Teaching qualifications
05-02-2017, 09:21 PM (This post was last modified: 03-20-2018, 11:34 AM by Bob Schroeck.)
05-02-2017, 09:21 PM (This post was last modified: 03-20-2018, 11:34 AM by Bob Schroeck.)
The following is actually a passage (mostly) excised from chapter 3 of DW8, but I've just pulled it out of my discard file for that Step and pasted into the master dev file for DWS. I don't know if I'll actually use any of it, but I have several points coming up in the next few dozen kilobytes where at least a summary of this would be an appropriate answer to questions from Usagi.
To start with, at the time of my exile I was one of the primary
combat trainers for the Warriors' powered infantry corps.
Skilled soldiers and volunteers all, from the militaries of every
member nation of the U.N., these were the guys who served as our
ground troops, doing everything from security at the Mansion to
backing us up on the really *big* operations. I was one of the
Warriors tasked with getting new troops up to speed on using
powered armor to combat metas, and with keeping the experienced
troops in fighting trim.
In addition to that, like every other Warrior I had taught the
occasional class at Warriors Academy, our in-house private school
for kids with early-manifesting metatalents. The only real
difference I could see between Hogwarts and the Academy was the
class size -- a half-dozen students at the most in an Academy
class vs. twenty or so here. And none of the Hogwarts students
would call me "Uncle Doug" like Nina, Ruth and Gracie did.
After being ejected from my home timeline, teaching naturally
became one of the ways I chose to support myself. Over the past
75 years, I'd have to say I've been a teacher of one stripe or
another more often than any other single occupation. Hell, it
was the way I initially earned my keep in Velgarth, the first
world I was stuck in after I fell through that damned teleport
gate in Piccadilly Circus. Starting with Alberich, their
existing instructor at the Collegium at Haven in Valdemar, I
taught unarmed combat to Heralds who were interested -- and it
kept going from there.
A few years after that, I was a bodyguard-slash-tutor to the
twelve-year-old fireball that was Kurata Sana. To be honest,
though, that wasn't a classroom situation -- it was more like
structured homework time plus catch-as-catch-can life lessons.
(And no small amount of early-pubescent relationship advice --
something I dearly hoped I wouldn't be called on to provide for
a few hundred underaged wizards and witches). Still, it *was*
teaching.
Then when I ended up among the Hong Kong Cavaliers, I earned my
way in part by providing unarmed combat training again -- this
time both to interested Cavaliers and to their auxiliary corps,
the "Blue Blazers".
Almost a quarter-century into my exile, I actually ran a
storefront dojo in a place that, although it was on the site of
the Japanese city I knew as Hakone, was called "Tokyo-3". There
I had dozens of students, but none more special to me than three
very exceptional teenagers and their guardian. (I had foolishly
left them behind as soon as an opportunity to move on had
presented itself, and I was still kicking myself over that. If I
ever found my way home again, I was going to convince the
Warriors to make a sortie to their world to offer them all the
help we could give.)
And of course there was the training I gave Utena as we crossed
from the East Coast to the West, not many years back: combat,
both armed and unarmed; tactical and strategic thinking; bringing
her English up to native-speaker level; and generally being the
parent and general question-answerer she'd been denied for most
of her childhood.
In other worlds I've helped a tribe of Bronze Age nomads reach
for the Iron Age, "invented" 20th-century first aid for several
different medieval armies and trained their first true medics,
helped a time-traveling doctor teach 21st-Century medicine in
19th-Century Tokyo, and taught at every level from kindergarten
to grad school wherever local customs (or the ease of
counterfeiting teacher certifications) allowed. I've been a
martial arts sensei/sifu almost as often. And then there was the
year I spent as a general science instructor at St. Trinian's
School for Girls... the less about which I admit to, the better.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
To start with, at the time of my exile I was one of the primary
combat trainers for the Warriors' powered infantry corps.
Skilled soldiers and volunteers all, from the militaries of every
member nation of the U.N., these were the guys who served as our
ground troops, doing everything from security at the Mansion to
backing us up on the really *big* operations. I was one of the
Warriors tasked with getting new troops up to speed on using
powered armor to combat metas, and with keeping the experienced
troops in fighting trim.
In addition to that, like every other Warrior I had taught the
occasional class at Warriors Academy, our in-house private school
for kids with early-manifesting metatalents. The only real
difference I could see between Hogwarts and the Academy was the
class size -- a half-dozen students at the most in an Academy
class vs. twenty or so here. And none of the Hogwarts students
would call me "Uncle Doug" like Nina, Ruth and Gracie did.
After being ejected from my home timeline, teaching naturally
became one of the ways I chose to support myself. Over the past
75 years, I'd have to say I've been a teacher of one stripe or
another more often than any other single occupation. Hell, it
was the way I initially earned my keep in Velgarth, the first
world I was stuck in after I fell through that damned teleport
gate in Piccadilly Circus. Starting with Alberich, their
existing instructor at the Collegium at Haven in Valdemar, I
taught unarmed combat to Heralds who were interested -- and it
kept going from there.
A few years after that, I was a bodyguard-slash-tutor to the
twelve-year-old fireball that was Kurata Sana. To be honest,
though, that wasn't a classroom situation -- it was more like
structured homework time plus catch-as-catch-can life lessons.
(And no small amount of early-pubescent relationship advice --
something I dearly hoped I wouldn't be called on to provide for
a few hundred underaged wizards and witches). Still, it *was*
teaching.
Then when I ended up among the Hong Kong Cavaliers, I earned my
way in part by providing unarmed combat training again -- this
time both to interested Cavaliers and to their auxiliary corps,
the "Blue Blazers".
Almost a quarter-century into my exile, I actually ran a
storefront dojo in a place that, although it was on the site of
the Japanese city I knew as Hakone, was called "Tokyo-3". There
I had dozens of students, but none more special to me than three
very exceptional teenagers and their guardian. (I had foolishly
left them behind as soon as an opportunity to move on had
presented itself, and I was still kicking myself over that. If I
ever found my way home again, I was going to convince the
Warriors to make a sortie to their world to offer them all the
help we could give.)
And of course there was the training I gave Utena as we crossed
from the East Coast to the West, not many years back: combat,
both armed and unarmed; tactical and strategic thinking; bringing
her English up to native-speaker level; and generally being the
parent and general question-answerer she'd been denied for most
of her childhood.
In other worlds I've helped a tribe of Bronze Age nomads reach
for the Iron Age, "invented" 20th-century first aid for several
different medieval armies and trained their first true medics,
helped a time-traveling doctor teach 21st-Century medicine in
19th-Century Tokyo, and taught at every level from kindergarten
to grad school wherever local customs (or the ease of
counterfeiting teacher certifications) allowed. I've been a
martial arts sensei/sifu almost as often. And then there was the
year I spent as a general science instructor at St. Trinian's
School for Girls... the less about which I admit to, the better.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
