music, therapy, and me

The SEMTAP and me... I completed my first SEMTAP observation today. What a mess I am in the middle of at this point right now.  The parents want the student to get music therapy services because they want her to be able to perform. The student refuses to perform. The student has exactly two (2) IEP goals, neither of which are appropriate for music therapy services. The SEMTAP is basically writing itself now. I am not able to justify music therapy services to support the goals and objectives on the IEP. We will probably head into mediation because of all of this. Did I mention that this is part of my current job, and I have had to cancel the music therapy sessions for the 83 students that I am paid to work with during the school day?? Tomorrow I go back to complete the protocol. What a weird way to spend a day.

Disappointment I had a job interview a week ago. It looked like a promising "step-up" for me - a director of music therapy for an influential music academy in a large metropolitan area. The interview went well, and I had an invitation to attend the second round in a week. They wanted someone really fast (within 2.5 weeks) which sent up a red flag, but it seemed to be a place where I could be challenged with new things in my therapy life. I started to calculate how much I would need to attend the second interview. One of the things never mentioned was the salary being offered. They were requesting persons with Master's degrees as well as 3 years of practice, so I thought, it being in a large metro area and all, that there would be some good money involved. There wasn't. The salary was 40-45K per year. The benefits were decent, but nothing spectacular. I wonder why we are unwilling to demand salaries appropriate to our education and experience? Many of the jobs...

Leaping OUT of the Comfort Zone into the FRAY Here I am, again, after almost 15 years of settled routine, jumping into the job market. This has been precipitated by a significant change in how I feel my services are perceived by the administrators at my current facility. I am always heaped with compliments by folks who have never observed a session. They appear to get all of their information about my effectiveness from whether students smile when leaving the session - not very good quality control here. I have always told myself that I would pursue any and all opportunities that came my way... I have applied for a position as a Director of Music Therapy at a facility that I would never have considered two years ago. It is in a large metropolitan area and appears to be very well established in that area as a creative arts therapy program. I have my first interview tomorrow afternoon, and I am nervous. It is interesting how we can become comfortable in our routines and situations. I ...

Musings about this blog... Are you there? I have a suspicion that this is a place that I ramble on and on all to myself. That is fine since I treat this site as a place to think about music therapy, not for public consumption, but as a personal place to vent or process information. Then, I attended the inaugural Online Conference for Music Therapy last weekend. I was amazed to see and hear from music therapists who have used their online presences to build their businesses. They all have blogs, websites, accounts on Facebook, Linked In, and Twitter (same as me), but they have also made their online presences something to be viewed with awe. I am learning. I am trying to launch a business online. This business is targeted towards music therapists and music therapy students, offering tools and materials. I have owned the domain name for 15 years, but have never been able to officially launch the site as a business. This is the year! 2011 is the year that my business starts.

THE ONLINE CONFERENCE FOR MUSIC THERAPY Forgive the capital letters, but this has been an exciting couple of days. Way back many, many months ago, I answered a request for organizers for an online conference for music therapy. I thought, "Sure, I could help out with something like that. I would like to be on a committee to review presentations." Next thing I knew, I was the treasurer/financial contact on the ORGANIZING committee! This was a bit of a shock. I went from being a peripheral part of a conference (which I could see fitting in nicely with my available time and schedule) to being a part of all aspects of the conference, from beginning to end. Now, I did only as much as I could, often leaving decisions to the others, including the person who started the whole thing, John Lawrence. We are now halfway through the conference. We have had technical difficulties, multimedia presentations did not stream the way they needed to, people dropped in and out, we could ...

Deep thoughts... I love bass voices. I love them more than tenor voices. There is something about a deep bass voice that just makes me shiver. My favorite opera singers are the villains. Samuel Ramey (Kansas Native and bass extraordinaire) came to my university when I was an undergraduate. I fell in love with him from the stage. I do not think I have ever seen his face from closer than the back of the balcony, but his voice...oh. That's all.

Focusing on What Makes Music Therapy Unique Well, duh, music. There are many things that music therapists do well. We help clients, patients, residents, persons-served, whomever to reach their goals using music as the primary treatment modality. We often do not let folks know the effect of music on human development in a way that makes sense to our audience. It is not just enough to say that music works well. We have to be able to talk about the effect of music on the human being in terminology that is familiar to our audience. In order to do that, we, music therapists, must know what neurologists, music psychologists, and behavioral psychiatrists are finding out about what happens inside the brain when music is in the environment. We know how folks respond on the outside, but the specific reactions occurring in the brain are not often visible or accessible to the average music therapists. In the past week, the music therapy listserv has been in an uproar due to the coverage o...