Another Week With Max -- Part 2

So marshmallows are the usual image.  i prefer chocolate, and neither is like steel!

     Continued
  Thursday was our second VSA day.
Once again, staff seemed to have a different idea from me about how well Max did.
  But this is

a Good Place to Learn about Having a Job.

  This day, i acutally got us there at 9am.  Max, however, though willing, even eager, to get in the van, would not get OUT of the van until twenty till 10.  (Jobs in the Real World do not appreciate this.)
  On arriving, the first thing Max needed to do was Sign In.  He did so without being reminded.
  i had told him that he could have a drink of water before going on in to the job.  No, Max, a drink, not a snack too  The snack, you will need to wait for Break to have.
  Disgust.  No drink if he can't have snack too.  On into the studio.

A Different Room

  Last week we were in the big room, with two large groups of artists.  This week, we were placed in the smaller room.  It's still a BIG room, but there were fewer artists, and only one group.  Max was given a different task: instead of making pinch pots then stamping them, he was asked to smooth & flatten clay balls, then stamp them.  He used an actual stamp instead of a pencil point.

If your'e shopping in VSA's sales venues, the projects i'm talking about are a bird/garden decoration and the flattened, stamped balls will be stuck on flower pots.

Work Progress

  To recap: Max signed in at 9:38, not 9am,.  Another 2-3 minutes to get past the Snacks idea, then we arrived in the room and learned what we were to do.
  By 10:00 he had been sitting there 10 minutes, mad and refusing to work.  So i started rolling and stamping clay balls.
  i hate the feel of clay.
  Eventually, about 10 more minutes, Max was agreeably taking some of the balls and working with them.  He actually enjoys working with clay, just not being told what to do & when to do it.  (Welcome to Life 101.)
  After break, it was much the same story, with a brief stint of Standing By the Van tossed in.  Good thing we don't need to park across a street.

The Rest of the Work Day

  So we got about another fifteen minutes of work from Max.  i was stamping clay balls too, and making sure Max and his partner got them placed closely enough on the tray when finished.
  When the first students were finished, he was too.  We didn't get much cleanup from him, but he stayed & cleaned up a little.
  At the end, he did fill out the Self Assessment sheet.  He checked that he had done his best, andonly needed 2-3 redirection prompts (i would've said 25-30), and that he had had a good attitude but his bad attitude had affected others.
  Is this what they call Cognitive Dissonance?  The answers were all his own.
  He did very well with ths signout procedure, patiently waiting even though others pushed in front of him.  Some of that may have been misunderstanding where the line was, but more than one of the kids could have noticed that Max was waiting to sign out.
  That is, though, why it is Very Special Arts.

Friday: Laundry Day

  Since we don't have hot water for our laundry, we go to the laundramat.  Max does enjoy that.  Not having tutoring, plus needing todo laundry, we made Friday a laundry day.
  Laundry day includes lunch at Hardee's across the parking lot.  Max and i think Boom also enjoy starting sheets and towels, then having lunch.
  The main problem with the laundry is Max doesn't really understand about loading evenly, but he is beginning to get the hang of it, at least so much as not getting upset when i explain and redo arranging the big sheets.