First Day of the 2024-2025 Regular School Year

It is time.

Today is the first day of the 2024-2025 regular school year. Now, it is not the first day of my contract year - that happened in July, but it is the first day of the school year as far as my school district office is concerned. Actually, it's not even that - the rest of the district doesn't come back until Monday, but for some reason, we start earlier than everyone else. Sigh. At least I get paid for these extra days.

Today is a work day where I will have an entire day to organize my storage room. I am ready to make that space a bit more useful for me as therapist rather than as an office space for interns. Since I do not have any interns scheduled at the moment, I can use the space the way I need it rather than how I want it prepared for interns. If I get interns again, I can always adapt the space to make it work for them. If not, then it works for me.

I would like to remove everything from the room and then give it a good cleaning. That reminds me to put the dolly I bought when I moved into my home into the car so I can move the file cabinets with little strain on my back. I have two tall cabinets, a drum set, lots of instruments, and some desks to move out of the room before cleaning it all and then putting them back. I want to establish work zones for the closet, so I prefer to work with a clear room rather than try to work around the mess that I currently have in there.

I have been watching lots of teacher preparation videos on social media lately, and I usually laugh when I think about doing some of the things that those teachers do to make their classroom environments look comfy. Most of those things would not last a day in my classroom, but that's okay. My kids need different things in their music therapy environment, but that doesn't stop me from yearning to have a calming corner and a couch for lounging on and inspirational posters all over the walls. 

I am trying to figure out how to establish a communication system that will not require me to move my cabinets to get the cards from behind them cabinets where kids will flick them on a daily schedule. I think that will be inevitable for the type of system that I want to establish - daily card hunts behind the cabinets.

It is an interesting thing to create an environment that is conducive to music therapy for a diverse clientele. My walls are decorated - our art therapist painted murals on all the walls about 13 years ago when my current room was a play therapy space. I like the murals, and I use them for I Spy games and all sorts of therapeutic music experiences (TMEs), but they do make the room a bit busy visually. They also mean that there are limited places where I can set up new visuals. I have covered up an entire mural with my storage cabinets, but those cabinets now offer more wall space where my communication system is going to go.

Tomorrow's schedule includes a taco bar and some professional development obligations before a bit more work time. I am going to try to get the storage room finished today before I go home so I can work on the actual room and the communication system tomorrow afternoon. I have lots of laminated things to cut out and prepare for students, and I still need to strategize my sessions for next week.

I am not ready to go back. While I enjoyed my 13 days off, I still need more time to rest, but working is inevitable, so I will be heading off into the stormy morning to go to work. I have to figure out my work list for today, and then I will get going.

It is time to start this new year. There will be new students (but not many), there will be new staff members, and there will be many new songs to learn and sing. I will try my best to figure out ways to engage my students into TMEs while still supporting the goals of our facility and of their individual treatment goals.

It is getting more and more difficult to go back to work. I know that my time at this facility, in this role, is down to a year and 10 months - 22 months left before I can retire with my full pension - so that makes things a bit more of a process. I like music therapy, so I do not plan on leaving the profession when I leave my current facility, but I do want to leave my current facility when I can afford to do so. So, going back to work after a short-ish break is a struggle. All I can think about is having time to rest until I can rest no more - 22 months to go.

For now, though, it is time to get started. Off we go into the next school year!