Mary Brooding-Hawthorne
March 24, 2020 2:38 PM
Back to square one. And eight. [Beginners I-II] by Mary Brooding-Hawthorne
Mary only taught classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. That left Tuesdays and Thursdays to be filled with office hours, prep, grading, and working with her assistants. Or spending time with Tabitha sometimes, too. In theory, that meant the Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays could be reserved solely for day-of class prep. However, Mary never was very good at this balance. Classes always struck up some new inspiration for Mary, particularly when things were stressful and she would rather think of her work than her life, and she most often found herself spending time between the morning Advanced class and the afternoon Beginner class working on one brew or another. Naturally, this meant she missed lunch fairly often, but she'd become well enough known among the elves that they often brought her food or drink when they realized she was absent from the larger meal.Today was one such day, and Mary had only just barely touched the meal she'd been brought before it was time for the beginner lesson to start. Pulling herself from the batch of wolfsbane she was working on - both to keep up her skills and because there were always those who needed wolfsbane and too many unqualified people brewing it, so Mary was always happy to help out - she dusted her hands off on her robes and picked up the last of her lunch. Stuffing the last of a roll in her mouth and moving an apple to her desk for later, Mary smiled at her incoming class.
She was well aware of her hat sitting off-kilter on her head, her sleeves rolled up unceremoniously to her elbows, her hair sticking out at funny angles, the sheen of light sweat on her face, and the dusts and powders on her dresses. It was going to be a messy day, but that was just how it went sometimes with Mary.
"Hello," she smiled at her students and waving her wand to clean up her classroom. The cauldron of wolfsbane potion moved to a her office off the side of the classroom, the ingredients placed themselves back on the shelves, and her papers and notes arranged themselves on her desk.
By the time the students had all chosen desks, Mary was a bit more put together and ready to begin. She smiled again, more warmly at her class this time. "It's lovely to see you all. Please keep your water cycle worksheets with you for now. I'll come by to make sure you have them and you'll turn them in after class, but you may want them for today's activity."
She waved her wand again and a correctly labeled version of the water cycle appeared on the chalkboard. "You can also use this for reference. Today, we're going to be looking at how water sourcing can impact a potion. Most of the time, potions that call for water use 'standard potioning water,' which is pure, distilled, and very clean. However, we haven't talked much about what the differences are and today we're going to look at this."
This was one of Mary's favorite lessons to teach. She loved learning about Muggle science and tried to incorporate it into her lessons where possible, but she also knew she needed to be careful because there were more than a few students who would immediately be turned off by any mention of such things. Still, they needed to know it.
Mary waved her wand again - she seemed to be doing a lot of that today - and several wooden boxes, like picture frames but as big as garden beds, floated around the room, one to each desk, as well as several vials. Inside each were small live dramas of the water cycle, demonstrating transpiration, evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and percolation. "For homework, you'll be researching the difference each of these waters would make in an Antidote to Common Poisons. For today, we'll just be collecting them. By the end of class, each of you should have a vial of water from each of these sources, as well as a vial from a water charm. What challenges stand out related to two of these states?" Mary called on students until she got an answer that was near enough to what she was going for. There were a few other great ideas though, and she was glad that students seemed to be getting this module pretty well. "Yes. Since water is in a gaseous state during transpiration and evaporation, you wouldn't be able to collect it as liquid water from there. Condensation occurs from both of these processes though, so you can collect condensed water from transpiration and condensed water from evacuation."
Mary paused, hoping to make sure they all understood. It was the cumulation of several previous lessons and sometimes, that sat well with students. Other times, they had a harder time synthesizing so much material. "You can choose to do this manually or magically, but each of you should have collected enough of each to use in the potion. Let me know if you need any help or have any questions. Go ahead and get started!"
OOC - Hello! Feel free to be creative about this and you can assume that it wouldn't be a terribly difficult assignment, just a lot of work and it would require a certain level of meticulousness. Please note that it is assumed that students have been working on water cycle lessons for a few days and should have a basic understanding of it before beginning. The image I'm referring to and that you can assume was on their worksheets is here: https://www.worldatlas.com/r/w1200-h701-c1200x701/upload/59/fb/a3/shutterstock-694784353.jpg
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Mary Brooding-Hawthorne
Back to square one. And eight. [Beginners I-II]
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