What I mean is that I will sit for hours staring at a blank lesson/session plan racking my brain for what I should do. For some reason, I have the hardest time coming up with activities. This is something I struggled with during practicums and recently as well.
So how do I solve this? One way I've come up with recently is to just adopt the brainstorming strategy. Whenever an idea pops into my head, I write it down. Doesn't matter if it I think it's an awesome idea or a terrible idea, I write it down. This has been working pretty well for me. Sometimes when I come back to the idea, it really comes together and forms something pretty cool. Other times, nothing really comes of it. But that's okay. The idea is that it gives me a really wide range of ideas to start with, which is sometimes the hardest part.
Just this morning, I was awoken by my alarm radio by the song "Do You Feel Like We Do?" by Peter Frampton. For whatever reason, I thought about using this song in an activity involving recognizing emotions. I wrote it down, and a few hours later when I came back to it, I was able to form it into a workable plan (one that I'm pretty excited to try out. In fact, depending on how it goes next week, I'll do a write up on here.)
Professional MT's, do you ever find yourself suffering from music therapy writer's block? What are some successful strategies you employ to overcome this?
When I have to plan sessions I play "what do I know?" and ask myself the following questions ---
ReplyDelete1. what does this person like to do (in mt, that is)?
2. what is this person really good at?
3. what is this person's mt goal?
Then it sort of comes to me. :/
My issue tends to be needing to get out of my head, so just playing lots of music helps. I like to sit down at the piano and sight-read songs from fake books or just to improvise freely - lots of ideas come from that musical exploration.
ReplyDeleteI try and remind myself too that with many of my clients, I don't have to "reinvent the wheel" each time - I can take something I already know they like to do (like Michelle mentioned), adapt it to their current needs or add an additional element to it, and recycle it. Sometimes I tend to forget how some of our clients really benefit from repetition!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments! Very interesting to note how different everyone's strategies seem to be.
ReplyDeleteI work with older adults. Themes work really well. I decide on a particular theme and choose a variety of interventions based on the theme.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate all of these great ideas. For programs it's useful to establish a cycle of session plans. It provides a basis and the freedom to adapt as needed. I also try to build a skeleton outline and fill in the details when the right intervention strikes. Plus, keeping copies of every session plan ever!
ReplyDelete