Interview with Gwen Gates

Music Therapy major at Utah State

What ways can you use music therapy to help people with disabilities?

I had a practicum in special education class. I was working with a student who was on the Autism spectrum, he has a hard time making decisions and expressing himself. We had a story time and music activity then presented a table with different instruments. He got to pick up an instrument and say what he thought of and what kind of animal it sounded like. He had to think for himself and express himself. As we did this more he more readily answered questions.

Another boy I worked with had a Traumatic Brain Injury when he was four. He struggled to count and say phonograms. For an activity we made a song with the phonograms he was trying to learn, he would have to repeat the sounds before we could go onto the next part of the song until he had said the first phonograms. For counting we put numbers of the floor and played musical chairs, whatever he stopped on a number he had to pick up an instrument and played it however many times the number said.

I have heard of people using instruments for movement, like lift your knee up high enough to hit a drum or stretch fingers enough to reach a 5^th on the piano.