To refuse to do what my employer wants me to do?

[Confused222]

I am a qualified music psychotherapist and employed to work in a college setting. The company that employs me now wants me to mostly teach music on a regular long term basis when I go back from mat leave in August. I’ve never trained to be a teacher and was only employed to do music psychotherapy to benefit those with mental health issues.
I was told in the beginning I would only do psychotherapy and case studies/reports/ evaluations etc and work closely with mental Heath team etc etc. I had clarified this at the interview because I was the only music therapist to be employed when the rest are teaching staff.
now when I go back from leave I’m supposed to be a teacher?

I don’t know how to teach.
I have covered teaching classes in the past to help out when I’ve had space and always told the students that I was a music therapist covering a class for the session etc, so they wouldn’t expect me to really know how to teach them and just got on with their work as I was more of a supervisor on the day.

Some of my colleagues think I’m being stubborn as they’ve all had to move around and teach different subjects, but that’s the term of their contract and they are all teachers. Mine never said I would have to teach any subjects. They only change I could expect was to be moved around to provide therapy sessions in different locations. the company are telling me that I’ve always been a combined therapist/tutor but this is not true.

Genuinely don’t know what’s right anymore or what’s even really happening. I am worried about my clients as it means they will no longer get sessions that they were referred to for mental health reasons.. But if they were to come to me for music classes they might still want to open up about thoughts & feelings and then the lines could be blurry? Or they just won’t want to come back and go back to not having a support that worked well for them. Or the classes might not even be offered to them?
gutted as this is my dream job but feel like it’s slowly being pulled away from me and I’ll be letting clients down. I’ve been crying every day..

Can they do this? Or am I overthinking this? Should I just be grateful to have a job? Should I leave?

they at first had tried to get me to get my clients to complete some educational qualifications on based their therapy sessions! (Such as wrote about therapy for someone else to mark for writing award, or working with others award etc). I said that was unethical and immoral and I couldn’t even ask my clients that
That's astonishing and completely unethical. Imagine seeking therapy and being pressured by someone else to use your therapy like that. I'm horrified that a college is behaving like this. To be honest I find it odd that a college would employ a music psychotherapist, this is healthcare not education. Unless they felt the need to diversify, which doesn't seem to be the case if they now want you to teach.
I suspect they've realised that offering psychotherapy doesn't give them performance numbers in the way that students passing exams does.

@FictionalCharacter

i think you’re right about performance numbers.
mans yes at first they seemed to want to reach out to students who were Struggling with mental health and offer them more support. They seemed really big in the mental health side of things and initially the work I was doing was really appreciated. but I guess they don’t feel they have the capacity to offer this now.

It's quite common for colleges to offer counselling as part of their "support package" to students and this may or may not include things like music therapy.

Maybe they would find it easier to employ a therapist through an agency?

I know it’s not exactly the same but I just wanted to say, I have been a college tutor and have a PGCE qualification (which was necessary to the role) and now work in a CBT related group facilitator role. Whilst many skills are transferable, it is NOT the same as you know.

It feels like they aren’t being transparent about the situation. Lots of good advice on here.

Thank you for sharing.
yes certain skills are transparent.
I guess if they could be more transparent it would make things a lot more clear and easy moving forward.

Hold your boundary. They're counting on your getting upset and going along with them.

Sounds like this is edging towards constructive dismissal, to be honest.