Professor Pye
January 12, 2015 1:46 AM
Beginner DADA-- Years 1 & 2 by Professor Pye
His first night at Sonora, Alfie had stayed in his room, asking the prairie elves to send him some simple bread and soup as he really didn’t want to have to deal with the students first thing. However, Alfie was not one to do a half-job and so he rose early the next day to finalize his lesson plans—all ones he had asked former professors to look over for him, in order to ensure they were beginner level material. He had at one point been concerned that perhaps his material might overlap with that of the Care of Magical Creatures or Charms material but he soon put those thoughts out of his mind. He wasn’t at Sonora to make friends, just there until they found a full-time professor for Defense or until he found a better suiting job—whichever came first. However, with the damage his father had done it seemed as though the former was more likely than the latter.He’d been teaching the beginners for a week now, which meant five one hour lessons, and he was bored. The only part about his job that he liked was that on Tuesdays and Thursdays he had nowhere to be until 1:30 pm and on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays he basically had the whole day off since class was from 4:00 to 5:00 pm then. This meant that he was able to spend the rest of his time as he pleased, which meant walking in the Labyrinth Gardens, wracking his brain to figure out why it was that his old job had not been enough for his father who was a fan of those suit and tie positions. Here, however, he left his ties alone as he dressed, choosing instead to pull on dark, worn khakis and a lightweight, cream colored sweater. The weather in Arizona was hot, he had discovered, unpleasantly so and nothing like his native England. The school itself however was temperature controlled for the most part and he had made sure to make his bedroom and classroom even colder than the rest of the building. If students got cold, they could wear extra layers under their robes but he wasn’t going to swelter in the heat of a place he didn’t even want to be in. His dark hair he left unbrushed and, in one last dig at his father who thought that men worth their weight were clean shaven, he left the more-than-five-o-clock-shadow alone. He was twenty-seven years old and his father was still controlling his life, though it seemed like a small thing, each one was a victory in and of itself.
Today Alfie’s legs dragged more than usual as he walked to the classroom. It was Monday. He hated Mondays. He vaguely remembered hearing of a Muggle cartoon cat who also hated Mondays and felt sympathy towards the fat, orange creature whose name he could not remember. However, it was the start of his second week which meant there was one less week, one less Monday, and soon to be one less class that he would have to teach. Defense class was the one time during the day during which he was required to be in the same room as Barnaby and it was not a situation he looked forward to in the slightest. It was forced, awkward and uncomfortable.
He entered the classroom seconds before the period began and took his place at the front of the room, choosing to sit on the desk’s smooth surface rather than stand around like professors had when he was in school. Blue eyes stuck out of the crowd, piercing him with their intensity. Alfie ignored them. The students already knew of the no nonsense policy he had described on his first day of the class. They already knew that they ought to address him as Pye, though because of his gruff attitude, some had slipped and called him Sir when they asked questions. That, he was okay with—he just couldn’t bear to have the professor title added to his last name. Every time he thought about it was like another knife to the heart reminding him that he had lost out on the opportunity to do what it was he really wanted to.
“Quills and parchments out, notes and books away,” he said once he had finished tallying up the number of heads in the room. Full attendance or not he was going to start the class and if a student was late, then they would have to make up lost points as he had already made it clear that tardiness or absence during his daily quizzes was not to be tolerated. Perhaps one of the redeeming qualities of his class was that he assigned no homework, preferring instead to use daily quizzes on the previous class’s material as a way to make sure the students knew their material. One might say he was a little too harsh, but the subject on which Defense was formulated around was difficult and he refused to let his students slack off. A good foundation was essential to later success. He understood that they were eleven and twelve, but age made no difference to the creatures and dark wizards and witches who lurked out in the real world. “Today, your quiz is a paragraph on doxies and bow truckles. I want ten lines minimum, name, year and house at the top of your parchment. You will have fifteen minutes, your time starts now.”
While he waited for the class to finish their quizzes, he began to prepare for the lesson, taking out the various shoeboxes he had put under his desk the night before. Once the time was up, he collected the papers and resumed his tabletop space. “Today, we will be learning a spell to repel. This spell can help if someone has thrown something at you, if a small creature—like the ones we covered last class, has decided to attack you, or if something is falling towards you among other things. The first day we covered the lumos and nox charms which are considered defensive charms.” Why that was exactly, Alfie had no earthly idea. “The second years should have been familiar with them already from previous classrooms and maybe some of the first years were as well. By now all of you should have mastered it.” He had asked they all be completely able to cast that spell by the end of the first class so any student who still couldn’t execute it to his standards would have been approached and asked to stay after class on Friday. “The spell today is the knockback jink. You will have a week to learn it as it involves wand movement and direction. The incantation for this is flipendo,” Alfie said, demonstrating the wand movement with a quick wrist flick in the shape of a check mark with a hook at the end of it. “The emphasis of this spell is ‘pen’.”
“You will all have ten minutes after I’ve explained the exercise to practice your flipendo wand movements, after which I want you to all pair up. I have hidden immobilized pixies, imps, and fire crabs around the room. Your job is, in these pairs, to take turns using the lumos and flipendo spells. I will dim the lights and you will use lumos to explore the room taking care to aim down-wards so you don’t blind your classmates while your partners will use flipendo to “knockback” any creature you discover. After each creature is discovered, switch spells. If I find that anyone is using the knockback jinx to purposely hurt each other or if I believe they are then they will be severely punished. So be absolutely sure it is one of the aforementioned creatures before you cast the spell. You may begin.”
As a student, Alfie would have loved to take part in hands-on lessons such as the one he had just given the students. In reality, the various creatures would have been on the offensive, but Alfie wanted to make sure the students knew how to properly cast the spell before animating their targets. Of course the “creatures” he had hidden around the room were simply harmless plaster replicas that would most like turn into a crumbly mess if knockbacked into something hard enough but that wasn’t something he wanted to tell the students. It didn’t fall into the category of things he thought they ought to know. Besides, the lights would be dimmed enough that they would most likely not see the mess they had created and he planned on cleaning the room after the period so the other professors wouldn’t have to deal with the mess. It would give him more time on his own and hopefully would enable him to avoid conversation with the other professors at dinner.
OOC: Welcome to Defense Against the Dark Arts. Like your other classes, posts are graded on realism and creativity (I am loads more lenient than Pye). In addition to these two things, posts are also marked on length and abiding to the site rules.
However, Pye would intervene should anything get out of hand so please allow me time to respond by tagging me in the subject line if your character has any questions or is having difficulties or causing trouble.
If you want a class schedule, you can find that here
Subthreads: I think I have decided this is not my favorite class by Ginger Pierce, Teppenpaw with Scarlett Brockert,Pecari
Regrettably finding a partner. by Jax Donovan, Aladren with Sutton Nicolls, Pecari, Anna Clarissa Cooper-Flemming
Eagerly searching for a partner. by Gia Donovan, Pecari with Diana Carey, Pecari
Why are partners necessary? by Aislinn Nicolls, Aladren with Andrew Carey, Teppenpaw
Defending in the semi-dark. by John Umland, Aladren
Analyzing by Savannah Brockert,Teppenpaw with Caelia Lucan, Crotalus
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Professor Pye
Beginner DADA-- Years 1 & 2
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Professor Pye
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Savannah Brockert,Teppenpaw
February 14, 2015 7:47 PM
Analyzing by Savannah Brockert,Teppenpaw
As she sat waiting for DADA to begin, Savannah couldn't help but wonder why Mr. Pye had such an aversion to the title of professor. Why would someone choose a career and not want the title that went along with it? It wasn't as if he was the sort who wanted to be their friend and allow them all to be on a first named basis with him-though there was apparently another Pye in the first year class, whom could be anything from a sibling because siblings could have wide age differences as Ryan and Peyton did to a very distant cousin-his demeanor suggested that he didn't even like them much.So that served to make Savannah further curious. The obvious motive for going into teaching when you didn't like students was power. She had a feeling that was Headmaster Brockert's reason for it. However, wouldn't Mr. Pye lord it over them by making them call him Professor then?
There had to be another reason, something she had not thought of yet, and it had piqued her interest. One thing she and Scarlett did have in common was they were both genuinely curious people, they just went about it in different ways. Savannah might have done well in Aladren actually, but when it came down to it, she was glad she was where she was. She'd take Aiden over John Umland any day. The Reinhardts too really, though she didn't know them well, just that Liac was good to Chaslyn.
Savannah was not really surprised by the daily quiz. They were, after all, daily and being a pretty good student she managed to write down a pretty decent amount of information about both bowtruckles and doxies, including any similarities between the two, which she knew was useful in case she ever had to transfigure one into the other. Why she'd want to do that was beyond her, but it might be a valuable exercise in animate to animate transfiguration and one never knew what professors would do in the future. (Well, other than they'd surely have another quiz next lesson and Scarlett-and probably a lot of other people- would not be happy about it. Another reason why Mr. Pye was obviously not the "let's be buddies" type of teacher, that sort would only rarely give a quiz, let alone make an extremely unpopular decision to have them every day.)
After the quiz, came the practical part of the lesson. Savannah listed carefully for instructions. She did not want to end up on the wrong side of either dark creatures or Mr. Pye. She wasn't exactly cowering in fear from the man but it was just good common sense not to make professors, especially seemingly grumpy ill-tempered ones, angry at you. Besides, DADA was not a place to be reckless even if your teacher was the more warm and fuzzy type. Of course, Savannah reasoned, that wasn't the sort of person who'd want to teach DADA most likely, unless they had some sort of save-the-world mentality.
She rose and went about the task of looking for an unattached person. Finding such, she asked "Would you like to work together?"
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Savannah Brockert,Teppenpaw
Analyzing
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Savannah Brockert,Teppenpaw
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Caelia Lucan, Crotalus
February 24, 2015 12:47 AM
Anything but. by Caelia Lucan, Crotalus
Defense kind of sucked. Caelia was not really a smart girl and though Emrys helped her to complete her homework and worked either her twice a week for their regularly scheduled tutoring sessions, it wasn’t enough. The seemingly endless number of quizes she had to do for Defense angered her—if Pye had just given out homework like any normal professor, she would probably be scrapping by with good marks. Instead, she had a range of grades, from Es for her in class wand work to Ps for the quizzes. So, when the class was instructed to get ready for their daily quiz Caelia narrowed her eyebrows and felt like running up and throttling Pye. However, young ladies did not behave in that manner and so instead she put away her books, taking one last peek at her notes and trying her hardest to remember everything she could.Her quiz itself was a reflection of her inner-mind. Neatly laid out in girlish script but also quite sparse in terms of actual information. The doxie is a faerie that that is really tiny. It likes to live in wand trees. This means that the wood of these trees make wands. They guard these trees.They are covered in dark hair and have shiny wings. A bowtruckle is not a faerie but a little treeman. They eat insects and look like trees so they camouflage well. They also can bite humans. These bites are poisonous so you should get a Healer as soon as possible. They are classification XXX but Doxies are classification XX. Satisfied that her scribbles had met the requirement of ten lines, Caelia turned in her paper. However, after looking at her notes afterwards, she groaned to discover that while she had gotten at the least their appearances correct the rest of the information was horribly mixed up. “I hate this class,” she said to herself quietly.
At least the assignment for the day involved the lumos spell that they had learned the previous week. Caelia had been able to complete the wand work rather quickly. Both lumos and nox weren’t too difficult and were easier to keep straight than some of the other spells she had to learn for her other classes. She rose from her desk to look for a partner and was delighted when one approached her. “Sure,” she said. The girl asking the question was one of the two Brockert twins in her class. She had figured out by now that they were amongst the right sort of Brockert but wasn’t positive which twin was which—though she was good with names and status, Caelia could not tell twins apart, even if they were fraternal. “Caelia Lucan, of the Massachusetts Lucans.” In a classroom environment, Caelia felt awkward curtsying and so instead offered her new partner a hand and a smile. The Lucans were still relatively new to America—she herself was only the third generation there and the second generation to be born in America as well as the second child to attend Sonora (Emrys being the first), so she didn’t expect all the families to know who they were. She did, at least, hope that they recognized her last name as being vaguely proper and of the Right Sort especially since her brother had been at Sonora for five years now.
“Would you like to go first with trying the flipendo spell?” Caelia offered the older student, double checking her notes with a surreptitious glance downwards so that she didn’t embarrass herself in front of a society witch.
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Caelia Lucan, Crotalus
Anything but.
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Caelia Lucan, Crotalus
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