music, therapy, and me

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 ...

It is almost the start of a new school year in my area of this world, and as a school-based music therapist, I am getting myself put together enough to face this year with the same type of uncertainty that I faced the start of last year...and probably with good reason. At this time last year, I was uncertain that the pandemic outlook was as rosy as others seemed to think it would be, and my skepticism won out. Last year was a time where my work situation changed radically about every six-eight weeks, and being a therapist for students who could not be accessed was difficult - to put it very mildly. We went from full-time, in-person school to hybrid for some clients and live for others, to complete lockdown due to an outbreak at my facility, to back to full-time, in-person school for some and hybrid for others, to full engagement with all clients but in segregated classes (residents with residents, day students with day students), to full mixing of our two populations. I had to scramble...