Tuesday Musings - Just Thinking Too Much These Days...

Forgive my interrupted posting schedule. I am simply trying to figure out some things in my life, and this interruption is part of the figuring out part. I am at the end of this figuring out part, and that is a good feeling. I know where I will go in my near future, and that makes me feel happy.

Sorry for being so vague, but I cannot talk more about this topic. It is something that involves others besides just me, but there is something nice about being certain in my future, so there you go.

For now, I am enjoying an opportunity to turn my attention towards something that I really want to pursue in our field - competency-based clinical training.

I spent some time putting together a notebook with each of the AMTA Professional Competencies on a separate page. I intend to use this to parse out the competencies across all clinical training opportunities that music therapy students encounter in their preinternship and internship clinical training. It may sound funny, but I really believe that this is the direction that we need to go in our future. To be completely honest, I have felt this way for about 20 years now, and I wish that others saw it as clearly as I do.

I have some converts, but it is time to get some more to this way of thinking. I think that the place to start is the students themselves. My problem is that I am not where students are these days, so it is difficult to get the information to them. They don't read blogs.They don't seem to be on Facebook. They are on TikTok, but I am just a TikTok voyeur. I haven't posted anything on my account. Perhaps I will start. I wonder if I could do a competency-based TikTok something before the start of May...

There are many options available to me these days, and that is exactly the way I like it. Time to get cracking. I will probably not post tomorrow, but I will try to be back on Friday for some fun!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dear AMTA

Dear American Music Therapy Association: I am debating long and hard about remaining in this relationship. I have been in this relationship since college, and this is not a decision that I am taking lightly or without great cost.  I am not happy with what you are bringing to this relationship. Now, I have been a selfish partner over the past several years - mainly because I am not feeling like we share a common mission anymore. It is easy for me to place the blame on you, but I know that this is not all on me. I have tried to be invested in communication and support and understanding, but everyone comes to a time where enough is enough. I am trying very hard to decide if the benefits that you provide to me are worth the feelings that I have about where I think you and I are going. I am not sure that our destination is the same anymore, and this makes me sad. To be completely honest, I am only in this relationship these days for the music therapy interns. I don't think that is a hea...
Read more

Songwriting Sunday: Repetition

Image
One of the things that I find to be helpful with my client population (children, adolescents, and young adults with dual diagnoses) is repetition of phrases, lyrics, and music. As a result of 30+ years of working with this population in various iterations, I have found that my clients respond the most to songs with three repeated phrases to prime their responses with a different phrase to communicate the important part of the experience. DISCLAIMER: This is not a definite way to write music for clinical interactions. This is what seems to work well with my particular group of human beings. Don't go to your supervisors and tell them that I told you that this is the ONLY way to write music - It is NOT! You have to find what works for your clients and for their clinical goals. Since my clients respond well to this type of song, I tend to write songs in this format more than any other. What I have found is that my clients remember these songs more than the ones that I do in different f...
Read more

Being An Internship Director: On Hiatus

Image
It has been long enough since I have had an intern that I am seriously feeling like I have little to say on the subject. At the same time, I am currently writing Chapter 5 of my general internship handbook, so I am able to write about being an intern and what types of things to think about during this important time in our professional development. It is a strange place to be in, and it is one that is a bit challenging for me. Right now, I have had three vacant internship positions since the beginning of the calendar year. I will have a vacant position next month and that will be an entire year of rejected offers. In the past nine months, I have offered positions to three applicants who have declined. It is interesting how people complain that there aren't enough internship programs, but programs like mine are empty. I guess there aren't enough internship programs that pay large stipends (which mine cannot) out there. I get it. It is interesting to me how we have moved from an ...
Read more