Thoughtful Thursday: Remembering Some of the Systems That I Have Established

'Tis the season of watching classroom set-ups on social media. Do you know the videos I'm talking about? The ones where teachers set up their super cute classroom themes and bulletin boards in a fast-forward type video? My sister, who is an elementary school teacher, is currently in the process of getting her classroom theme put together. I always love watching the creativity of others in setting up their environments, and I am always jealous of their space and ability to keep things up on the wall with their students. My students and my space are not conducive to cute themes and color-coded, coordinated wall decorations. The things that I have up on the walls of my music therapy room are functional rather than coordinated. My room is already decorated with lots of paintings from various murals, so things are already as busy as I want them to be. These facts don't stop me from wanting a classroom where I could make my own cute theme happen though.

As I am a week away from the start of my next school year, I am starting to think about what I want to do in my music therapy room this year. This leads me into the yearnings mentioned above, but it also makes me think about how to maximize what I can do. This makes me think about some of the systems that I have in place that I want to get going again.

The week before the start of the new school year always drags me into introspection, and this year is no different. It is easy to fall into the trap of setting goals and then not accomplishing them, so I want to avoid that trap. I prefer setting quests, and one of the quests that I had last year was to increase the opportunities for my clients to communicate. I will be continuing that quest this time around because communication is the most important part of music therapy for my students.

During the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years, we had lots of interruptions that took me away from some of the things that had worked well in previous years. In the subsequent years, I had enough medical issues that interrupted my systems that some of the tools that I have used went by the wayside. Some of those systems and tools have worn out and need to have new versions. Some of those systems just need to be updated. Others need to be re-established from long, long ago.

One of the systems that I really like that needs to be updated is my greeting binders. I've spoken about these before, and I will continue to talk about them until I get them finished and in use. Currently, I have three sets of emotion icons that I use to ask my clients to indicate their current emotional states during our opening TMEs. These have been well-used and are very dilapidated, so I need to get the new designs combined with the older emotion sets into new ways of collecting them into folders.

I am going to try to get away from 3-ring binders. While I like the use of the binders because it helps me get lots of pages into one contained location, my students seem to enjoy going out of their way to step on the binders, bending the rings, and making the binders inoperable. As a result, I have to buy new binders every couple of months. I am tired of the costs associated with this habit of some of my students, so I am trying to figure out a way to include these pages into poly folders. I will have color-coded sets (one of my systems!) of information for students to use to indicate their ideas and words and comments.

I color-code things so I can identify sets of communication cards quickly and easily. If you are not interested in colors for sorting purposes, you can use patterns instead of colors, but I use colors. I have six different folder colors, so I can have six sets of word options available. To make these sets, I print the icons out on regular copy paper, cut them out, and then glue them to the color indicated by the set. The finished cards are laminated and then put into the corresponding folder. When the pieces get scattered (as they ALWAYS do!), it is easy to see where the icons belong. The orange pieces go into the orange folder. I no longer have to sort the icons based on the pictures! HUGE time saver!!

So, I will have some pretty, pristine, and perfect sets of icons to use during music therapy sessions with my clients at the start of this school year. I will make some extra copies to keep pretty, pristine, and perfect while I release the rest into the music therapy sessions. That way my heart won't stop when I watch a client grab the visuals that I have spent so much time making and scrunch it immediately! There is always a perfect, untouched version sitting in my file cabinet at home.

One of the good things that will happen this time around is that I get my Fridays back. Fridays are the day where I can work on task boxes as well as tools for music therapy sessions. I will have some time on Friday mornings and more time on Friday afternoons to continue on this quest. I will dedicate some time to making things for others and some time to making things for myself. That's the way it goes on Fridays in my room.

For now, it is time to keep working on my laminating corner in my bedroom. I made some progress in that room, but it is not ready to work in yet. I have some medications to pick up soon and tickets to Jagged Little Pill at the amphitheater tonight, so I have things to do today that are outside my house. The medications will probably wait until tomorrow and I am hoping that the performance gets rained out...

See you tomorrow, folks.