IZ’ Songwriting Story

IZ received individual music therapy sessions as part of her IEP while at a residential school for behaviorally and emotionally disabled students. IZ struggled with expressing herself in all forms, so after her music therapy assessment and consulting with her IEP team, the MT-BC decided to make improving her authentic emotional communication skills her primary goal, with a secondary goal of improving her expressive language in general. IZ was very motivated by songwriting and singing, so these interventions were tailor made to target these goals. IZ received 4&1/2 months of weekly sessions in person, and wrote two original songs with lyrics about feelings that were authentic to her.

            The first video example is a practice session after she wrote the lyrics to the first song. The audio recording underneath this was after several more practices, and recorded using GarageBand. The music therapist then added musical layers at IZ’ request to make the song sound more “pop-country.” Notice the difference not only in the overall sound of the song, but in her own confidence and delivery.

To facilitate her transition back to her regular school district, IZ worked with the MT-BC over zoom for one more month. Over this time, and with the help of her in-school therapist, the two completed a video recording of her second song, shown below, and began writing a third. The third song was about her feelings regarding the transition. IZ expressed excitement and confidence about her transition, so her IEP team decided remote music therapy sessions were no longer needed. Despite this termination of services, and though they didn’t finish her third song, IZ expressed enthusiasm about continuing to write songs to process her emotions.