Takeaways from the Course

[Julie Palmieri]

What are your key takeaways from this course?

How has this learning changed your perspective on development, your approach to the work, or the way you use music in your sessions?

How will you share this information with colleagues, administrators and families?

[Kimberly Werner]

The most important takeaways from this course for me are a better grasp of typical developmental trajectories of milestones in babies <18 months old, and designing & developing programming group programming for this age group.

I’m not sure how I will share this information with colleagues/administrators, or when the opportunity to share will come up. Sharing with families will be easier, because I’ll be working directly with them while their babies are admitted to the hospital, and try to share my thought process of designing sessions with families as I’m working with them. It’s nice to have different language to speak about these things, and a more broad understanding of additional things to encourage the family to notice outside of “standard” discussed milestones.

[Maggie Johnson]

Thank you for holding it down in the conference call. It was great to hear about your situation and your perspectives!

[Christine Wick]

What are your key takeaways from this course?
I’ve also learned so much regarding developmental milestones and am taking away a lot of ideas and excitement for program development.

How has this learning changed your perspective on development, your approach to the work, or the way you use music in your sessions?
Most of my work has been with children ages 5+ to adults. This course increased my knowledge of early childhood musical responses and in turn my confidence within sessions when working with and supporting caregivers. My approach has always been to meet individuals where they are at. This course, musical examples, and developmental framework provides so many good tools to really engage with parents/caregivers. So much of working with this age group is working with and supporting parents/caregivers. The way I use music in my sessions now has more of a shift to bring them in and make them feel supported as well.

How will you share this information with colleagues, administrators and families?
I started work within part-c services this spring. I plan on sharing my takeaways with my coworkers and embedding this developmental framework within my practice.

[Katelyn Caruso]

I agree that this course sets you up for success in working with the caregivers of the children, which is so important for the young ages in particular.

[Maggie Johnson]

What are your key takeaways from this course?: For me the musical developmental levels have been very important and connecting them both with observable responses and with the musical experiences themselves. I think I have a much greater confidence in best-practices for interacting with parents and caregivers, and for the structural details of this type of programming. And, of course, the wonderful music! I am really grateful not only to be able to learn the music presented in this course, but to have a grasp of the interconnectedness of the musical phenomena, writer intentions, ways to adapt songs to different scenarios and needs etc. all so deeply—this is a huge gift!

How has this learning changed your perspective on development, your approach to the work, or the way you use music in your sessions?: I think I have been given tools to be developmentally responsive at the individual, dyad, and group levels of those I meet in groups, and tools to be responsive to my individual music therapy clients of all ages. I think I am poised to offer a much more immersive musical experience in that I have a deeper understanding of the musical mechanics in every moment and every choice I make as it relates to development. I feel a deepened sense of the power of music. My observation skills have been sharpened along with plenty of language to describe what I see in these groups. I now feel much more confident in working with young children.

How will you share this information with colleagues, administrators and families?: I supervise several therapists so I will be able to better support them when developmentally focused questions and opportunities arise in supervision. With administrators I will be more equipped to meet the demands for consultation/inservices and to fill the need for gaps in services for families and connect my lived clinical experiences and stories to the knowledge gained in this training. I’m reminded of a talk I attended recently at the MAR virtual regional conference last year and one of the speakers mentioned the importance of recognizing musical response in head trauma survivors as a way of advocating for services. I’m connecting this concept and thinking of ways to talk about musical responses as being the in-road to advocate for young children’s potential, especially when it comes to things like social-emotional learning. My hope for the future is to develop and help market the early childhood program within the agency I serve. My wheels are spinning. Thanks everyone for a great class!

[Erika (TeamRH)]

Thank you all for your insights. It has been my pleasure to be with you throughout the training. I enjoyed learning about each of you, your work, and hearing what each of you have been taking away from each week of the training.

[Katelyn Caruso]

What are your key takeaways from this course?
My key takeaways from the course are how each stage in child development matches up with a phase of musical development, and the songs and musical elements to use with each stage to support their learning and growth. The types of songs (transition song, embedded song, movement song etc.) are also a key takeaway for session planning of all ages, and put many ideas in my head about what each person needs, as well as ideas of writing these types of songs with musical elements appropriate to developmental levels but with lyrics geared towards adults. The content of this course was all so relevant and applicable that I almost feel like the whole course was the key takeaway.

How has this learning changed your perspective on development, your approach to the work, or the way you use music in your sessions?
This training has really impacted my day to day work! I work primarily with individuals with dementia and developmentally disabled adults, and honestly when I started this training, I didn’t think I would be able to use the information I leaned with my adult clients. However, it has already improved my sessions and deepened my understanding of my clients. With my dementia clients, it seems that every day they are in a different developmental phase with the music, and now I better understand how they are interacting with the music as I have learned to be a closer observer and what to look for. Also, it reminded me about how repeating a song or experience can be beneficial and through repeating a song more times than I usually would, I have gotten big responses from my clients. It has helped me to see my work through a developmental lens which has already led to some important client moments and strong interactions within the music.

How will you share this information with colleagues, administrators and families?
First of all, this training gave me an important reminder to continue to educate and advocate about music therapy in general. It has reminded me that sharing psychoeducational information for caregivers in a session can be easy and quick, and that I am an expert in what I do. I think my goal will be to share easy and understandable bits of information to the caregivers of my clients that will help them understand what I do, as well as how their loved one is being successful and interactive in a session. I do keep endorsing this course among music therapist peers as I have found it so helpful for all ages, which I didn’t realize before I took the course. Thanks for all you put into this course, I really enjoyed it and learned so much!

[Melissa Neitzel]

What are your key takeaways from this course: I really appreciated the breakdown in musical development. It was so helpful to see each step in different domains and what to look for in each stage. There are so many items to look for and now I incorporate that into my current sessions. It was a game changer!

How has this learning changed your perspective on development, your approach to the work, or the way you use music in your sessions? I feel that this course has given me tangible milestones to observe and a path to support a child’s development in the moment. It’s given me tools to have parents be active participants vs. observers. It has also provided reassurance in moments where a child is walking away or is “just staring” and how to support them and reassure the caregiver.

How will you share this information: I want to be able to share fun little one-liners that caregivers will remember. I will share information in group with observation or in a quick song. I currently work alone, but if a colleague runs a case by me, there may be opportunity to share or ask questions “have you noticed x?”.

[Leslie Aldrich]

What are your key takeaways from this course?
My main takeaways from this course are the child development stages and musical development stages. This was so interesting to me especially having been years since I’ve worked with children regularly. I feel like this was the perfect review of child development and really how they interact with the world and with music.

How has this learning changed your perspective on development, your approach to the work, or the way you use music in your sessions?
I loved the information about educating parents and how important of a piece of these classes that is. I think encouraging that bond between child and caregiver is a really beautiful thing and I love that is built in there. The “Sprouting Melodies Sayings” are really helpful to me; things to say repeatedly to help solidify concepts for parents so they can take the material home and know why it is helpful and important for their child’s development.

How will you share this information with colleagues, administrators, and families?
I am planning to reach out to the public library and see about partnering with them to start a program for children. We have a wonderful library and some pretty big gaps in the programing so I think this will be a great opportunity to start building this into our community.

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