music, therapy, and me

Today will start the American Music Therapy Association's national conference, and for the first time in 25 years, I am not attending. I made this decision back in April when I decided not to submit any presentation proposals and again in July when I decided that I didn't want to spend exorbitant amounts of money to go see the same old people talking about the same old topics - none of which are directly related to me. So, I opted not to go. For the most part, I'm happy about my decision, especially now that I am in recovery from my recent health situation, but I still have some twinges. Instead of going to conference, I am talking to car repair places, am trying to avoid exhaustion, and am scratching around my incision sites. I am very thankful that I am not trying to do these things while roaming around an unfamiliar city and sleeping in a hotel bed. Even so, friends are posting lots of pictures from the conference area and that makes me take notice and experience tho...

Here it is, the last Monday of the regular 2015-2016 school year. In 21 days, we will start our Extended School Year (ESY), and things will change. Some of our staff members are retiring, others are leaving, and some of us are going to be in the same place again. My schedule will change a bit - just enough that it will take some getting used to - and then it will change back again. We have seven weeks of ESY, and I think I am ready. I have my basic session themes put together, and now all I have to do is finish up my visual aids and figure out the rest of the session plans. There is always something nice about the end of the year. This Monday, I will see three groups of kids. I will play graduation songs once and will reveal our Musician of the Month for this month. I'm thinking that we may also watch music cartoons this week. I've got some Silly Symphonies, Extreme Music Fun, and Sing Along Songs that will probably fit the bill of music-themed learning. In addition I will ...

Last night, I had a chance to talk about one of my favorite music therapy topics to some of my favorite music therapists - interns! We talked about becoming more purposeful in how we use music in our therapy sessions. This is my favorite thing to ramble on and on and on about, and sometimes it leads to deep discussions about our therapeutic modality. Sometimes we just ponder what is going on as we think more deeply about what it is we do that makes us different from other musicians in our area, facility, or location. I have an ulterior motive for talking like this to music therapy interns. I think that many of us practiced veterans of the music therapy profession do not really know how to talk about music therapy to people who make funding decisions. I think this is why we are sometimes replaced by other music programs - we don't know how to delineate what we do that makes us different than the other musicians who interact with clients. This is so mething that we seem to stru...