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Fun Friday: Toys in Therapy Sessions

I have been playing with some of my Star Wars toys this week in my music therapy sessions. I have some VERY cool Star Wars toys, including lots of R2-D2 toys that beep, move, and need voice activation to get going. I enjoy taking in my cool things every year during this week (because it is almost May the Fourth!), and I find it interesting to watch how my clients do not know how to play. My piece de resistance is my voice-activated R2-D2. He is obstinate, refuses to listen to any and all commands, and does such a great job of ignoring my students that I just want to hug him! They express their frustration with his defiance, and I can use that as an exemplar of why others are often frustrated with their defiance. There are times when their eyes show a bit of understanding - for a split second. I use toys in my therapy sessions quite often. Some of my students do not want to interact with me, but they will play with me if we have some toys available. So, if you open my cabinets, you will
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What I'm Reading Wednesday

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Gee whiz. Two weeks ago, I was actually reading some pretty interesting things in the world of music therapy, but I am not reading anything in our field right now. This, of course, doesn't mean that I am not reading - I am just not reading something about the field of music therapy at the moment. This is not unusual for me to not read things about our profession. I do not like to do that very often, but I recognize that it is important to do so on occasion. My problem with reading research articles and the like is that it takes lots of work to make the research relevant to my experience as a clinician. I am naturally suspicious of research results, having done my own and recognizing the limitations present in the process, and I find it hard to justify some of the results with my reality in my clinic.  As a result of my avoidance of research and desire to know more about research, I have developed a research to practice process that works for me. It involves a form - swoon! Perhaps
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Being an Internship Director on Hiatus

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I think I am fully immersed in my "old fogey" stage of life. At this moment, the song,  Kids  from  Bye, Bye Birdie  is sliding through my musical brain as I am thinking about the seven applications that I have in my internship file that are not finished. In addition, I have one set of letters of recommendation without an application - isn't that an interesting situation to be in... The one finished application prompted me to send an audition/interview invitation - no, actually, THREE invitations before the applicant bothered to let me know that an internship with me was no longer desired. No one seems to remember that they need to inform the other places that they have submitted applications that they no longer need to proceed as defined in the National Roster Internship Guidelines. So, I am a bit frustrated with the entire experience. Now, this is probably more of a function of what is going on around me than any type of significant change in applicants, but this is the
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Songwriting Sunday: Picture-Inspired Songwriting

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I am a person who enjoys writing songs. They are never really deep - most of the songs that I have written are of the "social-emotional learning" or "task analysis" types, but I enjoy the process of composition from start to performance. I haven't always enjoyed this process, but I find that this is one of the creative things that I enjoy about the job that I have at this point. In my various roles around the music therapy world, I have taught others how to write songs, and that is a part I enjoy playing. There is something quite nice about watching others be creative within boundaries that I set up. I enjoy seeing what someone else thinks about the prompts that I provide versus what I think and create during the same exact process. This is part of the reason that I am writing about composition on Sundays right now. I enjoy the process. One of the techniques that I recently shared for inspiration for composition is picture-inspired songwriting. There are times t
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Fun Friday: Sharing with Others

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I had a chance to show off one of my organizational systems this week when I shared my songwriting kit with a group of students. Sharing something that works for me is just plain old fun, and I enjoy it greatly. I like hearing what other people do in their systems, and I like sharing mine with others. This little songwriting kit is not fancy, but it does work for me, so why not let others in on the secret? My songwriting kit is a pencil pouch that includes some sheet music paper cut to size for my cell phone camera to take pictures for sharing TME ideas, two mechanical pencils, a really good eraser, some post-it notes (of course), and some index cards. The pencil pouch fits in my work bag without taking up too much space, and it is a Star Wars themed pouch with my favorite character in it, so it always makes me smile when I see it. Sometimes the simple things are the best. I have this kit because I tend to have ideas flit through my head when I am not close to my computer or software.
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Tuesday Musings - Just Thinking Too Much These Days...

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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 t
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Songwriting Sunday

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It's here again.  Songwriting Sunday, and I think I am ready to talk a bit about how I write songs. Today, I think I will focus on my goal-based compositions. Anyone wondering what that is?? Here we go. There are times when I have to write songs to support and rehearse particular skills to match my clients' goals. The topics are not ones that are easily supported by precomoposed music, so it is my job to make the music that my clients can use in places other than music therapy. So, how do I do this? (NOTE: Please keep in mind that this is how I do things, not the only way to do things - you find the way that works best for you, okay?) I start with the goal and an assessment process. If my client's goals are already known to me, then I do a quick baseline assessment. If the client has a brand new goal, then I start from the beginning. I write task analyses for the different skills or levels of mastery for the goal. For example, if I am writing a goal for toothbrushing, I try
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