[humanser] Questions about practicum and documentation

[Kaiti Shelton]

Hi all,

I saw Renee's thread, which coincidentally raised some similar
questions to those I have been forgetting to ask on this list.

I am a music therapy student who has just completed my sophomore year,
however this year I have ran into some pretty major issues with my
degree program professors.  Most of the issues seem to be related to
my blindness.

First, let me preface this by saying I have excellent self-advocacy
skills, and have never really had a problem with professors until now.
 All my gen eds thus far have worked out well, and even the more
strict or less open-minded of those professors I have for only a
semester have come around and been willing to cooperate with me to
make things work.  However, I have taken most of those classes before,
or classes very similar to them, so it is easy for me to say, "I'll
need all printed materials converted into an electronic format or
braille," because I know that is the drill and what works.  I have
never taken anything with experiential learning like a practicum
before, so this is new territory for me.  I feel like I don't really
know what I don't know in terms of accommodating in this type of
situation, and my professors have obviously never had to work with a
blind student either.

I was hoping that my professors and I would be able to work as a team,
and collaborate to find reasonable acomodations for course
requirements.  Additionally, I know a blind music therapist from my
hometown, and she agreed to consult with my professors by telephone so
that we might be able to have the best of all three worlds working for
a solution---the student who knows their personal vision issues, the
professors who know which standards need to be met and where I'm
lacking, and a blind professional who has been successfully practicing
for years.  At first, my supervising professor seemed very eager to
call the music therapist to seek her advice, and she even said she
knew of another MT-BC who was blind as well who could be of
assistance.  I went into the semester and the first weeks of my
practicum thinking everything would be great, and as I started to get
more confident in sessions I thought I was doing a really good job.
The feedback about my interaction with the nursing home residents in
our session s was getting better, and I was getting stronger musically
as well.

However, an area where I had issues was in the documentation.  I was
really unsure of how to do it, because a lot of our residents did not
really talk or make much noise.  Obviously I thought to use auditory
cues for evidence, but there were still some issues in specificity.  I
might say, "The residents participated in the receptive experience,"
and struggle to say much more because I didn't know what they were
doing visually.  My observations were significantly limited during
this particular experience, because they were just moving to
pre-recorded music, and the movement is what is important to document
in order to judge whether or not range of motion has improved.

What was frustrating was that I had to walk a fine line between
advocating for my needs and being annoying to my professors.  I backed
off in my advocacy efforts because they seemed annoyed that I was
pestering them to call the music therapist I knew to get her input so
much.  I trusted that if they were that annoyed with my reminders that
they would do it.  I was wrong, and only received the family education
rights and privacy act (FERPA) form to sign on the last day of the
semester.  By that point, there was nothing that could really be done.
 I The forms which would have allowed me to give my professors
permission to speak to this other woman were not served to me until it
was too late, and I still wonder why they were given to me at all
since the professors could have talked to her in general terms without
breaking confidentiality laws.  I would have much rather have had that
happen and been a little fuzzy on what was said, and had professors
that had an idea of what to do or some way to help me, than to not
have anything happen at all.  The worst was that as a result, I was
given a failing grade on the practicum for the issues I had in my
documentation, and I was told "The difficulty for us lies in
reconciling your accomodations with professional standards," by one of
my professors.

I really am unsure of what to do next.  Having to take practicum again
will keep me in school for an additional year, which I have no clue
how I am going to pay for, and I am now scared that the same thing
might happen again.  They don't want me to remind them, yet they don't
follow through with their end of helping to come up with
accomodations.  When I do come up with my own accomodations, there is
always something clinically wrong with them.  For example, to allow me
to see what the residents were doing one day late in the semester, I
decided to lead movement while walking around the group.  My
documentation was a lot better that week, however I was told that by
standing up I was no longer on eye level with the residents, and I
failed to encorperate foot movement, because I needed to use my feet
to stand and walk around.  I don't want to annoy my professors,
because I need them to be in my corner and willing to help, but I
obviously can't leave them to their own devices and expect they'll do
as they say they will as evidenced by this past semester.
Furthermore, I feel like I'm being held back because my musical skills
and interpersonal skills have grown significantly, and I think in
those areas I am more than ready to go on to subsequent practicum
courses.

Has anyone had experience in practicums?  How did you accommodate for
visual information in documentation, and what accomodations were
helpful for you and your supervisor to use?  Any suggestions at all
would be appreciated.
-- 
Kaiti