Today I participated in Anna Haglin’s European paper making class. This is a two-week workshop, so today’s class was very information heavy, while next week’s will involve more work time for the students. Anna had a video about the history of paper making for students to watch as well as a detailed explanation of how to use the raina pulp maker. The room that the raina is stored in is very small, so Anna split the class in two groups in order to give demonstrations. This was an important decision, because the class was meant to be the prerequisite to using the raina during studio hours, and so it was important that each student fully understood and could see the entire demonstration. The other half watched the video on Anna’s TV, which she had brought in. The Tv was not set up before class, and I think that doing this would have made class run just a bit more smoothly. The video was very interesting and talked about a professor who had attempted to recreate the way that paper has been made historically, and showed how he used the historical precedent to solve problems that came up. However, the Reina demonstration was detailed and students watching the video in each group ended up having some downtime while the other group was wrapping up the explanation. The students did not seem to mind this however, and they chatted about their own practices and different local art events with one another. This is a perk to teaching adults, you can leave them unattended and unoccupied for a short while, whereas with children, this is much harder. Anna also provided a resource list to learn more about the different types of homemade paper and Overall, I think the students learned a lot and are excited to make paper next week.