Our First Continuing Ed Class...
...for our annual renewal of our certification as foster parents was titled "Loving Through Lifebooks".I was excited about this class, as we were currently working on Cookie's album and wanted to be sure we were putting everything in it that we could think of.
The class was an insult.
The teachers asked us "What kind of things can you put in a lifebook?" "Who can work on a lifebook?" "Is a lifebook just pictures?" "How can you add interest to a lifebook?" "Who is a lifebook for?"
Then she proceeded to show us matted pictures and point out that a yellow mat looked good because there was some yellow in the girl's shirt in the picture. She also showed us some relatively plain looking pages and commented on how they could be improved with more *ish*.
That was the first hour.
They used copies of chapters from some book that was so poorly written, it made us laugh. The book referred to biracial and multiracial children as "blended children". Oh my Lord. So, they are smoothies?
Then, she talked about things that were inapproriate to document in a lifebook, and actually said, "Things like masturbation should not go in a lifebook." Gee - ya think?
It was all I had to contain myself.
The second hour they took out supplies and asked us to make a Lifebook page using pictures we had brought (!!!) Um, that would have been great, except no one TOLD us to bring pictures with us. I didn't know this was an art class, people.
I had a few wallet sized copies of Cookie's most recent pictures, but nothing much. Needless to say, we went to work creating out page for her pictures. Folks sitting near us made fun of us (i.e. tired to correct us) for not using pink as the background color - we were using blue with yellow borders.
I didn't really want to make the page without the supplies we have at home that make the pages look a lot more professional, and less...moochie. I mean, moochie is alright on occasion - but these supplies were just plain awful.
So, we made the page - and put it in her lifebook when we got home. It will forever be known as the page we made in biggest waste of 2 hours of our foster care training to-date.
Get a clue, trainers. We have IQs higher than hedgehogs.
I sure hope our class later in the week titled "The Cycle of Poverty" has more to say then, "when you don't have money, you can't pay your bills". Ugh.
posted by No Longer In Crisis @ 6/19/2006 10:58:00 AM
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