music, therapy, and me

I have an arbitrary rule for myself and my storage space. It is not something that I based on anything other than my tendency to collect things and head towards hoarding, ESPECIALLY with music things, but it has been handy in the 27 years that I've been a professional music therapist. Six things to do before buying/keeping/storing. Simply put, this means that I have to come up with six goals or therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) in which I use the material in order to keep it in my storage space. Since this is my guideline, I strive to make things that can be used in many different ways so I can justify keeping them. Here's how this goes... I see something new, and I start to think - "Can I afford this?" "Do I want it because I just want it?" "Can I think of six things to do with this thing to justify buying it?" The questions start to come fast and furious... What is it? Would it be something I could use in my current music therapy job? (If the ...

If you don't know, I am a proud "Music Therapy Maker." (I think I've just coined this phrase, and I think I'm going to start a hashtag about this...) For me, this means that I love to make things for my clients to use and use up and play with and enrich and change and adapt and all that stuff. I make lots of things, but I think my favorite music therapy materials to make are file folder visual aids.  I have made so many different types of file folders to assist my clients in completing specific goals and objectives over the years that I have found many tips and techniques for my fellow Music Therapy Makers (how does #MusicTherapyMaker look for a hashtag?? No one else is using it yet!) I have messed up SO many folders, laminating sheets, tools, and materials that I don't even try to keep track any more. It is just too sad to think about how much time and energy I have wasted over the years. So, I CHOOSE to focus on what things I've discovered about making...

Tomorrow is the start of my next round of music therapy intern webinars. I am looking forward to starting these interactions up again as I find that many folks out there don't seem to get much discussion or practice in the nuts and bolts of how we have to do our jobs - things that are considered non-clinical tasks or practices. I like to talk to people about the practical considerations that we have to complete - things like time management, categorizing our interventions/therapeutic music experiences, self-care, and intern rights and responsibilities. It doesn't seem that too many internship directors are talking about these things with their interns. I know I don't often find the time to talk to my interns about many of these things, but I do try. On a somewhat related note, I am currently involved in a video challenge. This is both a blessing and a curse as I am going back into webinar mode. My mind is full of all sorts of technical tips and prompts while I am getting ...

I have a secret code that I use to organize things. Are you ready? (Prepare to be pretty disappointed at this point, because it isn't all that thrilling, but here it goes...) C O L O R !! (See, I told you it was not all that thrilling, but it has really saved me lots of time and lots of energy when looking for different things.) I use color to organize everything music therapy around me.  I have four emotion binders that I use with my clients who do not speak. Each one is a different color. This allows me to keep them organized. When there is a red emotion card in the green folder, even my youngest clients know that isn't right and fix it! When I was an itinerant therapist. moving between two storage places and five buildings daily, I used color-coded boxes to organize my session materials. The blue boxes were for my young students. The purple boxes were for the middle schoolers, and the red boxes were for my high schoolers. I could grab the right colored box and ...

Yesterday I had a session that I was dreading. Last week it was total chaos as kid after kid started screaming, cussing, and had to be bodily removed from the music therapy room. We didn't get ANY music therapy done. I couldn't even start singing as every time I tried to get something started, the level of noise in the room increased to riot stage and took over. I woke up yesterday with the idea of taking a sick day in my mind, but I know that avoidance does not solve a problem. So, I went into work. During my entire commute, I tried to approach the group in different ways in order to figure out something to do and a strategy to follow if things went absolutely kerfluffity. I couldn't solidify my plan until later in the day. I decided yesterday to run Instrument Memory Games in small groups - not music therapy, but essential to observe group interactions and to work on the therapeutic relationship with this group. The previous session included three new kids, no tea...