music, therapy, and me

I teach in a school setting. My clients are not easy to teach and often have aggression and significant difficulties with communication of emotions, wants, and needs. They often have not had many positive experiences in school settings and come to us for specialized special education services. One of those services is educational enrichment music therapy services. Being an educational enrichment therapist means that I see every student for an hour per week. I do not have IEP goals for clients - music therapy is not considered a related service at my facility - I do not have to do eligibility assessments because every student is automatically eligible for music therapy just by being admitted to the school. All of this is just to give you a glimpse into my facility and how I operate before I head into my current sessions. Part of what I do in my sessions is introduce my clients to some general music education concepts because many of my clients have never been allowed to engage with inst...

When I first started TME Tuesdays, I wanted to share ideas and get comments and interact with other music therapists who were interested in providing music therapy ideas and experiences with clients that were new and different. I wanted to create community, but then I got cranky. When I was a part of Music Therapists [Aren't] United  (the additional word is completely mine and mine alone), one of the people posting went on a rant about gatekeeping and how music therapists should just give things away to younger music therapists rather than expecting to be paid for TME ideas, visual aids, business advice, etc. I got angry at that because I feel that we should be paid for the work that we do. I don't believe that I should give away my hard work to everyone and anyone just because they feel that they want to take it. There is a difference between sharing with someone and someone just taking from you without reciprocation. That is when I stopped publishing my therapeutic music expe...

It is TME Tuesday again, and I am going to head to work - reluctantly because my bed is more inviting than the thought of leaving it to go to be around other people. That is typical for me. I like sleeping so much more than working, but working is what I need to do in order to have a bed to sleep in, so I will haul my body to my car for a day of work. (I blame President's Day for this malaise this week - I HATE Monday holidays!) I will go reluctantly into this work week. Tomorrow is a 12-hour day at work - full day of work with kids and then additional professional development after school. I have to leave early because I have my Wednesday night job to get to, but I am hoping that it will be "work on your own" time that I will make up. Anyway, today is the first work day of the week. I have about 10 minutes to write this before my time anxiety will take over and make me jumpy. That brings me to today's topic - overcoming my tendencies to not do something because I am ...

This year, I am going to try the 100 Day Challenge again. Last year, I made it through 36 days of doing something for the challenge, so I am going to strive to get the entire 100 days this time. I am still trying my TME challenge, so I am hoping to combine the two into one big challenge. For the first part of my challenge, I am going to make a small piece of art on rolodex cards. The second part is a TME challenge. I do these things every once in a while. I set myself challenges and then try to do them. If I do not make it through the challenge, I tend to engage in some self-recrimination, but I am working on that as well - not doing the entire self-recrimination thing. Last year, I made 36 pieces of art. This year, I would like 100 new TMEs, but I will take what I can create as a positive contribution to my music therapy compendium. I started a TME yesterday when I was at work. I started writing up something that my students are doing this week as we explore percussion instruments and...

There are some things that I am convinced I will never finish up, and one of those things is my therapeutic music experience (TME) database. I think the lack of completion of this project is a good thing since it means that I am constantly finding and developing new TMEs to use with my clients. It also means that there is always more work to be done. Always more work. I recently updated my TME file to include the TMEs that I had my intern complete as part of the assignments of the internship program. All I have finished, at this point, is the list of the TMEs that the intern wrote up and the intern's name as author. I still have to go through each of the files, change the author (if necessary), update the purpose statement of each TME, and then link it to the correct folder so future me (and future interns) can click the title and find the complete TME. The other task that I am undergoing this semester is updating the TME database to reflect the files that are in the TME file itsel...

Yesterday, at this time, I was getting ready to spend the night at my job. About halfway through the day, though, I remembered that my Christmas boxes were supposed to be delivered. I did not want two large boxes to sit on my porch for two days, getting covered by snow, and tempting other people to take them. My father's (and mine as well) cornet was shipped this time around. If I lost that, I would be heart broken as it is something we shared. So, I drove home yesterday afternoon, pulled in the boxes, and decided that I would try to get to work this morning through the storm. I have now decided that I will not be doing that. All of the roads between here and work are completely covered with snow and ice. While I would love the extra sick time, I am not all that willing to risk my life by sliding off roads and into ditches on completely covered roads. It has happened before, and I am determined that it will not happen to me again. So, I now have a day at home without plans. This is...

"Tis the season for holiday hype. Can you feel it? If you are like me, you do everything you can to avoid the stores this time of year because of the barrage of holiday music that bombards you as soon as you enter and continues until you leave. There are messages of consumerism every place you look, and it is sometimes hard to see the original purpose of the holiday itself under all the glitter and tinsel and opportunities to "buy, buy, BUY!" The holiday hype permeates schools. If you are involved with school-aged kids or adolescents, then you know that there is a change in learning ability and interactions between October and January. If you work in a school associated with a psychiatric residential treatment facility for school-aged kids and adolescents, then you know that those changes happen in those settings as well, but the responses may be a bit more pronounced. We are in the last week of school before our winter break begins. Students are finished with school on ...

This morning, I saw a post about having an indoor snowball fight with kids, and it got me started thinking about things I used to do with my clients that I no longer do. The indoor snowball fight is one of those things. We used to have massive paper ball fights in the gymnasium. We would take all the recycling, cut it in half, and then encourage our students and staff members to crumple it up and then engage in a battle royale! We would go until we were tired, and then we would time ourselves as we cleaned up all the snowballs into bags. We would then stack the bags into snowmen as we sang winter songs. I miss those days. These days, my clients are not able to be safe with themselves or with others to handle a snowball fight of any sort. I have been spending some time steeped in nostalgia lately. I am not sure why, but I know part of it is being tired of work situations. I have been thinking about the things that I used to be able to do with my students without the possibility of compl...

It is time to update you on my TME challenge. I have finished three sequencing therapeutic music experiences and have the master template finished for two more. This week's challenge is writing coping skills TMEs, so it will be a less visual heavy task this week than last week. I have plenty of coping skills ideas in my books, so I just have to write things up in order to get them into my database. I am working more and more in the areas of making things that are relevant to my client population and other school-based therapy populations. I am hoping to have more free time on my schedule pretty soon, so I want to get into the habit of making TMEs and visuals during that free time. At the moment, I don't have that extra free time, but here's hoping that we can do this really soon. Anyway, it was a late morning for me, so I have to end here. I hope that you have a good Tuesday. Mine should be pretty good. We have five groups and one individual and then a meeting about that fr...

It is Tuesday again, and I have not written down any TME ideas for the past... um... month. I am failing in my experiment to write 5 TMEs per week, so I am resetting this experiment. It is time to evaluate and try to figure out what is going on. First, I am recovering from a broken finger that has impeded everything that I need to to do for this experiment. I am hoping to start occupational therapy very soon, so I can stretch this ring finger and strengthen it enough to get back into playing the guitar. I miss my guitar so much! My songwriting is only half-way done because I am not allowed to use my left hand fro anything at the moment. It is frustrating, and not being able to use my left hand means I am not able to play things in their entireties. I can hear the melodies and the accompaniments, but I cannot play them to see if I am correct. I also don't have any composition software on my work computers, so I cannot hear if what I am writing (rhythms can be my downfall when compos...

I wrote a song yesterday, but I can't move forward until I can play my guitar. I might be released to use my hand again on Friday, but I don't know yet. I am not happy about not being able to use my left hand to make music or do anything else. This has hit me harder this time around than it did in 2020 when I broke two fingers. I am tired of not being able to do much of anything. The song yesterday was all about making food. I wrote it on a used post-it note and took it into my group session. Then, I picked up the wrong post-it note and had to go back to one of my stand-bys, I Like to Eat, Eat, Eat, Eat, Eat .  I took out my food pictures and my clients selected things that they like to eat. I have since found out that my music notation software (bought by my father in 2014) is not on my computer, so I am downloading that right now. I can now set up music to see if it works the same in my head as it does on paper. One of the things that I have never been very good at is rhythmi...

I am horrible with making goals for myself and sticking through with them. I mean, I can write the goals no problem - I do that all the time, but I don't follow through. I am lousy at that particular part of the goal-followed life. So, I try to trick myself into viewing these things as "quests" rather than "goals" to see if it will work better for me. It does, to a point, and then it doesn't anymore. I am currently in one of those times when it doesn't work anymore. Now, I have all sorts of excuses - some good, some not so good. I have a broken finger which makes typing, writing, and composing challenging. I am sick again with the same sort of stuff I had in May which saps my strength and makes me just want to sleep all the time. My brain is stuck in survival mode which means that creativity is pushed to the side in favor of just getting through it all. I am lazy and just don't want to write any sort of therapeutic music experiences right now. I have...

Last week, I did not get any sort of TME production accomplished. If you are a first-time reader then you probably don't know that I am working on writing 5 TMEs per week in an experiment. I ask my interns to do the same thing, so I am examining whether I can do that task. I can, when I bother. I, of course, am navigating all sorts of things including a work-related hand injury which stops me from playing both the guitar and the keyboard for the next month, at least. My TME productivity plummeted last week as I was going through adjusting to my new reality of an awkwardly broken finger on my dominant hand that interferes with my ability to write and type and compose. So, I took a week away from TME development, but I started up again yesterday. I am finished with everything except the actual transcription of the music - again, can't play instruments easily right now... can't even do body percussion with my left hand... That is the part that is the most frustrating right now...

I have been through some interesting experiences over the past two weeks, but I am trying to see if what I am asking my interns to do is too much. I sat down and calculated the amount of time that my interns spend in direct leadership, in observation, and how much time I am expecting for them to use in session documentation.  In their 42.5 hour work week, they are leading 9 hours of sessions. They are observing another 6 hours of sessions. I anticipate about 40 minutes per group for documentation so, the amount of time for documentation varies from day to day but should take no longer than 6 hours per week for documentation (that is lots of time for documentation, but it still adds up to just over half the time at the facility per week for direct clients services). That leaves 21.5 hours. We have one hour per week for consultation and about 2 hours per week for meetings - taking us down to 18.5 hours left for practicing and assignments. To me, that seems to be lots of time to get t...

I am currently challenging myself to write 5 TMEs a week like I assign to my interns to see how much time it takes. Yesterday, I finished a Google form to input TMEs into a database and completed a TME from idea to documentation (all but the sheet music) in 90 minutes. That reminds me - I need to take a sheet music book with me to work. My composition software isn't on my work computer, so I have to write things old school. That means that my rhythms might not be accurate, but I will try my best. One down, four to go. I am trying the Google form with an associated spreadsheet to see if I can move from one way of doing things to another. It is not easy to reconfigure my brain to think and create differently, but I want this to replicate what I ask my interns to do as much as possible.As a result, I am changing my ways to see if that has an effect. So, if I go with my assumption that learning how to do this is more difficult than just changing how to do this, then the 45 minutes of t...

Yesterday was a day when I was grateful for my TME database and idea book. I don't know about you, but I have times when I do not have any idea what I want to do for my group programming during the week. I sit and stare at my guitar. I wonder what I am going to do with the clients who will be arriving to my music therapy room.  I was in such a state yesterday, and I went to the places that I keep my ideas - my ideas book and my database. One of the quests that I have right now is to update my database so I have all my TME files listed. I am behind in that task - seriously behind - so it is something that I am spending time organizing. As I was looking through the individual letter folders, I remembered several TMEs that I used to use and have moved away from recently. I also flipped through my ideas book to see what ideas are waiting to be moved into my "Ideas for Development" folder in my TME folder. My ideas book and the Ideas for Development folder serve the same purpo...