Intro to Dance, Wednesday Period 1

[arboreal_priestess]

Verity wasn't hung over anymore but being up and ready to teach a dance class at 8am made her feel like she was. It was possible that she was going to go and kick the moose in the face when class was finished. Still, if she could come out screaming with excitement at seven in the morning to tape the opening of Dance or Die!, she could at least fake some pleasantries.

"Morning," she said, welcoming the class into the dance studio. There was a wall of mirrors with a barre mounted in front of them. Verity was standing in front of it, doing stretches. She'd sent out a handwavy email to students, requesting that they come to class in comfortable clothing they could move in, with either sneakers or, should they have them, ballet flats. Later in the semester, Verity might try to transition them to ballroom heels or jazz shoes, but not until they were comfortable moving around. "Welcome to Intro to Dance. I'm Verity Price, a semi-professional Argentinian tango dancer, and we're going to be focusing on ballroom dance this semester. Ballroom dance is excellent for helping improve your balance, flexibility, and strength. But perhaps the two most important aspects of ballroom are what we're going to be focusing on today: rhythm and the ability to work with a partner."

Or, as Verity liked to think of it: nobody learns dips until she knows they won't be dropped.

"The first part of every class is going to be devoted to warmups and stretches," she explained, gesturing for everybody to sit on the floor. "It's really easy to pull a muscle or get cramps while dancing and stretching first helps prevent those." She ran through about ten minutes of easy stretches with the class. The first and last set of exercises were the same, so they could see if they were able to reach farther and stretch deeper than before.

Once they had finished stretching, Verity turned on the music. "All right, let's start working on that rhythm and teamwork, shall we?"

Shop Class; Wednesday, Third Period [01/02].

[special_rabbit]

Was Amaya more than just a little pleased that her class got moved away from Monday mornings into a more reasonable time of the day and week for teenagers to be working with heavy-duty equipment and fiery stuff? You bet she was! Not that they’d be needing much of that today on the first class, but it would make her feel a little more comfortable when they really got to the heavy-duty stuff...especially now that she was learning a bit more of it herself.

...and don't worry. There was still caffeine available let like time, should anyone need it.

"'Hello, everyone!" she said, nodding when it was about that time and everyone seemed there, "Welcome to Shop Class! My name’s Amaya Blackstone, and in this class, we’ll be making things. I’m a blacksmith by trade, myself, so I’ll admit, we’ll be leaning a little heavily toward the metalworking stuff, but I’ll try in incorporate other materials as well and feel free to share any ideas you might have of things you’d like to learn, and we can work that in, too. Some of this stuff is going to involve some heavy-duty and dangerous machines, so one thing I want to make crystal clear is that safety is always going to come first. No one even goes near any of these machines or the majority of those tools unless you’ve got your proper safety equipment: gloves and eye gear at the very least, maybe a little more depending on what we’re working on.

"Since this is our first class of the week, I’m sorry to report that we’re not digging into anything too deep today. Gonna make you work up to the good stuff. Hopefully, you’re not too burnt out on introductions quite yet, as we’ll be doing a little bit of that. But we're gonna be doing 'em shop class style, with these," she gestured to the table beside here, where boxes of long metal sticks sat around a collection of hammers and a variety of small metal discs and squares. "Metal stamps! As I mentioned, I’m a blacksmith, and these are very common with any sort of metal work as a way to brand pieces so people know when they're getting a bonafide Blackstone piece. It's also popular with jewelry, it's used to mark metal tags, and all sorts of other stuff. Today, we're going to be using them to introduce ourselves.I did this last semester for introductions, and I think it worked out pretty well, so we’ll try it again. Something a little simple, but a little fun, especially since, in a place like this, we’re all going to be coming from a wide variety of knowledge and experience, and this here’s something everyone can get something out of.

"Pick out a base and take a second to think about what you might want to stamp onto your tag. It can be your name, a nickname, something important to you, whatever you think might be a good way to ease into an introduction, then pick out the stamps you'll need. Grab a stamping block," and Amaya did just that, holding it up to show the class before she demonstrated as she talked, "tape your piece down on your tag to help you keep it all aligned. Now, this next part's important: start in the middle and work outward, so you'll have to do a little planning, but that'll help it be nice and centered and even. Unless you want it otherwise, I suppose. Start with your middle letter, place the stamp straight and firm on the piece, and then give it three firm hits," smack, smack, smack!, "on the top. And there you go!" She held up the block and brought it close so they could see the firmly stamped A, then returned to the table. "Then just go from there," and she went through the other letters, place the stamp, grab the hammer, smack, smack, smack! Until she finished up, peeled off the tape, and then sent the small disc with "AMAYA" neatly printed on it around.

"And there you have it, that's my name, Amaya. I'd have probably preferred to put BLACK STONE on there, BLACK on top, STONE on the bottom, but I’m not making you wait around for all that! Let’s let you all get to work, though, if there’s any questions, go ahead and ask. And if it you finish your first piece well before the time, feel free to make one or two more of your choice. Just pick out a base or two, find the stamps you’d like to use, grab a hammer, and get to work. When you’re finished, show us what you’ve stamped and explain why you stamped what you did as a way of introducing yourself to the rest of the class.”

"Alright, then!" Amaya grinned, lifting up one hand and pounding her fist into it. "Let's get to it!"

An Excuse for Field Trips, Wednesday, 4th Period

[furnaceface]

Class had been handwavily sent messages to meet at Portalocity, and Hannibal and Jono greeted them when they showed up.

"Hello." Hannibal, in his bespoke plaid three-piece suit, smiled at the students he knew and nodded to the ones he didn't. "I see we have some new faces. I am Doctor Hannibal Lecter. I am a psychiatrist and former surgeon and I often teach classes involving food here at Fandom."

//And I'm Jonothon Starsmore,// Jono added, clad in a rather more casual outfit involving a pair of blue jeans, a grey scarf, and a black leather jacket over a faded old Pearl Jam t-shirt. Somehow, these two men were married. //Jono or Jon will do. Mr. Starsmore if you absolutely have to lean into formality, I suppose. I am... nothing half as exciting as a psychiatrist or a surgeon,// said the occasional superhero, //but I do run the music shop in town.//

( Field trips! )

[OOC: Open!]

The Future Is Swell, Wednesday, January 2, 2019

[heroic_jawline]

You kids got real lucky these two guys weren't still teaching civics, because the rants about shutting down the government would be... extensive.

Instead, there was,just occasional angry phone checking.

So. Dodged a bullet.

"Hi, welcome to The Future is Swell. I didn't name it, I promise," Tony said helpfully. "My name is Tony Stark, feel free to call me Tony if you like."

"What's wrong with saying that the future is swell?" asked the one who named the class. "I'm Steve Rogers. Feel free to call me...Mr. Rogers."

Because he was still old-fashioned enough to find it weird for students to call him by his first name. "This class is going to be more in Tony's area of expertise--lots of building things."

"Or, at least, trying to build things," Tony said with a grin. "But first, we'd like to get to know you all. Your names, where you're coming from, and what you'd like to see become reality techwise."

"Flying cars!" Steve said immediately.