Teamwork, Monday, Period 3

[psychoticbiotic.livejournal.com]

The students had handwavily gotten an email asking them to meet in a clearing in the woods. Sure, Jack could have programmed the Danger Shop to look like a forest, but she was a believer in going with the real thing. Even if the real thing was, frankly, grey and a little chilly.

As the students arrived, she handed each one a paintball gun and directed them toward a pile of armor. Once everyone was suited up, she began to speak. "Glad to see nobody got lost chasing a squirrel," she said. "Anyhow, so today you're going to work on battle tactics through paintball. Lucky you, the roster's balanced enough that we can do guys against girls. Girls are the red team, guys are the blue team. First team to mark everyone on the other side wins. If nobody does that, team with the most people standing at the end of the hour wins. You can play a little dirty, but I'm trusting all of you to be freaking adults with the paint guns. No shooting at super-close range, no shooting above the shoulders, no shooting an area not covered by armor. Break a rule on purpose and you get detention with me this weekend."

She quickly demonstrated how to aim and fire a gun at the trees and watched the students do the same, then: "First thing you guys need to do is pick captains. I'd say Surreal and Cade because they had so much fun last week bossing people around, but it's up to you. Captains get to help their teams come up with a strategy and then watch them play it through. Either captain notices your squad's getting too violent, come to me."

She glanced at her omni-tool. "You get 15 minutes to strategize and half an hour for the battle. Time starts now."

Anger Management and Emotional Control | Monday | Period 1

[justonecondition]

Today class was meeting just outside the Danger Shop, but before opening the door, Bruce seemed to want to give his lecture in the hallway. Ominous?

"We've gone over a few different anger management methods so far, but omitted a really obvious one," he began. "Breathing techniques. Closing your eyes, taking a deep breath and counting to ten is for some reason considered the go-to Western method for keeping your emotions under control. Whether or not it's effective can vary from person to person, though I myself don't generally find it particularly relaxing."

Which he blamed on his meditation training. Closing his eyes and counting to ten while breathing slowly just felt like bullshit.

"So I thought today we could examine its effectiveness. Once we go inside, you'll find yourselves in something of a stressful situation. You can work alone or in pairs. When the situation becomes frustrating, I'd like you to try taking deep breaths. Afterwards, we'll discuss the experience and talk about why it did or didn't work."

Roller Derby, Danger Shop, Monday afternoon after classes

[3girls-1core.livejournal.com]

The Danger Shop had been set up to look like a roller rink and there were plenty of pairs of roller skates in various sizes and even more safety gear waiting for everyone when they showed up.

"Hey everyone," Zeela said, from where she was pulling on a pair of skates. She was already wearing a helmet, padding over her knees and shoulders, and a pair of gloves over her normal clothes--which, unlike her sisters, involved casual pants and tops. No fancy dresses or froufrou for her.

Which probably explained why she was the head of the roller derby club and they weren't.

"Sorry to disappoint, but we're not making costumes or coming up with cute names today," she explained. "That part is fun, but it's not the most important part of roller derby. We have to get good enough to earn the personas and the costumes! Right now, we're not a roller derby team--we're a bunch of high school kids with roller skates on." She gestured to the piles of gear. "So, today, we suit up--Mr. S. insisted we all wear safety stuff before he would even make the magic room work--and we start learning the rules and learning to be a team."

But without all the trust falls and stuff. That was more teamwork than Zeela was prepared to handle. "Also, we should probably do intros and everything. This school likes that."

[Open for interested folks who might not had made the club fair, too!]