Playtime

I attended the mandatory training Friday.

As I said, had I been given the option to attend, it sounded interesting enough that I probably would have, although taking a day off has its attraction, too.

The person responsible for arranging the presentation picked a good one. I enjoyed the day for the most part.

But the room is way too small for that many people. When I send feedback to the person who organized it, I will make sure to say so. I am more than a little claustrophobic/agoraphobic.

Had I been required to sit in the middle of that little room, I don't know that I'd have been able to.

I'll add that to the email, too.
Not all of us handle situations like those in the same way even though sitting in a room of people who do the same thing you do isn't usually a fight or flight situation.

A panic or anxiety attack is not a rational thing.

We started out the day with a large piece of paper and a styrofoam plate of primary colors in front of us. The instructions were: Don't paint a picture of anything, but cover your page. Fold it in half, make each half different.

When questions about 'what color' or 'should I' were asked, she repeated the same instructions.

After they were painted, we laid them in the hallway to dry all day.

At the end of the day, we were shown some Eric Carle books and told to use the papers (not your own) to make an animal collage from the painted paper.

It was actually really fun. I took a bunch of photos to show to my kids, thinking that they'd enjoy seeing the process and that adults enjoy making art, too.

The painted paper that my shoes are parked in front of is the paper I painted. Despite the instructions to not paint a picture, it ended up looking sort of like a picture anyway. When we chose ones to cut up (don't be attached to your own... discover the possibilities in other ones) I did not use mine. Not sure where my painted paper got used, although I looked for it in the finished projects.

All the things we covered were things I will be able to use in my program. It wasn't boring. There were no micromanaging assholes, either. All in all, a good day. And I was out of there at 3:30, meaning I was home before the demonstrations started up in the downtown area. I didn't get stranded on the wrong side of the river and no one was blocking traffic. In addition, since it was a holiday, traffic was not as bad as it usually would have been.

What do you think? Would you enjoy doing a project like this?