It's hard to believe it is September, and the kids are back in school. That means it is my yearly reminder to educate the public on music therapy in a school setting! I am going to talk about two ways I use music therapy in schools: as a related service and as an enhancement.
For music therapy to be used a related service, a student must first be referred for services. This student is probably not making adequate progress on their IEP goals and/or is resistant to other therapies/modalities of education. Insert music therapy! As the board-certified music therapist, I come in and observe the student in the classroom. How are they performing on the IEP goal? How many prompts does it take them to complete the task? Are they completing the task in a sufficient number of opportunities? After the observation, I complete the exact same classroom tasks but with music. I may sing a song about money if they have a money goal, I may have a series of instruments to sequence if they have a reading goal, etc. Finally I compare the performance between the two settings. If the student has a significantly higher difference of performance in the MT session than in the classroom, then that student qualifies for music therapy as a related service. One school district in which I work also has me come in to provide music therapy as an enhancement service. I currently provide a social skills group to five students in a classroom. I use their pre-existing IEP goals to work on appropriate peer socialization, impulse control, communication, and more. It also provides them an opportunity to make music at their own level. We also do songwriting for them to work on communicating with their iPads. Music Moves currently provides music therapy services in the Albia and Moravia school districts.
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