Thoughtful Thursday: Welcome to the Second Half of the School Year

I am exhausted. It is Thursday, I had a late night medication dose, and now I am trying my best to wake up enough to be safe as a driver.

Today is the day that kids return to school in my facility.

I have three groups and two individuals to share with my intern. I am hoping that the returning students will be happy to engage with us and the new students will be interested in music therapy. We will see.

My session for today is with our intake classroom, so all the students present will be new to me and to the music therapy room. We will do something with Boomwhackers as I start my informal assessment process. Tomorrow, I will see the same students again, so we will do some cabinet exploration in that session.

I also have a very enthusiastic individual as a client today. I love when clients are so into music that their therapy just flows. This client is currently engaged in some recording of improvised rap songs. I am learning how to support the client's singing and rapping through Audacity. This session is one where I am present only to provide technical support, and I love it!

The other three sessions of the day are going to be run by my intern who is in the last week of clinical work in the internship program. This is always an interesting time as interns are getting ready to finish up the last little bits of their internships. We spend time with termination concepts and with opportunities to close therapeutic relationships with clients in ways that we do not often have time to do based on the set up of the facility itself.

Once my intern graduates, I will have more therapeutic duties and more free time. It is interesting how this all works, but next week, all the sessions will be mine to run. I will also have more time to compose and write TMEs. I am ready to be back at the job of music therapy full-time. 

I do not like returning to school in the middle of the week. These sessions tend to be ones that deviate from my pattern of themes because they are alone. If I start the culture of the month stuff now, then what do I do next Thursday? So, I will try to figure out what to do with students next Thursday when they will have already done culture things but I am not ready to start the music education concept. I much prefer a start date on Monday - it is neat and tidy when it comes to session strategizing. The reality is that most of our breaks start in the middle of the week and end in the middle of the week. I have to work the schedule I'm given, so kids come back today.

I get to play the piano again! A visit to a hand specialist released me from my splint (the doctor actually threw it in the trash) and turned me towards Occupational Therapy (which is what I have wanted from day one of this injury). Apparently, my fracture included a partial separation of the ligament, but that has completely healed, so it is time get back to using this hand. The specialist is confident that I will regain most of my range of motion. For now, I am to avoid assists, impacts to the finger, and do what I need to do to avoid reinjury. I am not allowed to even assist other staff members in assists with students.

Well, it is time for me to go to work. I am still jet lagged, but my brain is waking up. It is foggy out there today, so driving will have to be slow, so I need to get hopping.

Happy fourth day of 2024!