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??

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