Music Therapy

I try and use music when I am teaching to engage students in the content and have discovered that it transcends into my counselling practices as well.

I see a student regularly because he has difficulties dealing with the loss of his mom who left his family and moved away. In our counselling sessions, we deal with his feelings and develop strategies to deal with his frustration and anxiety. At Christmas time, this student was very agitated, because he wanted to get his mom something special but he didn’t know what to get. I suggested that he write a poem of his feelings for her, which we could send her. Once the poem was finished, however, we decided to put his poem and voice to music in the form of a song. After we recorded the song together, we burned it to a CD, took a photo, and made a CD cover of his song. He then sent his very special present to his mom.

This student is very proud of his song project and gave me permission to share it with others.