music, therapy, and me

The BEST thing about summer is that I get three-day weekends (almost) every weekend! I am starting my first three-day weekend right now - after an hour long Windows update. I laminated some projects and read my Bible (seven Psalms this morning!) while I waited for Microsoft to finish up the things they wanted to change about my computer... Anyway, all that is finished now, and I am getting started with my morning routine. I updated my bullet journal, took my daily medications, laminated my projects that were awaiting lamination, watched some fun television (I love The Good Place and Legends of the Monkey King at the moment), and am now contemplating some breakfast. Today is going to be a day where I do what I want to do and not necessarily what I need to do. There is a big difference between those two (in my mind, at least). At some point during the weekend, I need to upload new music to my iPod, solidify my session strategies for next week (it's CENTERS week), do a load of ...

The first week of our Extended School Year (ESY) is three-fourths of the way finished. We are going into the last work day of the week, and it has been quite the week. There have been lots of new things thrown at me at the last minute, lots of gaps in communication revealed and (hopefully) fixed, and then getting back into the routine of music therapy groups. The heat and humidity is building, and my body is indicating that it really doesn't like either of those two things! I am getting back into the routine of music therapy and being a supervisor again.  I am exhausted. One of the things that I am prone to is summer Seasonal Affective Disorder. I tend to become a bit more likely to be depressed during the hot summer months than the cold, dark, winter months. Because of this, I am being as proactive as possible to combat some of my usual tendencies. This started way back when I was just a little kid. My mom asked me if I wanted to take a walk (I was probably between 18 mont...

I had two separate situations happen at work yesterday where people told me I was wrong, and I was able to prove that I was right. The situations themselves aren't all that important, but the situations could have been completely avoided had the other parties involved actually decided to talk to me rather than making their own decisions that affected me. Now, I hate confrontation, but I will go into full-blown confrontation mode if something happens that is inappropriate or incorrect. I will fact check before I start a confrontation, and I will have documentation to back up my position. I believe in being prepared (Thank you, Girl Scouts!!), and I do not enter any sort of situation without knowing the facts. Two people tried to convince me, "We've NEVER done this before." I was able to prove that we did do things this way before and this is the way it is supposed to be. They haven't responded yet, but I will be able to provide email proof that they did these t...

WARNING: This is not a complete idea or therapeutic musical experience...yet. I am working on it, so here is a glimpse into my process of putting together a TME from the very beginning...a very good place to start... Idea sparked by my sister, a second grade (sometimes first grade) teacher who teaches computer coding to her students and from materials sent by Music Therapy Mailings (I think last month, but it may have been the month before that). I have done TMEs like this in the past, but I have never really thought about it in terms of coding before. Basic ideas of coding - if you are interested in learning more about what coding is, google it! There are TONS of resources and tips and exercises - skill development in the areas of executive skill function and planning to see if things will work the way they need to work. In the music therapy room, we are going to use instruments to indicate directions and will be guiding a human through a predetermined pattern in real life. B...

Working in special education, like I do, and working in a residential treatment facility, like I do, means that I have clients available to me throughout the calendar year. When I was first hired, many years ago, the position was advertised as either a nine or twelve month position. My principal at the time did not give me a choice and signed me up for the full year position, covering our Extended School Year (ESY). I didn't argue. Way back then, we had three weeks between school and ESY. I would get REALLY bored with my own company, and I would head back to work with an enthusiastic attitude after going a bit stir crazy at home by myself. I had enough time during those breaks to go home to visit my family and then to work at home. Those days are gone. Today, I go back to work for our extended school year. Lots of things have changed in the many years that I have been at this particular facility, but one thing remains consistent - our students do much better with the structure of...

I am somewhat late to the Trauma-Informed Care (T-IC) philosophy, but it is the significant treatment philosophy being pushed at my facility, especially for those of us who are therapists. We are being encouraged to use the tenets of T-IC in every interaction that we have with students. I am immersing myself in strategy development on how to incorporate the ideas and thoughts of T-IC in my music therapy practice. One of the things that I have learned is that being a practitioner who is aware of T-IC is that there are no "T-IC" music therapy interventions, per se. The idea of T-IC is to interpret responses through a different lens - remembering that exposure to traumatic experiences changes brain development, so sometimes the behaviors are brain-based rather than deliberate. Just like there is no music that you can prescribe for a specific diagnosis, there is no "one-size fits all" when it comes to working with people. For my population, T-IC has become the bas...

I have a weekend left before our Extended School Year (ESY) begins. This is always a bittersweet time for me - the end of time away from work and the beginning of my structured time. It's good and bad. I would love more time off, but I need more structure to my time than I currently give myself. It's a good thing that I don't ever have more than two weeks off at a time, I think! I am about halfway through my office conversion. The desks are in and are becoming functional, and I have gone through about half of my books and papers. I threw out old intern files and old paperwork from my tenure on the Association Internship Approval Committee - all of that information is in the box of confidential paperwork to be recycled at the UPS store. I have WAY too many books and things left to go through, but I have made progress and will be able to finish up in the next two days. This time around, the end of summer break means that I get to work with an intern again. I am simultaneo...