeating itself" that also sneaks in there. To preface all of this, let me tell you that my facility is undergoing a major change in how we do things with our students. This change is significant and will affect all of the things that we do - there will be changes in our student population, in our classroom configurations, and in what my job entails. This change is happening but no one has really thought through the implications for the rest of the program at this point. We are focusing on what has to happen for the new program, but not on what has to happen for the rest of the folks in the facility who are on the periphery of this program but who will also be affected significantly by these changes. That's where I fit...

It is time to be stuck in my office more than I am actually working with clients right now, so I will be taking some time to update my therapeutic music experience (TME) database. I am several interns behind on cataloguing and linking things into my database, so it is way past time to get this finished...well, started. I love the memories that come up when I delve into my TMEs. I get a chance to remember interns who are well-seasoned professionals now. I get to remember clients who are in their late 30's and 40's as well as the ones that are still in their teens. I stroll down memory lane while I am updating ideas and looking through different ideas. I have so many ideas generated by so many music therapists over the past decades that I can never get through them all! I love this type of idea bank to deposit ideas into and to withdraw from whenever I am in need of some inspiration. So, what does this all look like? Well, it has varied greatly over the years, but I now have a sy...

I enjoy being an internship director and supervising music therapist. I love having the opportunity to be part of the last bit of a student's education and to watch each student move from being a student to finding the first way of being a "Therapist with a capital T." Now, if you were around while I was part of the Association Internship Approval Committee (AIAC), then you probably know that I am all for basing everything that an intern does while during the internship on the competencies developed by the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA). I have a very detailed evaluation that includes all of the competencies and that is linked to all assignments required during my program. I try really hard to make sure that I have linked all work requirements to those competencies for several reasons which I will state below... A music therapy internship is often unpaid for both the intern and for the internship supervisor. Since that is the case, the intern has to be involve...

Do you know how you can look at the calendar and see that it is already the start of the second week of May yet the amount of time that it has taken to get to this point of the year has been excruciatingly slow? Each week seems to drag on and on, especially around the Tuesday/ Wednesday mark, and the hours just seem to keep crawling by. Yet we are already in the last month of the regular school year. Already. Somehow. On this Sunday morning, I am working on several tasks simultaneously. This is my regular way of doing things, and I am comfortable with this type of process. I have been working on my new sing about edition, setting up the formatting, and figuring out templates, while blogging, watching Star Wars episode 1, and ripping CDs to my computer. I would like to have all of my music in one location, but I have not been able to sit down and get music onto my digital storage for years now.  Ripping CDs to my computer takes a bit of time. It is a repetitive task. Put CD in, wai...

Graphic states, "All About Interns" One of the things that I do as a music therapist who is interested in other music therapists is run free webinars for music therapy interns. I enjoy talking to interns about intern things because I find that many interns are not aware of their rights, responsibilities, and how to be professionals in the current work force. So, I lead these webinars on Tuesdays for whoever arrives. This week's topic was professionalism, and we covered things like following required dress codes, time management, making choices about how we spend our work time, following policy and procedure, and other topics as appropriate. The one thing that is important to talk about during discussions about professionalism is fitting the culture of the facility that pays your salary, and we covered that. I know that this is not always the most pleasant of topics for folks, but my reality and experience is that people who pay you often have specific needs or ideas about...

It is almost over...Star Wars week, that is. Oh, also, Teacher Appreciation Week is almost over as well, but that's almost secondary to the first celebration in my life! I love all things Star Wars, so this has been a good week for me. I started a new thing in my favorite system of all time - my bullet journal! I tend to use my books until I fill almost all the pages, and it was time to change from my current book to a new one this week. I have filled up my yellow book with weekly planning calendar spreads and notes and things that I feel are important to know about, and I decided to start up my new book for the month of May because...well, it is Star Wars week, and my new journal is a Star Wars themed journal. I am focusing on a different character each week. I found a list of characters from the Star Wars universe, used a random number generator, and now have a different character to research every week. I am trying to work on my drawing and lettering and just making time for doi...

I am running themed therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) at my facility this week because... It is Star Wars week, or, as a co-worker put it yesterday, "It is the May." This is the one week per year that I devote myself to a theme for music therapy programming. I do not often use themes with my clients because I don't like that type of structure or limitations and my clients often need me to do other things. I think thematic programming would be fine, but it's not what I want as a therapist. So, I don't use themes. Even though I do not use themes for my own sessions, I do love creating things that go together for various categories and topics. I'm working on a new subscription service that will focus on thematic programming exclusively. The first topic? Cats...of course, it is cats. Anyway... This week's theme is Star Wars, and I have pulled out my May storage box to access as many of my Star Wars visuals and materials as possible. In my monthly boxes, I h...

It is time for my favorite themed week of the year. Star Wars week! I am a fan of the Star Wars stories from long ago. Episode 4 was the first movie that I remember seeing in the drive-in theater. I know that I saw movies in theaters before that, but I only know that from stories rather than my own memories. This movie I remember with my own eyes - watching it from the back of our station wagon, late at night. My junior intern will be doing most of the sessions for his assigned caseload this week. That will not change, but my senior intern is giving up her time with clients so I can do what I love to do... play with my clients!  We are going to boss R2-D2 around. We are going to learn a bit about John Williams. We are going to do much, much more as well. We may use our pool noodles to conduct or to even do some highly restrained and supervised light saber battles. I want to find my mini flashlights to see if we could do some constellation stuff as well. This is the week. I do not u...