Monday: Being An Internship Supervisor

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 understand what I was trying to convey. Now, I want my interns to feel comfortable enough with me to ask questions, but many of them do not. I think there is a reluctance to look like you do not understand, especially with a supervisor, but asking questions is the only way to get to clear information. I strive to get to know how each intern looks when they understand what I am saying versus how they look when they do not understand me.
  • After I figure out what signals I can glean from each intern, I then have to figure out how to explain things in ways that they will understand. I had some interns who needed to see me demonstrating things. I had others that needed to see themselves doing things before concepts became concrete. I have had yet others that needed a signal word or sound from me to indicate when things were happening that needed to be addressed (in my opinion).
  • Each intern is completely unique and that uniqueness means that I have to adapt for each one that arrives in my program.
  • We do not have standardized ANYTHING in the world of music therapy. I like to think that we all know terminology like ISO-principle and entrainment, but WE DO NOT! Therefore, one of the first tasks that I have to do is to figure out the vocabulary of each intern as we are working together.
  • The AMTA Professional Competencies are not clear to anyone other than the people who wrote them. I identify the specific tasks and assignments that are part of my internship program using the Competencies as my base, but there is so much room for interpretation. As someone who has studied curriculum and instruction, I think that the world of music therapy would be very well suited to the specific tenets of Competency-Based Education. I have written about and spoken about this many times in this blog and at professional conferences - in fact, I think I will be submitting this as one of my ideas for the World Congress for Music Therapy next summer...hmmm.
  • Each intern teaches me lots of things. This sounds like a cliche, but it is true. With each new person who arrives in my music therapy world, I learn so much about them, about myself, about music therapy, about what I would like to do next, and what I need to change before the next intern. I now have a specific interview/audition process because of something I learned with one of my interns. I now have some specific assignments because former interns have told me what they did not know when they entered the music therapy profession. I have learned so much from the interns who have dedicated their time, talents, and treasure (paying tuition to their schools - no money comes to me or my facility) to my clients and to me. I hope that they got as much from me as I got from them.

This is the week where internship supervisors get together on Zoom to talk about interns and to get some group supervision. I am looking forward to the discussion on Thursday evening. I find the community to be really important to me, and it is nice to know what is happening in other programs with other interns. Tomorrow evening is my weekly chat with interns. I also look forward to talking to interns about things that happen in their internships. It is interesting to hear things from both perspectives. 

I sincerely hope that you are thinking about being an internship director or supervisor. If you are but want help with the process, feel free to contact me. I am someone who is completely dedicated to helping others through the application and acceptance process as well as someone who is here to support others through their internship interactions with students. So, if you have been on the fence about whether you want to offer this service to our profession and to our future colleagues, let me know! (I don't charge for this at this moment, so now is the PERFECT time to contact me!!)

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