Office hours - Brandon Carey on Transfiguration

Professor Skies

November 15, 2013 5:13 PM

Office hours - Brandon Carey by Professor Skies

Professor Skies tried to look as much like the friendly, smiley blonde lady that she really was, and as little like The Capital Letters Deputy Headmistress as she could. Her note to Brandon Carey had asked him to stop by and see her and had tried to reassure him that he was not in any kind of trouble and had no reason to worry. In her experience, such phrases were enough to send even the cleanest conscience spiralling into a blind panic.

“Thank you for coming to see me today,” she greeted, surveying her student kindly. “Would you like a cookie?” she offered, lifting the head off a large ceramic owl on her desk which hooted loudly.

“I've been looking at some of the classwork you've handed in to me. And I'm generally impressed. You're clearly a bright boy,” she explained, hoping that the compliment would reassure him, or at least – when she came to say what she had to say next – would give him some context that indicated she was on his side. She laid out one of the Transfiguration tables he'd handed in. The balls had stopped bouncing around but the page was still wrought with doodles. “You have the right ideas here, and I think that I can understand everything you're trying to tell me. And that's brilliant. It's great that you have great ideas and that you can find a way to express them,” she explained very genuinely.

“It seems to be difficult when you try to write them down though,” she said softly. She felt conscious of the fact that Brandon was a Carey. She had the impression that such families might be loathe to admit to their children having problems and thus she might have to tread carefully. But, whatever family he came from, she was his teacher and she had a responsibility to him. “Is this something anyone's spoken to you about before?” she asked, trying to establish where things stood at present.

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Brandon Carey

November 15, 2013 10:56 PM

That's my name by Brandon Carey

As they walked through the corridors, Brandon glanced up worriedly at his oldest brother’s profile, wondering what, exactly, it was Jay was thinking. Normally, he didn’t bother with exacts, since he could usually guess the general direction people were going in, but at the moment, it actually seemed important. It always was when dealing with someone who was angry and disappointed, since the specifics were the whole thing.

Jay, however, continued to not yell at him after he stopped walking. Brandon had always found that annoying about his brother. Jay didn’t just yell and get it over with, he acted as though it wasn’t a big deal until you felt about half an inch high. It was worse than being yelled at by far. “Just down there,” he said, pointing toward a door. “Just remember – yes ma’am, no ma’am, and that’s it, and pay attention to whatever she says. I’ll need to know about it so I can know if I need to try to smooth things over with her later.”

Brandon panicked. “You’re not coming?”

“No. Here, things are different, remember?” Jay reminded him patiently. “You’ll have to do it by yourself this time. So what do you say?”

“Yes, ma’am and no, ma’am,” Brandon recited.

“And what do you do?”

“I listen and tell you what she says. And say yes, ma’am and no, ma’am.”

“That’s right. Good luck.”

He would, Brandon thought as he approached the office and tapped on the doorframe to make his presence known, most likely need it. Adults, as far as he could remember, had almost never wanted to talk to him when he wasn’t in trouble; when they said otherwise, either they were lying or someone else was in trouble and they wanted him to be a snitch, and when he wasn’t he got in trouble anyway, so really, there was no way around meeting with an adult being a bad thing.

He brightened a little, though, at the offer of a cookie after his initial “yes, ma’am, and decided to add one phrase to the list of things he was allowed to say to Deputy Headmistress Professor Skies. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, watching the head of the owl with interest to see if it would hoot again for a minute until the DHPS mentioned his classwork and brought his mind back to being serious and very sorry and penitent for whatever it was that he had done to warrant being called to the teacher’s office.

Instead of going straight to what he had did wrong, though, she said he was smart and had great ideas, which made Brandon stop and blink in confusion. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said again, slowly, but then felt himself flush when she mentioned his writing. It looked worse now than it had at the time, he had to admit – things always did, later, and she had only ever seen it later, so he knew it had to be really bad.

“I know I’m not good at it,” he said, as nonchalantly as he could, before realizing that, technically, he could have answered that statement with one of the approved phrases. People had pointed out to him that writing down the words in his head was something he was bad at, or at least something he lacked the patience for, before. People had done that many times. “I mean, yes, ma’am.” That, though, implied that his family had done something wrong, because being not good reflected poorly on the whole family, so he felt compelled to defend them, even though that meant talking too much again. “My brothers and sisters help me - well, not Cecilia and Peter, because they're too little, but the others, my other brothers and sisters - they all help when they're around, and I'm not supposed to hand in any of my homework until Jay helps me with it, but they're not around in class and I don't know how to measure circles on my own yet,” he explained.

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Professor Skies

November 18, 2013 10:09 AM

I'll try not to wear it out by Professor Skies

It was hard to know what was normal for Brandon, as she had only known him for a few weeks. However, he did seem somewhat stilted and robotic which she could place a fair guess on not being his usual demeanour. One day she would find the secret magic sentence that not only read 'do not panic, you are not in any kind of trouble' but also actually communicated this to children.. Clearly she hadn't struck it this time though.

“Why do you need to know how measure circles?” she asked, genuine perplexity pulling the question from her mouth before she'd really thought about it. She brought her attention back to the matter of hand.

“It's great that they help you,” she smiled, in reply to his comment about his brothers and sister. He hadn't entirely answered her question, in that his own awareness of it was slightly different to someone trying to talk it through with him. He would have had to have been fairly oblivious not to realise that he was struggling and she did not think that he was. “Having a supportive family is probably the most useful thing in tackling something you find difficult. However, as you yourself just noted, they can't always be there. They aren't there in class and they won't be there in your exams.” She knew that was a big scary word and she hoped she wasn't losing him as his mind potentially drifted into the terror of sitting alone in an exam room.

“Brandon,” she said, trying to ensure that she had his focus before continuing, “having trouble with spelling, and with getting your thoughts down on paper, is sometimes part of a problem called dyslexia. And history is full of famous wizards who had it. Barnaby Brewhard, the prolific potioneer, couldn't spell for toffee. The witch who invented spell-checking quills... well, what do you think her motivation for that was? My point is, an ability to spell has absolutely nothing to do with intelligence. You can be a very bright person and a very bad speller. And that's what I suspect you are. You're clever enough that you could do well at this school, if this wasn't getting in your way.

“So, the question is, what do we do about that? My suggestion would be that we ask someone to come in and look at this in more detail. They'll look at all sorts of elements of your writing with you, and find out what you're having trouble with. That may not sound very nice but the good thing is, once we know that information, we can look at ways to help you. One example might be allowing you a spell-checking quill in exams, or this person might have some strategies you can use to help you plan ideas out. How would you feel about that?” she enquired.

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Brandon Carey

November 21, 2013 11:43 PM

It gets used a lot, it's used to it by Brandon Carey

Brandon was as confused by Professor Skies’ question about the circles as she was by his statement about them. “So I can say what size they’re supposed to be,” he said. “That’s on the paper, and I couldn’t figure it out. Me and Diana haven’t got that far in mathematics yet.”

He had been even more confused at the time, but had since figured out how to handle the other half of the question, the part about the size of an object which didn’t exist yet. He was sure that there was an answer to that, but that it had to involve mathematics and magical theory far more advanced than any first year could be expected to know, so he was now sure he had completely misinterpreted the question and was supposed to put what size the end product was after he finished. It was either that or he was supposed to guess and it meant he wasn’t doing a good job if he measured afterward and had gotten it wrong, anyway, and he liked the first solution better.

Professor Skies’ statement about exams didn’t frighten him, but it did give him an idea which could solve a lot of his problems. He was just about to helpfully suggest that he was sure Jay or Anthony would assist him with those, too, if she would allow it, when she went on, leaving him without much to contribute but “to make a whole lot of money?” about the quill lady.

That was not, however, her point. Her point was the nicest way of saying he was kind of stupid that he'd ever heard, but it came up to the same thing. Normally, that wouldn't have bothered him much, since he'd been hearing it most of his life, but this was an outsider. He was smart enough to know this might constitute doing something bad for the family reputation.

Brandon started to open his mouth when Professor Skies asked how he felt about what she'd said, but then his brain actually caught up with him for once and stopped him from blurting out anything, though he thought it helped that he didn't exactly know how he felt about it. Not spending half of the class frustrated and forgetting the spells would be good, but he and remedial tutors didn't get along. The special etiquette tutor had quit after Brandon accidentally turned her handbag into a chicken and Diana kicked her. Plus, he was pretty sure everyone else was as ignorant of and uninterested in the famous wizards she'd mentioned as he had been before, so there was still the whole school thinking he was stupid if they found out to consider.

"Er - that sounds all right, ma'am," he said, as close to the script Jay had given him as he thought he could get under the circumstances. "If you and the family think so - ma'am."

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Professor Skies

November 30, 2013 4:23 PM

That doesn't mean it likes it by Professor Skies

“Ahh, I see,” Professor Skies nodded, when Brandon explained about his need to calculate circles. “That's very diligent of you. But when we talk about size in Transfiguration, it's ok to use general terms like 'big' and 'small.' Now, those aren't very specific, I know. It depends on what scale you're working on. But if you think about the two objects – the one you have and the one you want – and how they are relative to each other. If you made object B the same size as object A, would it look odd, or would it be about right? So really, you just need to consider whether there's a need to go bigger or smaller than what you already have.”

A grin flickered across her face as he answered her question about the quill lady.

“Well, I'm sure that helped it seem like a good idea,” she smiled.

“I'm glad you think so,” she stated, when he said he felt alright about the idea of her writing to the specialist. “I will need your parents' permission to ask this lady to come and see you, so I'll write to them and explain what I've just explained to you. Hopefully they'll agree with us. In the meantime, if you're worried, or if you can think of anything else we can do to help you, let me know. I want you to do well, Brandon,” she smiled.

OOC – unless the family would be difficult and we need a lengthy exchange of letters, I'm happy for you to take it from here, in terms of his interactions with the specialist and anything they recommend to help. Although, if she feels they haven't been sufficiently helpful, Selina might put her two cents in again.

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