Last Day of School - Let's Get Creative!

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 "must haves" are my straight edge cutting tool, lots of double sided tape, stickers and cards of various sizes and shapes, and these things will join others already in my music therapy room. I have my file folders, my laminators, enough lamination film for more than what we could ever generate in our entire lives, markers, colored pencils, scissors, velcro, and stickers galore! It is time to start making things.

I am firm believer that visual aids help my clients understand what is happening in the music therapy session, but that visual aids should NEVER be the sole reason that you do something in the music therapy session. I cannot justify keeping materials in the limited space that I have if I can only do one thing with the visual. So, many of my visuals are multi-functional. They either provide choices or supplement the song that we are singing, but the song can be used without the visual.

I have just finished an idea that I had at the beginning of the year for a choice binder for my clients. (This was one of the two projects for my current course.) I have made some binders several times over my years of being a music therapist in my facility, but it is time to upgrade them with a goal of increasing my clients' voices in the music therapy session. My students have many different ways of communicating other things, but it is difficult to include all words that they might need in every single communication situation. I wanted a specific set of pictures and choices that I could use in the music therapy session with all of my clients. So, I created one.

I am going to finish this file up. make it a bit more friendly to other music therapists (not just me), and then I will post it in my Teachers Pay Teachers shop so others can use them. After I get things arranged the way I want, I will print them off onto cardstock, laminate them all, and then put them into some binders for my groups to use. I will also make a bigger version to display on the walls - some of the pages will work well in a larger format and will offer more consistent communication options for clients. They will be able to indicate wants/needs without having to have the binder. I will also make some circles with lines through them to indicate things that are not options during specific sessions. I have lots of plans for this file...

The end of this school year has taken way too long to get here. This has been a rough year. I think it has been rougher this year than the year before because things haven't gone back to normal, but that has been the only focus of everything for this entire year. Instead of looking to fix things that were significantly wrong with education before the pandemic and trying to fix it, I think education as a whole has been trying to force us into old patterns that still do not work. I think that the mass exodus of educators from jobs is an indication that we have to change how we learn in this country. I also believe that this is the start of a radical shift in how we educate ourselves.

That's it. I have to get going. It is 10 minutes past when I usually leave, but I am feeling the itch...

Happy Friday, all.