Shop, Tuesday, period 3

[vdistinctive]

"Great job on those birdhouses last week," Eliot said at the top of class.. "I saw some real creativity in action, both in design and decoration. Y'all should be proud of yourselves." He was proud of all of you. You could even tell. He didn't look like he wanted to glare at or kill anything right now! "By now you should be gettin' a decent grasp on three-dimensional construction, how to think about your project having height, width, and depth. Or to put it another way, a top, bottom, and sides. And hopefully, you got a feel for some of those power tools, and how quickly they can tear into a piece of wood. And most important, I hope you all had some fun with it." Eliot thought power tools were great fun, personally. All that roaring and ripping and raw power. It was right up his alley.

"So with wood, you're mostly looking at shaping it by taking pieces away. You cut and sand and on occasion, burn." Here he looked for Hyacinthe to give the kid a nod. "Sure, you can fit pieces of it together, but once you cut, that's always gonna be two pieces of wood attached together. You're not gonna be able to make them one solid piece of wood again. Not with any tech where I'm from, anyway." This time a look for Tali, who for all he knew might come from a world where tech had found a way to melt or weld wood pieces together. "Wood is also generally pretty inflexible. It can bend, but not very far before it breaks. Today we're going to tackle a material that tends to be a bit more malleable: metal. Depending on the type of metal and its melting point, you can twist, wrench, and hammer metal into just about any kind of shape you can imagine. I'm going to give you a couple options for your project today, some of which require using torches and soldering techniques, some of which can be done with tin snips and a little bit of sandpaper. Whichever one you pick, remember our safety rules. I don't want to see anyone working without the right eye and hand protection. But first, let me show you your tools."

He led the class through a demonstration on using an acetylene torch for welding, cutting, and soldering, then covered the basics of using angle and die grinders, then showed some electroetching techniques by the fume hood. He finished off by pointing out the array of snips, hacksaws, and pliers for hand-shaping. Then he led the way over to a garage door that hadn't been in the classroom the prior weeks, opening it up to reveal a decent sized junkyard.

"Here's where you'll be getting your materials. Great thing about metal is how easy it is to repurpose it. Your projects today might use copper piping, tin cans, steel nuts, or maybe even an old table leg or piece of aluminum siding. Whatever it is, it ain't gonna look the same by the end of class. And really, that's the joy of makin' something yourself. So check out the project instructions on the work tables, pick one out, and get crackin'. I wanna see sparks flyin' up in here, people. Let's make some noise."

Sex Ed, Tuesday, First Period

[stickitupmyjinx]

"Okay, so," Vanessa said at the beginning of today's class, "now that we've covered the basics of how you get knocked up, let's talk about how to avoid that at all costs. If you've ever been to public school, which..." Vanessa paused and surveyed her students. God, it was like teaching a Ren Faire. "...admittedly seems unlikely, and had any kind of sex education there, you've been told that--" Vanessa assumed her best prim smarmy tone: "'The only way to avoid pregnancy or STDs is total abstinence.'" And then she was back to herself. "Ironically, the people telling you this usually believe that in at least one very important case that didn't work, and at least ninety-eight of the time did not follow their own advice. But! It is true! Sort of. The only one hundred percent foolproof way to avoid getting knocked up or having your junk rot off is to not get your naughty bits involved with anyone else in any way, or get involved with anyone else's naughty bits. But that's boring. So let's talk about your other options.

( The rest of Sex Ed behind the cut )