Music Therapy credentials

[MT-PRO Music Therapy List]

I hear Dori's feelings of "being left out" when the credential seems to not be the ticket to employment.  
Unfortunately, our 
credential is just that - not a license or a franchise that protects us from other folks who want to do what we 
do.
 
The public schools and institutions of Texas understand the credential and only hire persons who have it as 
music 
therapists; however, this is not to say that they might not hire someone under another general classification 
that might 
include things very similar to what we do.
 
Your credential is only a small part of who you are.  If your knowledge is adequate, if your skills are good, if 
you know how 
to network, and if you keep on knockiing on doors to demonstrate what you can do, you will eventually find 
employment as a 
music therapist.  There is no law to prevent someone else from getting those jobs, if the employers are 
willing to hire them.  
 
Negative assaults on these individuals don't really serve any useful purpose.  They only indicate a level of 
intimidation by 
such competition, and if what they do is really so troubling, perhaps we need to learn why we have these 
feelings.
 
In my encounters with non-credentialed others in the field, most of whom did not call themselves music 
therapists, I have 
treated them with respect, since they have broken no laws.  I have also gone out of my way to learn about 
the things they 
do and how they do them, in order that I might improve my own skills.  The fact that they have a job must 
mean that someone 
has seen value in what they do.
 
Hang in there, Dori.  Don't be intimidated by the competition, whether credentialed or not.  In this society 
there will always be 
competition, and we have to learn to deal with it.
 
Joe Pinson, MA, MT-BC
upbeat@gte.net
-- MT-PRO Music Therapy List, mtpro@multipro.com on 10/12/1999 at 9:52:28 PM


   *********************************************************
   To UnSubscribe, point your browser to
   http://users.multipro.com/clark/mtpro/
   or send mail to mtpro@multipro.com  asking to Unsubscribe.
   *********************************************************-
--

Administrative requests (including unsubscribes and retrieving archives) for
the mt-pro list should be mailed to majordomo@lists.shsu.edu (send the
command "help" for a list of commands).  The owner may be contacted at
owner-mt-pro@lists.shsu.edu.