Introductions

[Meredith Pizzi]

Introduce yourself to the group. Tell us about your professional experiences and what motivated you to take this course. Be sure to include where you live, if you are already doing work in early childhood and how you would like to make this information part of your practice.

[Tori Clark]

Hi! I’m Tori Clark, MT-BC. I recently began working part-time for a private therapy center in Ann Arbor, MI, which offers ABA, SLP, and OT services for children 14 & under. The owner is interested in providing some type of early childhood music class, and she likes the fact that Sprouting Melodies is tailor-made to be inclusive of children with autism and other developmental issues which we commonly see in our center. I am also offering adapted lessons, music therapy sessions, and a variety of groups to see what our market is interested in. (The adapted lessons are generating the most interest at this time.)

A little about me: I graduated from Tennessee Tech University in 2003. Since then I have worked a variety of full-time, part-time, and contractual jobs including: subcontracting to provide home-based music therapy for children with ASD, working as a paraprofessional in public school early childhood/ABA classrooms, providing music therapy in center-based summer camps for children with ASD, and working part-time as a music therapist in a school system for students with music therapy written into their IEPs as well as with all early childhood/early intervention students. I have been staying home with my daughters since late 2010, and that has given me great insight into Sprouting Melodies’ target population!

I’m interested in learning new material of course, but also in seeing what material/marketing/session structure, etc. is working for other providers.

[Courtney Kjaldgaard]

Hello!

I’m Courtney Kjaldgaard, MTA. I live in Canada (MTA is the Canadian equivalent of MT-BC) and I’ve been building a small private practice called Roads to Rhythm Music Therapy for the last two years in Brandon, Manitoba. Brandon is a small prairie city and I am the first music therapist to work within the area so I’ve been working hard to educate the community and advocate for music therapy over these last few years.
I started providing baby and toddler music classes as part of my services last year and so far I have received a very positive response from families within the area – the amount of registrations for classes has doubled since I started a year ago! I was motivated to take this course because I haven’t had much music therapy training within this age group (specifically with babies) and I want to enhance the quality of the classes that I offer by expanding my repertoire and gaining more expertise and feeling more comfortable providing a program that is structured around early childhood development and family dynamics. Also, the perk of this being a branded product will help my practice.

[Victoria Fansler]

Hello!

My name is Victoria Fansler, and I am a music therapist with the Snohomish County Music Project in Washington State. I work full-time in the Tulalip community (a reservation about an hour north of Seattle) under a grant from the Tulalip Tribes. My focus is providing music therapy for children who have survived trauma. I have clients from infants through teens, and I also have a moms’ group for mothers of young children. Part of my work is at the Tulalip Early Learning Center, supporting children six weeks through preschool age. My goals with these children generally involve filling in social-emotional gaps in development, resulting from early trauma or neglect. As the program grows, I would also like to be more of a resource for teachers and families in the community.

I currently use many songs from the “You and Me Makes We” book as well as songs taught by Elizabeth at conference; that was part of my motivation to take the course. Being rather new to early childhood work, there is a lot I hope to learn and explore here! I hope to learn more about how to use music to facilitate caregiver-child bonding, particularly for foster families or newly-reunited family. I agree with Courtney’s comment above that I feel somewhat versed in interventions for pre-school age children but not as much with infants and young toddlers. I hope to gain musical ideas for transition songs so I can offer these as tools for teachers and caregivers. I am also excited to hone my skills in providing visceral experiences of emotional validation and other-led emotional regulation through music. Finally, I am excited to just plug into a network of therapists so we can collaborate on how to successfully address issues that come up frequently with the children we serve.

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone. My name is Erika Svolos. I am one of the online moderators for this training. I live in New Jersey with my husband, my 3 year old daughter, and our four cats. It is a joy to be apart of this fantastic program and to join in your Sprouting Melodies journey. I am a graduate of Marywood University and have been a music therapist in New Jersey for the past 17 years. Over that time I have worked in a variety of settings including in-patient child/adolescent psychiatry, a private clinic for autism, a large urban public school, private practice, and a private special education high school for individual’s with emotional and behavioral disorders. In August 2013 I started my own business/private practice; Music Therapy Services of New Jersey, LLC. I completed the April 2013 Sprouting Melodies online training and it is a wonderful addition to my practice. I began offering Sprouting Melodies classes in February of 2014 and I have truly enjoyed working with my SM families.

I will be assisting with any questions and/or technical difficulties. I will be sending you an email with information about the online forum technology and my contact information. If you do not receive the email, please contact me at erika.svolos@gmail.com.

I am looking forward to getting to know each of you over the next ten weeks!

[Janet Buchanan]

Hello, my name is Janet Buchanan! I am currently a music therapy intern at Orchard Manor in Lancaster, WI, which is a facility that serves older adults and people with intellectual disabilities. My early childhood experience started in college when I had multiple practicum placements working with preschoolers. After finishing college, I took a year off and taught 3K full time before beginning my internship. I have absolutely fallen in love with this age group and I’m interested in learning as much as I can. However, at this point I do not have experience with the caregiver-child classes or with very young children. I am looking forward to learning the Sprouting Melodies material and eventually add it to my practice!

[Debrah Evans]

Hello! My name is DeeDee Evans. I am a relatively new music therapist, with most of my professional experience in assisted living facilities working with older adults. I am from Pittsburgh, PA and currently work primarily with older adults in an assisted living facility. My early childhood experience is limited to a two clinical placements, and the work I did in my internship with the intergenerational music group at our facility. Now that I am working in the facility full time, we continue to run the intergenerational group bi-weekly with preschoolers aged 4-5. Additionally, we recently received a grant to extend music therapy services to the community which includes the preschool and day care located within our facility. With this in mind, I wanted to complete the Sprouting Melodies training to gain a better understanding of how to work with young children (3 and under), and hopefully extend the model to working within the intergenerational groups. I’m also hoping to be able to create new groups with the infant and toddlers groups in the daycare to further fulfill the needs of the grant. If I find that I’m having success in running the groups at my facility, I may even try to assess the need to provide group services in my own community as well! I can’t wait to dive into the course and gain a better understanding of how to lead groups in early childhood music therapy!

[Megan Neil]

Hello All!

I completed my BM in Music Therapy at Slippery Rock University near Pittsburgh PA. Throughout my time in school I gained a lot of experience in practicum settings working with kids and teenagers. I was in a crisis shelter, psychiatric hospital, juvenile detention center, etc.

I decided that I really loved working with teenagers and pursued an internship at Bethany Children’s Home in Womelsdorf PA. This is a group home for foster care teenagers/youth. All had experienced various forms of trauma. Some came after multiple traditional foster home placements that did not work out. Others were placed through Juvenile Probation Offices. I completed my internship and was hired on to work there first as a therapeutic summer recreation worker and then directly after as a music therapist. I loved my job but the facility went through many structural changes and became a very difficult environment to be in. I also decided throughout this year that I did not feel complete in my studies and looked to further my education.

I decided to pursue my MS in Music Therapy from Radford University in VA. I was offered a graduate teaching assistantship. Through this position I worked directly with students to supervise their undergraduate work directly, provide individual supervision & feedback, and attend clinical class and assist with learning by providing lectures & participating. It was a lot of work but I loved it! And want to continue supervising students & interns in the future!

During my time at Radford we were able to pick an area of focus for our practicum and clinical projects. Due to my experience at Bethany Children’s Home I decided that I wanted to focus on family work. I saw the many youth at Bethany who were doing really well personally and were placed back home. But a month or two later they would be back. I started to realize the impact of the systems they lived in- especially their family system. Even though the youth was doing well when he/she was placed back in the same environment that had not been changed things got trickier. I realized that if I worked with family units music therapy may have a broader impact. I focused my work on “alternative family units” specifically foster, adoption, and reunited families. I worked with a reunited family (kids were in foster care and then came back to birth mom) and then an adopted family where the child had been in the home for about two weeks before we started music therapy.

Through my clinical project I learned about family work, family centered practices, and what was happening in the music therapy world related to this. My dream job was to work with the family contexts I focused on in my project however this doesn’t exist yet (that I know of). Through my research I was led to early intervention and eventually found Thom in Boston. Through early intervention one of the ways family qualify is through risk factors. One of the risk factors is adoption and foster care! And all of early intervention work is with families (since the kids are 0-3). I decided to take the job based on these factors! And as an added bonus this summer MA has recognized music therapy as a separate category in early intervention meaning music therapists can now bill insurance as MT-BCs!

I actually just started my job last week in Boston. I have experience working with kids, teens, and families however the 0-3 year old pocket is new to me! That’s why I signed up for this course. I chose it particularly because it was geared specifically toward music therapists and I am hoping to get a lot out of it to add to my new early intervention position!

Sorry for the length! Clearly I am excited 🙂 I look forward to this course with all of you!
Megan Neil

[Anonymous]

It was wonderful to read each of your introductions and get to know you virtually. I look forward to hearing from you on the forum. Remember to check in regularly to interact on the forum, you will get the most from the training by doing this. If you find you are behind more than two weeks and you are having difficulty staying up to date with the training, please reach out to let us know. Thank you!

[Joanne Van Eycke]

Hello Everyone!

I am jumping into the training a little late and very excited to be joining you. I did my undergraduate music therapy training at Montclair State University and received my masters in music therapy from New York University. I have been a practicing MT-BC since 2003 and have worked with school age children with and without special needs since then in public schools, private schools and private practice. The majority of this time I was in New Jersey until I got married and then had a private practice in North Carolina. I am currently back in New Jersey for at least one more year (my husband is in the US Marine Corps so we will move where and when they send us) and interested in getting back to work. I have been a stay at home mom for the past 14 months with my little boy. Recently, I have been approached by a local daycare that would like to provide music activities for their community. I think I will really benefit from this sprouting melodies training as I have never worked with babies and toddlers. Having my son is actually the first time I have really experienced being around a baby. We participate in many different group activities for his age and I find the dynamics of the groups particularly interesting. I hope to gain insight on working with this population and look forward to having a marketable program to offer the daycare.

[Peggy Grace]

Hello everyone, my name is Peggy Grace and I am a board certified music therapist from Fort Myers, FL. I have been working for the local hospice for over 15 years along with 3 other music therapists who work with our agency. My main focus is visiting pt.’s in their homes, skilled nursing facilities and group homes. Our music therapists also work closely with the bereavement department to help individuals of all ages deal with the loss of a loved one. I feel very blessed, because our agency also started a program working with children with life-threatening illnesses called “Partners In Care”(PIC), also known as “Hope Kids Care”. I work with 5 of these children on an individual basis. I love working with children, but it was initially challenging because I had very little experience in working with children during my training. I was drawn to this course because I want to expand my knowledge of childhood development, repertoire of children’s music and incorporate new techniques into my practice. I am also considering starting some music therapy group settings with some of the schools in the territory that I work. After viewing this first video, I am very excited to learn and apply the knowledge and techniques offered in this training!

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