Play Music More Often

"Music is the soundtrack of your life," said Dick Clark. When you hear a song, if you are like me, it takes you back to that time in your life when you heard the song for the first time or to the occasion where you heard it. That is powerful. Can you imagine the music that our residents have heard in their lifetime? Just like the world in general, they have experienced so much and it is nice when we, as activities professionals, can take them back to the happier days, with the soundtracks from their lives.

So, the question I pose to you today is how do you find and present music to your residents? Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is by way of hired professional performers. That is a given in our jobs, so in this post, I'd like to focus on a few other ways that you can bring music to your residents that they will recognize and enjoy, along with theme music for your special events.

Pandora, Amazon, (search MP3 Download then search free songs) and YouTube are places that I have personally used already. In doing research for this post, I found a few helpful articles that deserve a good look if you just starting to download music. Since I am not an expert in this field, and because I want to give credit where credit is due, I will simple direct you to the articles that I found relative to our use and hope that you will click the links to read more: 

• The Top 14 Places to Get Free Music Downloads.  
• Best free apps for downloading music with an android device.  
• If you prefer to watch a video, here is one on how to load music or listen to it offline on an android.
• How to use ITunes
• How to Sync our Entire ITunes Library to Spotify

And there are online music players available for free:

• Spotify
• mp3skull.com
• Jango
• and more

So that is how to FIND the music. Now that you have it what can you do with it? Just recently, I spoke with the man who set up our sound system in the Auditorium, and asked about connecting my IPhone to the system. He said "sure, it can be done." Shortly after that, I received a new cord that has been one of the best items that I've gotten for my job! It is an adapter cable that allows me to plug in my phone to the system. I had a 50's theme party and I found music of the 50's on Pandora. I used it for background music the night of the party. And then, we had a Cinco de Mayo party and music from YouTube was played that was just right for the evening.  

As I sit here and write this, I can visualize the 100's of CDs that I have in my office that I've collected over the years of being an Activities Director.  Just think how much space I can save and how organized they can be if I can turn them into mp3s, I can't wait to go back to work and find the right volunteer for this job! 

See, inspiration can come at any time. LOL!  I hope this article helps you add more music into your community's programs. It shouldn't cost you much financially but may take some time to get a nice library of music together. I truly believe that music will add an extra touch to your programs in the future and will enhance your resident’s journey on the "sound" track of their lives.

Mentoring Lessons

Being a Mentor is an important role.  As I write this article, it is not yet Mother’s Day and I am writing for the month of June, which is when we celebrate Father’s Day. For many of us, our parents were our first mentors.  In this article, I am sharing a mentoring encounter with you because it was a learning experience….for both of us!

The company that I work for has communities throughout the United States. At one location a young lady was recently hired to fill the position of Activities Director, but had little experience with the profession, and none with the company’s procedures. Her Executive Director had meet me and my counterpart at a neighboring sister-community, and sent her to train with us.  At first my co-worker and I were considered about the time it would take away from our regular jobs, but we changed our mindset after talking it over. We felt that it was an honor to be asked, because the Executive Director could have sent the new hired Activities Director to any other community instead of to ours. We then split the time that the new hire would be in town into what worked best for us. After that, we made our lists of items that we would cover with her, and allocated it to the person who felt it was an area that they could explain the best.

In my time with this smart young lady, I found myself recalling my first few months in the profession. (That was 28 years ago already!)I found myself recalling that I was not even sure what to ask about when I wanted to set up a dinner outing or other “field trip,” as I heard a 10 year old guest in our community call the advertised trips he saw in the Lobby.   As we went through our time together, I found myself saying “I’m going to tell you how I use to do it….. or intended to do it…. or when I have time to do it…..” Despite those comments, I feel confident that I showed her some important tools she could use to get off to the right start in her career as an Activities Director in the areas of organization, time management, resident satisfaction, and more.

What was surprise to me was how much I learned from the time that we spent together. realized that a system is only good when you use it. For example, if you keep a list of entertainers on your computer and have their evaluation score next to it, and it is not up to date, then it is not as valuable to you as it could be.

• I realized that when files are put away and you have not referred to them in a few years, that you probably don’t need them anymore.  For example, I like to keep my desk calendars from the past filed away, in case I need to see something I jotted down or what happened that day in 2002. But when I opened the cabinet to show my mentee this idea, I realized I had calendars from 18 years ago! I was so embarrassed. Who cares what happened 18 years ago? Phone numbers might not be the same anymore, and if a program worked then, it does not mean it will now.

• Another big lesson for me was that sometimes going back to basics could be a smart move. For example, I use to use a worksheet to make sure that I had all the details I needed for a successful program and to refer to it the next time that I wanted to recreate the program. But, I've gotten away from that, partly because of the easy access to information on the internet. The reminder I received while mentoring this new hire was, that I can’t determine the success or failure from the information on the internet – but I could from my worksheet, if I used the system I had in place for each program (including an evaluation afterwards).

There were other lessons, or reminders, I received in the days I was training my new friend. And yes, I was there to teach her about being the best Activities Director she could be in our company, and for the residents she will serve, and I do believe that I succeeded in that.  I am glad to say that I too learned from the mentoring experience.   I think Phil Collins said it best when he said,

  “In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.”