Starting to Be "Therapist" Rather Than "Supervisor" Again

My intern is getting ready to graduate from my program, and I will be a solo therapist starting next week. I am looking forward to it. I am always happy to see my interns go - this isn't because of them, but because I got into music therapy to be a music therapist not an observer of music therapy. When I am supervising, I am not doing music therapy as much as I want, and that is difficult.

I am getting my topic plans finished for this month. We are going to do the country of the month next week (it's Australia), my intern graduates in the middle of the week, and then I will continue with the country for the last two groups that will not see it before my intern graduates. After that, I will get back into my rotation of country, music education concept, instrument, and musician of the month. When there is a fifth week or a partial week, I focus on a technology/career concept.

In addition to these general categories for my rotation, I also have monthly themes to incorporate. The clinical director at my workplace has had the revolutionary idea (translation - we've done this with every new clinical director) of setting monthly themes for therapy groups. Now, I don't have to follow these, but it can be something that I incorporate into my groups.

There is so much that I would like to do with my students, but my time with them is finite, so I have to put ideas away for later on a regular basis. My IDEAS book is filling up with new things to think through.

Today is Friday, so I have empty time to fill with composition (I can play the piano again - I am allowed to lift the instrument again!!), idea development, TME development, and making music. I will have more empty time next Friday, and I am planning to use some of the time to clean the storage room. The entire morning is session preparation time - my Friday schedule does have a session in the middle of the morning, but that is our currently empty classroom, so I have an uninterrupted morning right now.

After my preparation time, I will have my last supervision/consultation meeting with intern #36. We will be talking about graduation and all the things that we need to do to ensure that everyone gets notified about the things they need to know. I am not sure that there is much else that we have to talk about - usually, these last supervision meetings tend to be just chatting with interns as my role changes and they are ready to leave.

I do not have any interns on the horizon at this point. I have some applicants for June, but I am not sure if I will be able to bring them on at that point. We are negotiating some changes in how we do education at my facility, so I do not know what will go on. The proposed changes will directly affect music therapy interns, and I do not know how to adapt the internship program to accommodate the changes as well as to provide future interns with the training and clinical experience they need. Until I have some answers about how we are going to move forward, I cannot bring an intern into the program.

I've been burned before by changing things with my interns just to have to renegotiate internship agreements. I always feel angry when I think back to that particular situation - I was promised things that did not happen. We will see if these changes actually come about. I think they will, but we have to engage in some negotiation and master contract work before things are finalized. I am hoping that we will know the answer to this situation very soon so I can move forward. I don't want to dedicate any sort of energy to this situation with regards to interns until it is a done deal.

For now, though, it is time to get my shower finished, get gas for the car, check my mail, and head to work before the snow starts up. I may have to scrape snow off my car for the first time this year. I love having a garage at home - no early morning ice scraping! Unfortunately, I do not have a garage at work, so I will probably have to scrape this afternoon.

I am heading out into my work world to think, compose, and work on music therapy things... Happy Friday.

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