Today was my last day of teaching at OCSA for the semester. Parts of me were happy, parts of me were sad, but when the students led a few interventions for their final project…part of me felt anxious.
Why…? I’m not sure…but as I reflect on my first semester (ever!) of teaching high schoolers, I think back to the time when I was in their shoes. The first thing that comes to mind is, “Wow! Their school offers an Intro to Music Therapy class?! That rocks.” And the second thing that comes to mind is, “Did I even KNOW what music therapy was in high school?”
Nope. No clue.
In 13 years (since the beginning of high school), my life has completely changed. I went to college. I got married. I have a husband. We have a dog. I lost my mom. We have a house. We have another house. I own a business. My life will continue to change. It’s always evolving. I’m always evolving, we’re always evolving.
Students were split into groups of three and were to select a song of their choice to facilitate a song writing and/or lyric analysis intervention for the class as a whole. The leaders were to facilitate the class in their choice of intervention as if they were clinicians.
One particular group selected the song “Reflection” from the Disney movie, Mulan. They sang the Christina Aguilera version and the class even joined in singing with them (they would have never done that the first week of class!). The leaders instructed the class to underline words or phrases that were meaningful to them and then we would all share our thoughts and ideas. I wish I would have recorded their thoughts. These students have really grown over the semester. They have become better at expressing their emotions, they aren’t thinking on the surface anymore, and they said some pretty profound things today.
I think my purpose of teaching this Intro to Music Therapy class was to (a) educate about music therapy as a profession (b) educate about music therapy [in general] and (c) to get these kids thinking about [life] and music differently. Music isn’t just the notes on the page. Music shouldn’t be forced. Music is not just music. Music creates feelings, emotions, it evokes memories and dreams. Music cannot be defined, yet is different to each musician, listener, and audience.
Today, I think the students realized that music is way more than just music. Today they reflected on things such as insecurities, putting on a ‘mask’ to try to fit in, about letting their parents know that they want to be in control of their lives, about ‘playing a part’ in society…whether they play the ‘real’ them or the ‘masked’ version…
Thoughts started flooding my body as each one went around the room and talked about what one song meant to them. One song.
By the end of class my anxiety passed and a sense of contentment filled me. They’re going to be okay. I struggle daily with letting things go that I can’t control (fun times!). Although I won’t be seeing them weekly, they will all be just fine. Ever evolving, ever changing…and hopefully ever reflecting.
Although I never took a music therapy class, I do agree that there are so much nuances to music that it cannot be objectively defined. We can always have scientists try to understand how certain acoustics affect our mind, but it gets pretty difficult linking these neurological effects to our feelings.