music, therapy, and me

I am sure that I mentioned that I brought back an old closing TME (therapeutic music experience) this week. It occurred to me that I had not sung the song for years due to interns being in charge of sessions and bringing their own music into our music therapy culture. Many of my "standard" TMEs have gone by the wayside. Right now, though, there are no interns at my facility. I closed that program in October after having zero applications for a year. For the next year and three months, I am bringing back the TMEs that I love and that my clients have loved over the years. It is time to rediscover things that are long forgotten and to introduce them to my current clients. This week, as I have been encouraging my clients to select their own music interactions through decision making and exploration of the music room, they have been making requests. I currently have requests for using the parachute, using the traffic cones, and using the bouncy balls. Some of the behavioral health...

Back in January of 2020, I was getting ready for something that I never thought I could do - an exhibition table at the Midwestern Regional Conference. I was producing file folders, small books and keychains, digital links, and several copies of my books to take with me to Lincoln, Nebraska for the conference. I was excited to figure out how to do this part of the job of a music therapy creator when BAM! Well, you know what happened in March of 2020, so I won't dwell. Since that time, I have cooled off with my production habits. I have focused on making things that I could use in my clinic, and those things have not often been original files. I have focused on making things from other creators and have not done as much as I would like on my own. Yesterday, I spent about an hour to two (I didn't really keep track) preparing 80 file folders to use to make visual aids. I trimmed off the flaps on the side so the folders will fit in my laminating pouches, and then I affixed stickers...

One of the things that you may not know about me is that I have written several music therapy session books. I have offered these on my website for many years, but I've decided to add them to my TPT store so others can find them. I put the first one, sing about autumn , on the store this morning. I am not anticipating that many people will purchase these, but I want to get them out there more than they have been out there before. Just so you know, sing about songs  have been my projects for many years. I love writing therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) and sharing them with others. One of my areas of research has been music to support learning across the age range, and I have always wanted to write music for an organization like Sesame Workshop or Fred Rogers Productions. I am fascinated by the way that music can enhance and enrich learning in ways that other pedagogical methods just do not. When I first decided to go back to continue my education in music therapy, I wanted to do...

I am going to try a new series of posts - we will see if it takes off in any way, but here we go... Now, I am really pretty good at making up series titles for things, but I am not as good at keeping up with them, but we will try it anyway. Today's change up in topics is brought to you courtesy of the Dollar Tree where I dropped a cool $60 this morning, buying things for my upcoming trip and spending money on books for kids and all that stuff. It is also brought to you courtesy of Kathy Schumacher over at Tuneful Teaching. ( You can find her on Instagram using this link. ) She recently released a cute visual aid for free, so go check her out!! I realized that I make all sorts of things, but I rarely share them for others to see, so this is the day that I will try to get some of this stuff out into the world for others to enjoy. Of course, I am making this decision with little to no plans or action steps or anything, but you know, that is how I roll these days. (Don't believe me...

One of the things that I absolutely love more than anything else in the world (other than actually DOING music therapy) is talking about music therapy, and I am feeling the need to host a music therapy student webinar! If you are a music therapy student reading this right now, please consider signing up for this free webinar all about how to find your internship. We're going to meet on Thursday, September 5, 2019 at 7pm (Central Time) for about an hour to talk about everything internship application process! Click here for the registration link. There are more details about the "what" we'll talk about here . If you are someone who knows a music therapy student (or better yet, a group of them), please pass on this link to the registration form. I can accommodate 24 separate computers for this webinar, so that means as many people as you can get to watch from one computer can participate in the live webinar. If you can't make this webinar, contact me at th...

Do you know that the World Federation of Music Therapy has decided that March 1st is International Music Therapy Day ? Isn't that fun? I didn't do much last year for Music Therapy Day, but I'm thinking about doing something this year. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, but I'll figure out something. I'm going to start with a poster on my bulletin board. After that? Who knows?? Having a day for music therapy advocacy and recognition around the world is a really fun idea. I enjoy the thought that there are music therapy friends in Taiwan who are celebrating this unique profession at the same time that there are music therapy friends in South Africa and Canada and Sweden and here in the states doing their own celebrations. I wonder what we can do to make this more of a recognized day rather than just something that we do as music therapists... I encourage you to head over to the World Federation of Music Therapy site to see what types of things are h...

One of the benefits of being an Internship Director is the opportunity to learn new songs and ideas from interns. I require that interns write 75 therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) during their internships, and they submit their files to me during their fourth month at the facility. Twenty-five of the TMEs have to be original songs, and the others can be a combination of original ideas and things the interns learned from other people (including me). I have every file from every intern that I've ever had work with me, and their work is one of the best resources that I have. (That reminds me, I need to take my TME file list for my current intern - she wants some of my resources for her file...) Now, I have a very strict policy that I will not share any of their ideas or TMEs other than within music therapy sessions. All resources that I have contain their source materials, copyright information, and relevant contact information as well. If someone indicates an interest in a TME...

I reset my quotation box on Monday during my intern webinar. (There are a couple of things wrong with that sentence...more about that later.) Anyway, my current quotation is from J. M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan (if you've never read the book, please do). "Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves." ~ J. M. Barrie Yesterday, it was mentioned that I was always happy. The person who mentioned it is never happy and appeared to find my enjoyment of the moment to be disingenuous. There was some discussion about how much I smiled and that I really couldn't be happy. Of course, there was some projection onto my emotional state from this other person, but in the moment itself, I was truly happy. I am not always happy. That's probably pretty evident from this blog. There are times when things go right and smoothly in my life, and there are times when things don't go as right as I want. That's part of human life, and I...