The Thrifty Therapist: Free CMTEs That I Use Every Five Years for Recertification

This is the first year of my seventh certification cycle as a board-certified music therapist. I am going to say, right now, that I usually send in my CMTEs once per cycle, and usually at the end of year four, and that I usually spend very little money on my CMTEs. I take full advantage of all the opportunities for collecting free continuing music therapy education credits.

So, if you are a MT-BC who has gone through your first certification cycle (at least), you can skip this paragraph, but if you haven't gone through a recertification process, let's talk a bit about how to get CMTEs. You do not have to pay money for every single CMTE that you have to get to continue your certification. You can get many credits for things that you might already be doing. It is always a good idea to submit things that you are not sure about because the worst thing that CBMT can say is that there is no clear link to the Board Certification Domains. The good news is that almost everything that you have to do to be a music therapist has something to do with the Board Certification Domains.

Welcome back, everyone!

CMTEs are all around us, and it makes good sense to have a copy of the CMTE chart around when you are submitting to CBMT. (You can find a link to the pdf chart here.)

You can get credits for writing songs (check out my Songwriting Sunday series for tips on how to write music). You can get credits for supervising music therapy students. You can get CMTEs for analyzing professional publications. All of these can be done with just some time - no money!

I use all of my facility training that is required of me every year once in my certification cycle. So, even though I have to do CPR/First Aid training every two years, I get to count it once during my CMTE cycle. My school district requires lots of training (I think I get about five hours from that training) every year. I can count each unique training once per cycle. I get free CMTEs through the training that I have to do anyway. As long as I can link the training to the Board Certification Domains, then I can justify why this fits. It makes finding 100 CMTEs pretty easy every five years.

Where do you get your CMTEs? How many of them are free??

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