Talking to my HoH (Tag: Professor Fawcett) on Aladren Commons

Henny B-F-R

May 15, 2012 12:10 PM

Talking to my HoH (Tag: Professor Fawcett) by Henny B-F-R

OOC - I am assuming the whole knocking on the door and being invited in thing happened but I chose to skip it as it doesn't add a lot and I'm short of posting time. Hope that's ok. This is set pretty early on the term.

IC
Henny sat nervously opposite her Head of House. She was keen to get this discussion done but she was scared of what the answers to her questions might be or the questions that would be asked of her in return. However, the carefully balanced programme of gritting her teeth and bearing things, combined with occasional convenient stomach aches which had got her through her first year of Care of Magical Creatures was not going to carry on working. It was better to try to sort this out now before they figured out she was deliberately missing classes or before she started getting failing grades. She wondered whether she was supposed to talk to the class teacher rather than her Head of House but she didn't know the new professor yet, which made it very daunting to try telling him that she had a problem with his class, even though the problem was entirely her own.

“I was wondering,” she began slowly, “whether it would be possible to take Care of Magical Creatures as a purely theoretical class. I know I never want to own or work with any so I don't really need the practical skills. I know I can't drop it but I'd be happy to do the classwork and any extra work to make up.”

It sounded stupid now that she'd said it out loud. They didn't just let second years pick and choose which parts of the curriculum they wanted to study. But she wasn't trying to opt out of anything, just adapt how she studied it. She hoped that being an Aladren might help her case, along with the fact that she tended to work hard and do well in Professor Fawcett's class – he had to know that she was a serious student and wouldn't be asking this if there wasn't a good reason. Plus she couldn't see how they could physically force her to stay in the class. There were times when she'd tried to attend and had to leave, where it wouldn't have been a lie to tell the nurse that she was feeling sick. It just made her so anxious.

13 Henny B-F-R Talking to my HoH (Tag: Professor Fawcett) 211 Henny B-F-R 1 5

Professor Fawcett

May 16, 2012 4:42 PM

Talking with one of my students by Professor Fawcett

John had been mildly surprised to find a second year at his door this early in the year, but he had ushered Henny in, noting with satisfaction that he had succeeded in keeping a chair clear for visiting students, and taken his own place behind the desk his grandmother had bought him when he finished at Sonora himself half a century (and, he thought with mild horror, probably change by now) earlier to hear what she had to say, trying to look approachable.

He was not sure how successful he was, since she seemed tense and nervous, but soon enough she began her inquiry. John’s eyebrows rose slightly as he made out the shape of it. Of course every few years one or another pureblood child would make some complaint about a class he or she – unfortunately often she – did not wish to take, and there was the case with Miss Lennox and Amelia’s flying lessons, but he did not imagine either of those was quite the case here. He had never noticed Miss Boxton-Fox-Reynolds seeming to think herself particularly privileged, or looking as though she had a severe illness which made more than one staff member question why she was even in school to begin with.

“May I ask why you wish to leave the practical class?” he asked. He had reviewed all the Aladren files before school resumed, not long ago, and so remembered that she had passed last year. Perhaps there was a problem with the new professor; John had not yet become well-acquainted with the man, though he understood he was another of those Care of Magical Creatures teachers who allowed students to use his given name. John didn’t much care for that – of all the students he had ever taught, at any level, there were perhaps fifteen he was still in contact and on excellent terms with, and only three of those called him John even when they visited his home – but to each his own, unless it actually did cause problems.

“In any case, an exemption from a class goes somewhere above my head, I’m afraid. The Board of Governors determines which courses it is necessary for students to complete in order to graduate from Sonora. If you are serious – and if you are, by all means, try; exemptions and accommodations have been granted before for all kinds of things – you would need your parents to submit a written request to Headmistress Kijewski-Jareau.” Which would likely go higher from there, but he saw no need to overly complicate it for a second year. “It’s good that you’re willing to do the work; expressing that may improve your chances, though I can make no promises.”

He looked at her, part of his mind still on looking approachable. He did worry about that when dealing directly with the young ones, as he was often especially severe in their class to impress on them the seriousness of the work. “Does that sound like a solution?” he asked.

0 Professor Fawcett Talking with one of my students 0 Professor Fawcett 0 5

Henny B-F-R

May 16, 2012 6:03 PM

Talking to the arm of my chair by Henny B-F-R

“It sounds reasonable,” she replied to his enquiry of whether they had found a workable solution. The idea of it panicked her, it sounded big and daunting and unlikely to favour her, but she tried to be rational about it. She could see the logic in decisions needing to be made that way although she didn't think it seemed terribly workable in her case. “I worry though that my reasons are... I suppose they are slightly personal, or that they won't necessarily translate well into being put on a form and submitted to committee.

“Being in the class makes me....,” she broke eye contact with him, “anxious. Incredibly anxious,” it was hard to explain even to Professor Fawcett. He had always seemed fair and serious, qualities which she felt were appropriate in a Professor. But she couldn't imagine him having weaknesses and was concerned that he might not be sympathetic to them in others, especially when they were so stereotypically feminine and also so abstract and unquantifiable. If she was going to go into anaphylactic shock on contact with any animal, that would be demonstrable and provable, and would constitute a reasonable reason. Fear was vague. Most students, if they had any sense, would be edgy to a degree around some of the more advanced creatures. How could you identify the point at which that became pathological? “And I know a lot of animals are sensitive to humans' emotions and it can cause them to become panicked or unpredictable. Which in turn makes me more anxious. So it becomes something of a vicious circle,” she continued, addressing the arm of her own chair.

“I struggle to concentrate. If you compare the written work I produce in class to my homework, you can clearly see the difference,” she fished in her bag for her evidence, although she wasn't entirely sure of the point of demonstrating it to Professor Fawcett any more. “This is probably my best piece of classwork and my worst piece of homework and they're still miles apart,” she said, laying the two pieces on the desk before him. “Sometimes I don't write anything at all in class,” that was a very painful thing for an Aladren to admit. She decided not to elaborate further, decided not to explain that she concentrated her efforts instead in forcing herself to stay in her seat and breathe, and that sometimes these efforts were unsuccessful.

She wasn't sure about trying to push any of that through. The fact that the first point of call would be Headmistress Kijewski-Jareau was a further worry. It was her own subject, which might bias her.

“Do you think there's any point in trying?” she asked Professor Fawcett, meeting his eyes again. The look in her own asked the follow up question for her... And what do I do if there isn't?

13 Henny B-F-R Talking to the arm of my chair 211 Henny B-F-R 0 5

Professor Fawcett

May 20, 2012 8:42 PM

Still talking to one of my students by Professor Fawcett

Though Henny was speaking more to the arm of the chair than to him, John was careful not to let his expression change as she spelled out why she wanted to leave the practice side of the Care of Magical Creatures classes, in case – as he would have, he imagined, in the same position; he knew his own behavior was not always strictly standard, but he could predict it far better than he could anyone else’s even after decades of studying other people professionally and worked under the assumption that others might be prone to at least parts of it as well – she glanced up when she thought he wasn’t looking. He tried, anyway, to have his willingness to work with students where there were issues with achievement of any sort, and while he seriously doubted he really managed it, he also liked to think of himself as approachable, not as someone to frighten one who was obviously already uneasy off unless there was a good reason to want to frighten her. And as this one didn’t appear to be involved in any major breaches of the school code of conduct….

The corner of his mouth did twitch slightly, though, as he suppressed a smile while she got out her evidence of her problem. He would never admit it publicly, but privately, John did favor his own House, at least partially because of things like that. Only an Aladren – all right, and perhaps some Crotali, but they in a much more calculating way, he suspected – would, he thought, think to bring along academic documents as evidence of trouble with anxiety in a given class. He looked over the documents seriously, indeed noting discrepancies between them.

“I see,” he said.

Severe anxiety was not unheard of, of course, and accommodations had been made with it before, but John had no intentions of seeing this case handled the same way Miss Greer’s had been before. However the other Houses chose to manage their students was their business, but John saw Aladren’s as a personal responsibility, and those students, too, as something of a direct reflection on him. He expected them to be their generation’s leaders of their fields, or at least highly respected contributors, and that was not very likely to happen if they became strung out on potions before age thirteen. There would be little he could do if her parents decided that was the best approach to the problem, of course, but he had hopes this would not be the case.

“If you wish,” he said when she asked if he thought her case was worth pursuing further. “It is a legitimate concern.” Or so he trusted it to be, coming from an Aladren, anyway. “We are responsible for your well-being as well as your education while you are here, after all. If your petition is unsuccessful – “ which he couldn’t predict; he couldn’t recall such a case directly involving him before – “then we will look for another solution then.”

0 Professor Fawcett Still talking to one of my students 0 Professor Fawcett 0 5