Intoduction

[Cindy Humphreys]

Hi, my name is Cindy Humphreys and I am a music therapist working in Bay City, Michigan. I have been a music therapist for a very long time, almost thirty years, and am still as committed to the field as I was when I began. I currently work in a school district providing music therapy services to about 200 special education students each week. This includes early childhood inclusive play groups and many early childhood special education classrooms which are self contained. After meeting Beth at the AMTA conference this past October, I was very excited to learn about Raising Harmony and Sprouting Melodies. I have wanted to provide a music play group as part of our early childhood program, and I think this will be a perfect fit. I also would like to expand our special ed. classrooms to include typical developing peers, and I think that this approach will help administration understand the philosophy.

[Meredith Pizzi]

Welcome, Cindy! We are so glad you are hear to join us! You will find that this training will definitely support your work in the school district and in creating a music play group within your early childhood program. When we speak about parents and caregivers in the training, you can can substitute the words “teacher” and “paraprofessional” and think about how this applies to them. Thanks for posting! Be sure to come back and read other’s posts and feel free to contribute to the conversation again.

[Elizabeth Schwartz]

We are so excited to have you join us on this brand new adventure. It was just over a year ago that Meredith and I sat at dinner during the AMTA conference and made the decision to create an early childhood music site by music therapists for music therapists. And here we are! The seeds are sown, the ground is fertile and its time to grow.

I have had the pleasure of being a music therapist with young children since the early 1980s. Each day I go to work excited about being in the music with the children and their families. I primarily work at at center based program called Alternatives for Children on Long Island New York. I also am an adjunct professor in music therapy at Molloy College. You can learn a lot more about me by reading the blog postings on https://raisingharmony.com. Now, tell me about you….

[Alyssa Kereki]

Cindy – I am currently embarking on my own music therapy journey with the special education classrooms in my local school district. If you have any advice for me or come up with creative new ways to incorporate the Sprouting Melodies training in your fieldwork, please let me know! As a newly certified music therapist, I am eager to take in as much as possible. 🙂

[Cindy Humphreys]

Alyssa,

I hope you will enjoy the world of special education as much as I do. Early childhood is an area where I see music therapy making such an impact on children’s development. I currently have nine early childhood special education (ECSE) classrooms that are self-contained. In one building we also have a grant based pre-school (GSRP) that receives no music therapy. Even though they are in the same building as the ECSE rooms, they NEVER interact in any way. It is my intention to have some integrated classrooms next school year. I know I will have to do some PR with the teachers for them to understand the benefits, but I am confident that the results will speak volumes. I have been doing a test integrated group in another building and it has been very successful. My hope is that the Sprouting Melodies will give everyone involved in the project greater understanding and cohesiveness.

[Meredith Pizzi]

Cindy, as we travel through the course content, we are going to focus a lot on early childhood development and musical development of all children. I think this information will provide a strong theoretical framework for your outreach to the preschool teachers. We will speak a lot about working with babies and toddler and their parents. Be sure to apply this learning to working with staff members in your school programs as well. They also need the information and education that we can provide. There is a Sprouting Melodies age grouping for preschoolers called Music Makers that we won’t get into during this initial 10 week course – there is just too much to cover! – but we will talk a lot about how music supports the overall development of young children. When we get to Family Sprouts we will talk about how to reach children of different developmental levels in the same group and I’m sure you’ll see how that applies to a lot of the integrated classes you are and will be working with.

[Alyssa Kereki]

You go, Cindy! I’m excited to track your milestones in integrating the classrooms with you!

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