music, therapy, and me

Complain, complain, complain. I am sitting here, trying to remember what day it is. I have this issue when I am on breaks because there are no outside pressures, but I REALLY have this issue when I find my typical daily schedule interrupted - like with a Monday at work without music therapy sessions. I am at odds with my expectations, mainly because I didn't have as many sessions as I have on my schedule. It is Thursday, right? This means that I have my Tuesday groups again and my Monday groups are finished for the week. Everything is a bit discombobulated in my brain, so I am having to remind myself over and over that this is the way it is this week, not next week, but will replicate the week after when we have Monday off for MLK, Jr. Day. I don't like having Mondays off or away from students. It just messes with my mind too much. Things are going well with other tasks. I have felt pretty good about my upcoming events as well as my own quests for musictherapyworks.com. I have ...

No one is happy at work right now. There are so many emotions happening that are just hard to navigate. Kids are upset because they are not going home. Kids are happy because they are going home. Kids are jealous because their peers are going home and they are not. Behavioral Health Technicians (BHTs) are angry because teachers get a five-day weekend, and they have to work the holiday. Teachers are just trying to get to that holiday. There is no sense of team or working together right now. I do not know, at any given moment, who will be coming into my sessions these days. The BHTs I am expecting are just not with the groups I expect them to be in. It is hard to navigate constant changes while still trying to come up with therapeutic enrichment for clients. Things work so much easier when the BHTs know the students really well rather than coming in and not knowing things like typical responses or communication styles... Oof. This is a rough time for everyone involved in education, but w...

Yesterday was a challenging day. Not because of clients - they were just what I expect from my clients - but the staff and the universe conspired against me - AGAIN! I was called to the principal's office to discuss an event that happened during my Tuesday sessions. I have a client who is targeting me and new staff who do not understand that the reason that he is targeting me is to get attention from a preferred staff member who is not in the session anymore - for some reason unknown to the teachers in this school. When the preferred staff member arrives, this client will stop engaging in targeting me and will sit next to the preferred staff member. I have requested that this staff member stop engaging with the client during his outbursts and instead attend to all the students who are engaging appropriately. I have asked this staff member over and over again to not reinforce the attacks by paying attention to the client. Anyway, this client attacked me on Tuesday - hit me in the fa...

Day one of my extended school year is over. "That client" was in attendance and screamed at me twice but waited to escalate until their next therapy session. I did not do my organization routine, but I did go through about 300 emails and finished my documentation including my notes, so there is that. The most difficult part of the day was the constancy of having someone else in my space. The vocational team has moved back into my room, and they open doors and talk almost continuously during what was my quiet time. I did not know how much I have become accustomed to my quiet time until now. It is gone. On the way home from work, I was contacted by the next specialist that I need to be involved with due to my current medical situations. I have another appointment on the books for next month. July is filling up with medical things. Today, I add another group to my routine. They will come in at noon - a new time for them and for me to do music therapy. It will take a bit of getti...

Here I am, sitting at my desk in a hazy mental fog caused by taking my medications 2 hours late due to my 12-hour work day yesterday. I have to report early for physical behavior management training and CPR (again! I did it in November, but they have decided that I have to do it again - I am not happy). After that, we have a faculty meeting and a pizza luncheon sponsored by the Executive Team. I am not able to participate in food-based events due to a strange response to the water in the town where I work. So, I will make my appearance and then skedaddle from the lunch. I am curious to see if anyone from the Executive Team will actually be at the luncheon. I forget how much my medication affects me until these days. My eyes don't focus right, and I am overly tired until the medication wears off a bit. It is always interesting to track when my medication wears off. I feel more pain but my brain goes faster and processes information better when it reaches its end. I fully credit this...

Yesterday was the first day where I was "therapist" in seven and a half months. I ran six groups with students from all of our educational pods, and it was glorious! I was greeted with one cry of dismay and another cry of heartfelt welcome, so things evened out. Today, I return as "therapist" for three groups and two individuals, and I am ready. I work in a special purpose school at a psychiatric residential treatment facility. My students come from all over this corner of my state as well as from other states. Some of my students come for the school day only, while others live at the facility for active treatment during all waking hours. I am not an itinerant therapist - I have a large, lovely, muraled, spacious room. (My only complaint about my room is the lack of windows, but I am happy to not have windows when I have a room where we can throw balls, use long ribbon sticks, and breakdance on the floor without touching other people! My students are between the age...

I stayed in my house yesterday, and I did absolutely nothing of note. Today, I am heading back to work because we are finally experiencing above zero temperatures and are having school rather than snow days. The snow starts up again tonight and tomorrow, so we may have more snow days this semester. In fact, I think this might be an eight-day snow day year. We will see. I used to drive in for snow days, and I have an overnight kit at work right now, just in case. I feel guilty that I am not going in for snow days these days, but I know that it is safer for me to stay home than it is to try to drive on ice. This year, I want the alternate days off, but I have to be at work to get them. In the past two weeks, I have not felt like leaving my house to try to drive on the ice, so I have remained home on our three inclement weather days. My rational mind knows that it is a safe plan, but my emotional mind is steeped in guilt that I am not there to provide music therapy for the residents of my...

This has been a long week and a long month all at the same time. We even had Monday off, and it has still be a very long, LONG span of time. Between client concerns and gas leaks and dangerous air outside, it has been rough. I am looking forward to a quiet day today since my only scheduled morning group is for a classroom that is empty. We have two afternoon groups and that is all. Today is my planning and preparation time, and I have lots to plan and prepare for... Well... lots of things that I want to plan and prepare for... I am behind with my documentation for Wednesday, so that is first on the list - get documentation finished. After that, I will engage in my strategy for sessions for next week. It is an instrument week next, and I think that we are down to focusing on ensembles because we have covered most of the instrument families. This might be marching band month - I have to see. Administrative tasks, like session strategizing, finding and developing TME concepts, and repairi...

Do you ever have one of those days where you start off thinking that things are going to be horrible, but they turn out to just be strange? That was yesterday for me. I spent a long time yesterday, debating about whether I wanted to go to work or not. The answer to that debate was that I really didn't want to go, but I went anyway because I have bills to pay and a tendency towards using sick time because I get really sick. I decided that since I was thinking so much about whether I wanted to go or not, I obviously did not need to take the time off. That was never really something that I was going to do - I just needed to whinge and whine a bit. Wednesdays are something I dread. It used to be tied to one particular client, but that client is now seen on Mondays, so I'm not sure why Wednesdays still fill me with so much of an "ugh" feeling. Yesterday, there were some students who were "off" during music therapy, but the scuttlebutt around work is that students...

I am getting ready to head to work for the first Friday of the new school year. Since we do not have two classes, I have an entire morning of planning, preparation, and task box time to fill. My intern is not expected back this week, so I will not have supervision time today. When we are sick, our work responsibilities stop so we can focus on getting better. So, we will postpone our supervision session until the intern returns to work. That means that I have an early release time today. I also have the entire morning to work on my stuff, two groups and one individual in the afternoon. I have most of a stack of laminating to work with today. I have a stack of file folder activities that I have neglected this summer because my Fridays were days off rather than work days. So, I have plenty to do but little to no motivation at this particular moment. I will find that motivation. I still have the movies that I brought in for my work days to play on the ancient television and DVD/karaoke pla...

Yesterday's post was titled, "I Don't Want To Go," and yesterday was an interesting day, to say the least. My intern is sick and needs to go to find medical care, so I ran seven groups on my own yesterday. Interns are always so funny about asking me if I can cover their groups. My response? "Oh, yeah, I think I can do that." Intern #36 will not be at work today. Intern #36 will probably not be at work tomorrow either. In fact, I will send intern #36 home to rest and get better. I am glad that I went to work yesterday. This morning is a relatively free morning. I have an entire hour before I need to leave for work. I will be heading to Walmart before work to replenish the chocolate jar and get some food for my office. I am completely out of everything to eat. That is the only thing that I have to do this morning before work. I woke ten minutes before my alarm, so I was able to turn that off which meant that I was not startled awake. Things seem to be going pr...

Today is the day that my next intern starts. I am not ready. I thought I would be in a better place than this, but being sick the last week of school really threw my schedule off. I neglected to tell HR that the intern was coming - I did arrange for training, but completely did not get to HR. I am hoping that I can get the intern to HR without a hitch, but they are a bit scattered over there, so who knows who to even talk to these days. Anyway, the assignment calendar is finished. I still want and need to print off things for the new special project and make the space a bit more intern friendly, but I should be able to do that before the intern arrives at the facility. I am assuming that the music therapy room is a mess. I asked folks to put things back in the room when they were finished with them after graduation and field day. I have not been back to the facility since graduation morning when I was kicked out and sent home. I am hoping that I will be able to put things together with...

This was a strange week, but something that is pretty usual for me in the month of May. May is ALWAYS a difficult month for me - lots happening and extreme exhaustion are the normal settings. This was a busy week, and I am glad that I am in my Saturday. The best/worst thing of the week was kicking some of the kids out of the talent show due to disrespectful behavior towards everyone. They are plotting all sorts of situations and attempting to follow through. The good thing is that these kids tell people what they are plotting which ruins their attempts. They haven't quite figured out how to be quiet about things. Heaven help us if they figure that out... The Talent Show was yesterday. I provided a yarn wig for the student who sang "Let It Go." I figured out how to amplify my Spotify account loud enough to support my singers. I was able to rig my old karaoke system to run two microphones without interfering with the music amplification - I've never been able to do that...

Well, it is Friday again, and I am, once again, sitting here, feeling so many feelings. The Talent Show is today, and there is SO much drama happening at work right now that it is interesting to be part of it all. I had to kick two clients out of the show due to their inability to maintain any sort of appropriate engagement and plotting to hurt people (including me). There may be more that are not allowed to engage. One of our clinicians broke down in tears during the session asking for recognition for the work that her team is doing in the evenings. I both empathize and sympathize with that emotion. This is a difficult time of year. For some reason, it was decided that we needed to change up three classrooms three weeks before the end of the regular school session. This has led to all sorts of conspiracies and rebellions in the client population. All of the staff is stretched to their limits and the clients can sense all of that. We are always short-staffed, in all areas, and we have ...

I slept in yesterday morning rather than getting up and writing. Wednesday was a busy day and kept me from waking up at the usual time, so Thursday was a rush to get out of the door, even with my late arrival at work already arranged. The good news about Wednesday was that it was a typical day for me - which means that students acted the way I expected them to act rather than being surprising. We had one tantrum due to a thrown choice board and the subsequent refusal of myself and the behavioral health technicians to allow the client who threw the board to go get the board. We had one episode (in the same session) of significant aggression and attempts to injure self and others. That was the most difficult session of the day. The rest just flowed quite nicely, even the one where the BHT was expressing doubts that I could do my job all by myself.  Uh, yeah, I'm fine. So, that was how Thursday started. It was a long Wednesday because of an extended day and Ash Wednesday services at n...

Oh, dear. Today is one of those days where I just don't want to go to work. We are experiencing lots of unannounced changes where kids are "visiting" new classrooms to become accustomed to places that they will be going soon that directly affect music therapy. We have students assigned where there are spaces rather than where things make sense for group treatment, and I don't want to go. I like my paycheck, though, so I am going to work today. My intern has influenza, so I am the only option for music therapy this week. My flu shot has protected me so far, so I am not flu-ish, just tired and crabby. Wednesdays are my busiest group day as well, so there is lots to do. I also missed one of their sessions during my continuing education week, so I feel like I have to be around this week. One of the things that happens in a psychiatric residential treatment facility's school is that we have to be very flexible with how we provide educational enrichment services. We hav...