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The author describes a music therapy group session
oriented
towards integrating a child with serious
mental illness and autistic behaviour with
his classmates.
The
experience, carried out at the Archimede Social
Co-Operative Laboratory in Pesaro and financed
by the Town Council, was performed by two
music therapists over a period of three years in
53 sessions.
The work
aimed to highlight the expressiveness of
every child and attempted to activate non-verbal communication
through relationships mediated by
sound music elements.
Teachers
were entrusted to observe any change in
the group produced inside the setting, trying to
maintain the relational development in classroom as
well.
By now more than 20 years have passed since the
approval of Law no.
517* on the integration of disabled
children and adolescents in schools; the consequent
abolition of special schools and differentiated classes
started off a slow process of integration
which, unfortunately, we still cannot say
has reached complete maturity.
By law every
school-age child, whatever his/her condition,
must form part of the school population for
his/her age bracket.
This is based upon
the concept that a school situation is
only complete if all children are part of it, excluding
no one. Thus, a disabled child, for example 6-year-old,
is a constituent element, not additional, of
a reception class in the school in his neighbourhood.
That is to say, his/her presence is necessary,
not optional. It is not, therefore, the disabled
child who is integrated into the class, but the
class that is not whole if that child is missing.
This is the real
meaning of integration; otherwise we
must refer to inclusion (etymologically: adding
a element to an already whole organism).
Planning a music
therapy intervention can make a
valid contribution to the start of the ongoing integrative process, provided
that we are receptive
to the introduction of
other pedagogic techniques
appropriate for the
impaired person,
such as
psychomotility, non-verbal communication, group
work, etc., which have also shown themselves to
be beneficial not only for the children with
difficulties but also for the others.
In particular the language of sounds, which does not
define reality by naming it, which speaks in an
analogue way through symbol and metaphor, which
does not require decoding or interpretation, but
which also allows us to accept contradiction, the
fragmented and the inexpressible, makes
participation in a common project possible for
everybody in that each person, as a central character,
can display all of their inner world made
of emotions, feelings, suffering, memories, but
also of imagination, dreams and fantasy, in their
relationship with the other person.
Accepting one
another, listening to one another despite
differences, creating together and com-municating, not
necessarily through spoken language, prepare
us to gain the ability to recognize one’s
own differences and difficulties and those of others.
All of this contributes to forming people able
to share and accept individual differences.
The role of the class group in integration
It often happens in the presence of disabled children that
compromises are invented between integration
and inclusion in which the children in question
spend some time in the class (in a group relationship)
and some in the support classroom (dual
relationship) with a reference adult.
The teaching team,
the curriculum teachers and the
support, does not always carry out their intervention
in synergy with and inside the class group.
It often happens that, faced with the inclusion
of a disabled student,
the rest of the group
that incorporates him/her
is considered as
a sort of "indistinct backdrop"
against which
to make the integration
"happen".
I am convinced, on
the contrary, that the group itself
is a strong driving factor and, in fact, its involvement
is the supporting core around which school
integration revolves. In fact, the conflict between
diversity and similarity is actually played out
within the group and it is there that this conflict must
be faced, negotiated and resolved. This
implies raising the consciousness of the underlying
group dynamics; the group can facilitate the
growth and learning effort or, in contrast, obstruct
the process.
The project
The work I am presenting is directed at class
groups of children at nursery and primary school
between 5 and 11 years of age and involved 467
children in total in the 1999/2000 school year.
The initiative, organised by the ARCHIMEDE
cooperative and financed by the Town Council of
Pesaro, started five years ago and over time has
undergone numerous changes that have enriched
it with more and more stable characteristics,
making the intervention more and more worth-while
and insightful as a result.
The project is aimed at those classes which include
children with various types and severities of
disability (even if not indicated by the health services).
The aim is to facilitate the integration of individual
differences through the sharing of experience.
Preliminary phase
Before starting the programme the teachers and headmasters interested in the project are invited
to a preliminary
meeting with the music therapists in
order to gather the data required for the logistical
organization and to establish a sort of therapeutic
alliance based on the awareness and sharing
of the intervention project.
On that occasion the
elements of the music therapy, the
role that the teachers are invited to play within
the setting and the type of collaboration requested
of them are made clear (writing up a record
of each encounter, connection of the experience
with educational activities such as writing
thoughts/an essay and/or drawing the experience
of each encounter, compilation of an entrance
questionnaire to identify the objectives more
quickly given the brevity of the cycle, writing a
final report as a verification tool).
The
intervention
The encounters (10 for each class), lasting 50 minutes
each, take place on a weekly basis at the AGORÀ
Music Therapy Laboratory located in a primary school.
The acoustically insulated laboratory has
at its disposal a large and varied number of musical
instruments, a stereo system and equipment for
audiovisual recordings of the sessions.
The children make use of the town council’s
transport service and arrive at the
laboratory accompanied by their
teachers, who take on the role of
observers within the setting.
All of the encounters are carried out
with the simultaneous presence of
two music therapists from the
cooperative.
The
technique: group improvisation
Musical improvisation is an expressive
means which every individual can
use to give voice to their own
inner life and to their own sensory perceptions thanks
to the use of a musical instrument, of
their own voice and of their own body which
act as intermediary communication objects
between themselves and the others.
In joint improvisation it is also
necessary to establish a
relationship with the others. Therefore, the task
of improvising in a group invests in the individual first
of all but contains an implicit invitation to
pay attention to the others at the same time
and therefore to the differences.
I think this possibility to experiment and establish a
privileged non-verbal relationship with the other
person, but also with ourselves, through sounds
(that come from the individual’s inner life, that
arrive into a space shared by the group to then
return to the subject himself, enriched with meaning),
assisted by the professionalism of the person
who leads the experience and by the participation of
the teachers, is a valuable means for achieving
the integration of differences (individual and
professional).
The
objectives
The general objectives are:
• development of the personality and its expressive potential;
• increase of self-esteem;
• recognition and appreciation of individual differences through
the improvement of mutual listening
skills;
• growth of emotional maturity and of socialisation skills.
To clarify, each class group also benefits from a personalised
intervention with specific objectives.
The
verification
Considering the numerous difficulties I met with some
teachers regarding their attitude during the encounters,
I planned a rather unusual way of holding
the verification meeting: I called them into
the Music Therapy laboratory to work with the
musical instruments. Before the
meeting I arranged the instruments in the
centre of the room and around them the chairs
in a circle.
On arrival I invited them to use
non-verbal language to express their experience as observers, highlighting
the fact that sound would have transmitted
senses and certainly not meanings.
I felt the need to make this proposal because, from
the observations that were given to me each week,
a sort of "photograph" of the encounter often
appeared, a sequence, that is, of events impartially
described as per their order in time.
Very few teachers accepted to express, despite my requests,
their state of mind, thus clearly expressing their
emotional participation and I think this was
due to their difficulty in putting themselves on
the line.
To my great surprise on the day of the verification, however,
the teachers accepted my proposal without
reserve. This can probably be put down to
the fact that many of the teachers have known each
other for years and that the level of intimacy made
the group sufficiently confident and well
integrated. Despite this, it emerged that almost
everyone thought the experience would be
less difficult than it actually turned out to be.
We then reflected for some time on how significant it
is for the children to put themselves on the
line in such an important way, not only in the context
of music therapy but every time they are asked
to express themselves (this aspect is sometimes underestimated
by adults).
Some teachers recognised that they had judged the
children’s expression and creativity according to
scholastic and aesthetic rules appreciating, or even
worse discrediting, the sound production of some
of them.
I took advantage of this opportunity to repeat the
importance in relationships of empathetic comprehension
and the appreciation of every creative
act, even if bizarre, and each individuality which
is revealed in any case in a music therapy context
(but also in a scholastic one).
In the second part of the verification meeting I left
space to discuss the process observed in every class
group. Here I will try to summarise the general contents that emerged
during the verification meeting
for the last school year.
It was observed that joint improvisation
made a decisive contribution to
the positive atmosphere of the
groups, to the sense of mutual trust and to the
sense of belonging and cooperation.
A gradual overcoming of the sense of
competition and bullying, of
fighting and of exaggerated self-assertion,
which initially brought life to most of
the groups, was witnessed. As some teachers testified,
this allowed the emergence of productive communication
thus facilitating group and cooperative
work, also during school activities.
Having the possibility to express
themselves in a non-verbal
situation, the children with impairments sometimes
amazed their teachers by showing unexpected
abilities.
The collaboration of those teachers who
put themselves on the line in
writing reports exposing intimate
parts of themselves was of great value.
By doing this many of them were able to
actively enter into the project,
observing the relational dynamics
of the class group from a completely new
perspective.
Reflections
Without doubt, over the last few years bure aucratic, organizational
and cultural difficulties have not
been lacking, but I can also say that there have
been many conquests and satisfactions.
First and foremost is the fortune in
finding an amenable Council
Administration, receptive to starting
up the project.
Over the years I have been able to see
that my work has contributed
towards creating a culture which
seems to spread itself through the teaching body:
in actual fact, the misunderstanding between
music education and music therapy is always
less frequent and the involvement of the teachers
is more intensive each year.
Lastly, but by no means in order of importance, this
experience has allowed me to grow professionally and personally.
I have learnt that, when we are called to carry out an
intervention by someone who is not familiar with
the elements of music therapy and for this reason
proposes inaccessible or conflicting objectives, it
is important to establish a relationship in any
case which aspires towards mutual growth by degrees.
Even when you run into obstacles for our work,
even when the request for help turns out to hide
needs different to those stated, I have learnt to
look for an intermediate working hypothesis which
can move towards the demands of the people
who revolve around the problematic child, thus
fulfilling his/her needs at the same time. I
have learnt never to take either side.
I have learnt to mould my professionalism without
losing sight of my objectives. Clearly, all of
this requires a lot of energy and willingness to refine
one’s own ability to listen.
Throughout this personal and professional
journey I have been greatly helped
by the constant discussions with
my colleague, who, in sharing the
experience, has supported me a great deal, enabling
me to overcome the most critical moments.
I therefore consider the simultaneous
presence of two music therapists
to be indispensable for the running
and direction of group encounters, particularly with
children.
*
Law 4 August 1977, no. 517: regulations regarding the
evaluation of students and the abolition of
resit exams, as well as other rules modifying school
regulations, published in the Official Gazette
(which publishes the text of new laws) no.
224 of 18 August 1977.
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It is not the
disabled
child who
is integrated into
the class, but the
class that is not
whole if that child
is missing.
The
language
of sounds makes
participation
in a common
project possible |
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References
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Benenzon
R.
(1981), Manual de Musicoterapia
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W.R.
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Sull’osservare: principi, metodi, rischi
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E.
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P.L.,
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