music, therapy, and me

It is Sunday again in this part of the world, and that means sitting down and thinking a bit about research. Last week, I started synthesizing an article about identity formation and working with adolescents (the full citation is below) that came to me courtesy of Music Therapy Perspectives . I described my process. The task for today is to actually put all of the information that I saw into my reference sheet and finish it all up. If you are interested in using my synthesis sheet, it is available on this link in my Teachers Pay Teachers store ...It doesn't look really impressive on the thumbnail form, but it works for me. It might work for you!! I left off in at the process of organizing my post-it note thoughts into different categories and then making the form a bit more final, so let's get to it! I think I will start with the thoughts on the teal post-its. Here are the rough thoughts... the population was "teenagers who had mild and moderate developmental d...

I spent a couple of insomnia hours this morning reading through my selected Synthesis Sunday article which comes to us from the most recent edition of Music Therapy Perspectives . I took my color-coded post-its and spent some time reading the article for the first time. I used my post-its and then collated them based on color (and on theme, of COURSE!). I am now ready to get started organizing the things that I found on this first read-through. Here we go... My system includes selecting four or five stacks of post-it notes (different colors) from my ever growing box o' post-its. I then assign a color to different aspects - the first is citations that are relevant; the second is quotations; the third is for thoughts or words I need to define; and the last is for takeaways from the study into my direct practice as a music therapist. Once I assign colors to each element of my reading, I start in, reading, taking notes, and using up those post-its. So, here is the content-relev...

I have always been someone who sees a problem and then strives to make it less of a problem. I've identified a problem with myself and research, and I'm now stuck in solving mode. If I'm not getting what I need from our publications, then what can I do to get what I need elsewhere?? This is the type of question that will take over my mind for a while, especially now that I have six more days of enforced rest away from my job. I don't have many clinical issues to think about, so my mind is capturing the most intriguing problem and is working away at it. One of the most frustrating things for me is to identify something that I don't like without having an idea what can fix it. I get very frustrated with other people who just seem to complain and complain but who do not make any effort to make their situations less difficult for themselves. So, I am going to talk a bit more about what I need as a clinician from the research that is available out there. This is ...

Yesterday, the most recent issue of Music Therapy Perspectives was stuffed into my mailbox. I got it this morning, and decided to look inside on this blog post. I open up the plastic covering and look at the table of contents. I tend to find MTP a bit more relevant to my life as a clinician than the Journal of Music Therapy , but it still doesn't have too much to do with my role in the world of music therapy. This edition includes an article about adolescents' experiences of MT in inpatient treatment - this may have some sort of relevance to my students, but probably not - my students have chronic issues rather than need for stabilization in acute care. There is another one about adolescents and identity formation. That may be more relevant and more easily transferred into my particular clinical setting. We will see. When I get into the mood to read research (and, to be completely honest with you, it doesn't happen often), I have a system! I'll talk about it mor...

I do not have an easy time making decisions about things that are important to me. I waffle back and forth, thinking and analyzing all the possibilities and situations, and I tend to worry more than many of these decisions are worth. It's my process, and it is something that I work through on a regular basis. I am currently in the middle of a debate with myself about a trivial little decision. It will not really matter in the long-term, but it matters today. So, I am weighing the pros and cons. I think I have come to my conclusion, but then I keep thinking. It's difficult to stop until the decision becomes irreversible. That won't happen for about 20 more minutes - the point of contact with the people who will be affected. Once that contact occurs, I will be able to relax a bit into the decision and move forward from there. Clinical decisions can also be difficult. I spend time talking to music therapy students (and others) about how to make decisions about what to fo...

I've had a brainstorm! I got a package of these books at my Target Dollar Spot for $3. I grab these whenever I find them because I really like blank journals, and I have all sorts of book ideas based on therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) that I want to manifest in my (HA!) spare time! So, I have this collection of eight, black-covered, blank books with 16 pages to use and play with. My brain started working, and I looked back over the brainstorming parts of my various journals and post-it notes and saw that I was trying to figure out a way to assess musical knowledge and preferences of a constantly changing client population. The problems? Too many to list here. The way to do this? A-ha!! I love A-ha moments! I love it when a plan comes together (directly stolen from the A-team), and when I can figure out a way to offer many options to clients with little to no need for an advanced degree in music therapy to implement. This is something that is desperately needed in on...

I had some thoughts this week about culture in institutional terms. I've always been interested in small cultures - you know the ones, they happen when you join a club. There are specific rules and expectations that are part of being a club member (some even have fancy handshakes!). If you join another club, those rules and expectations from club #1 may be part of membership in club #2, but there will probably be differences as well. That's the type of thing that I think of as small cultures. There are some folks who use the term "microculture" which I also like. This is something that I see demonstrated in the school where I work. Each classroom has a completely different cultural climate. This is partly due to the nature of the teacher, partly due to the nature of the Behavioral Health Technicians that support students and the teacher, and partly due to the students in each classroom. There are remarkable and apparent differences when you walk from room to roo...

It is Sunday, and that means time to do some synthesis, AKA reading something and then internalizing it within my own clinical practice to make some sense out of what happens during music therapy. So, off we go into the ninth chapter of my selected text - Music, therapy, and early childhood: A developmental approach. Written by Elizabeth Schwartz, this text organizes several ideas about musical development into a book that is a practical guide for music therapy clinicians who work within early childhood populations. With a bit of synthesis and lots of thought, I use this text as a guide for my work with children, adolescents, and others with developmental disabilities. Like all of my synthesis texts, it takes some extrapolation to get from the intent of the author to my own population, but that's what I'm here for - to figure out what is applicable to my students. Last week, I started an infographic for myself to help me organize my thoughts. Here's the graphic from la...

Happy Synthesis Sunday, all! Today's reading and overview is Chapters Four and Five of Music, therapy, and early childhood: A developmental approach by Elizabeth Schwartz. Chapter four is titled "Models of musical development in early childhood," and can be found on pages 29-38. Chapter five is titled "Musical response in early childhood: What develops musically and when." Are you ready for this? I think I am. Chapter four provides an overview of four music education models, termed "sequential music-learning systems" with brief descriptions of Dalcroze, Orff, Kodaly, and Suzuki learning models, but the meat of the chapter comes from two music therapists, Cynthia Briggs and Kenneth Bruscia (p. 37-38). The Briggs and Bruscia model is linked to "other major models of developmental psychology" and offers a sequence anticipated responses for musical development in the areas of auditory perception, vocal/tonal exploration, rhythmic development...

I have six days. My mother arrives in Kansas in six days for a period of rest and relaxation with me, and I have to work like a fiend to get things done. My "lazy days and time to rest" vacation has become a "clean up everything so Mom can move in the VERY small living space available" time, and I have not been doing all that I can do in the evenings. I'm paying for that now. I made progress this past weekend - panic tends to do that to me - but there is still way too much to do before I am finished with my odyssey to make this a presentable place. Interestingly, I was doing the exact same thing five years ago when my mother came to visit me because I was getting ready for surgery. This time? No surgery (that I'm planning for, at least)! She just wants to visit me. The problem? I am exhausted by the time I get home so I'm not doing anything right now... Last night, I fell asleep (sometime after 8pm because I saw that time on the tablet) with the ...

It is time for me to get back into my research reading routine. I took a hiatus over the past couple of months, mainly because I didn't want to do any reading. I'm back into a reading mood, so here we go. (By the way, this reading mood is almost always spurred on by the arrival of music therapy journals in the mail...aahh, guilt.) My first step is always to gather my materials so I have them near me for the entire process.  Essential Materials: Post-It Notes Research-Informed Clinician Sheets - look at the bottom of the page link My favorite pens With my materials in hand, I am ready to start reading! I am a bit old-fashioned when it comes to reading research, so I always print out my articles or use my printed journals when I am reading. This allows me to touch the pages - for some reason that is important to me. I've never really got into the whole electronic thing. I pick up my reading - in this case Music Therapy Perspectives, 34(2), 2016 - and star...

I had a small triumph yesterday.  I don't think that anyone else in the room even noticed it, but I used music to calm a very agitated student in one of my sessions. It took some time, it took some deliberate application of music, but you know what?  It worked. I used every tool at my disposal - repetitive music, using my voice to replicate the volume of the vocalizations happening, singing reflective statements and redirections, still engaging all of the other students in something therapeutic while this was happening, and embedding specific cues in both the musical phrases and the sung lyrics. By the end of the very turbulent session, the client was sitting quietly and was no longer hitting self or others. There were six staff members in the room who were completely unaware of what I was doing and how it was working. In fact, they spent most of the time in the room chatting with each other about specific things. (I am going to have to do some training with those spec...

There was a question about working with persons with the diagnosis of Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD) on one of my social media links, and a friend of mine tagged me to respond. I started to think about the folks that I know who have come in with this label, and how I worked with them. In my years of working with children and adolescents with a variety of concerns, I have found that the way I work with those with the initials ODD as part of their mental and developmental health diagnoses is not that different from how I work with those without those particular letters. When I start to sit down and think deeply about what I want the therapeutic relationship to look like, I want my clients to make decisions about their own treatment. I want my clients to know that they have a say in what we do, and how we do it. I want to foster a mutual respect for the clients who come to music therapy with me. To that end, I find that there are times when my clients don't want to do what I h...

I think I'm a bit of an odd duck when it comes to research questions. At least, that's what it seemed like when I was in graduate school. The questions that made me curious often didn't jive with the ideas of my advisors. That both concerned me and made me curious. Why weren't others interested in developing tools for music therapists to use during sessions? Why weren't others interested in how music therapists made decisions about their live music making with and for clients? It was this, more than anything, that led me to leave the world of academia and go back into full-time clinical work. Most of what I want to know can't be quantified, measured, or researched other than participant reporting. This is why I didn't find that my questions meshed with the ideas of my advisors. How do you really track the inner dialog that goes on inside the head of a music therapist who is making decisions about music presentation in the moment?      I have always ...