| Lesson Plans and OJ |
| Summary: | Doug finds Lorna in the kitchen at Xaviers' working on lesson plans. He makes OJ for them both and they discuss teaching. |
| Date: | 2016-09-05 (Labor Day) |
| Related: | None |
| NPCs: | None |
| Scene Runner: | NA |
| Social/Plot: | Social |
| Players: |
 .. .. |
Location: Kitchen in the Xavier Mansion outside of North Salem, NY
Lorna is occupying the kitchen, Labor day means no classes and she means to take advantage of that. Sleeves rolled up, she's sitting with some Earth Science text books and thumbing through them idly. She even has post it notes and a pen handy. Next to her is a sandwich mostly untouched but for a bite or two.
Doug wanders into the kitchen and looks around. Seeing Lorna he smiles at her and says, ":Mind some company?:" as he collects a manual juicer, a cutting board, a knife and a bag of oranges. He holds the knife against the cutting board in one hand and the bag with the same fingers wrapped around the jar portion of the juicer.
"Hey Doug, not at all." Lorna smiles and drops her pen in the book, closing it. "Trying to wrap my head around lesson plans, it's been a few years-you know?" She offers and watches him collect things. "Making some juice?" She wonders after a moment. New Doug is still a bit mysterious to her, it's hard not to study him and look for traces of the Doug she knew.
":Yes, fresh orange juice evokes good memories and has an interesting chemical composition. Both requirements for me to bother consuming a specific foodstuff rather than just plugging into the wall or converting an object and draining its lifeglow,:" Doug explains as he sets up on a clear portion of the table.
":Actually, I actually don't know,:" Doug says on the topic of lesson plans. ":I'm going to need to do something similar myself, although I'm not yet clear what languages Jean'll want me teaching yet. And it looks like I'll be covering the Comp Sci classes for now as well,:" he explains as he slices an orange in half on the cutting board.
"Well, that should be interesting. It's just good to see Jean around and getting involved. Maybe it'll feel more like the good old days." Lorna shrugs and brushes back her hair through her fingers. "I don't know that I could help with you're lesson plans, but there has to be records of past Comp Sci classes you could reference maybe?"
Doug nods. ":Yes, those will be helpful,:" he says as he presses half an orange onto the juicer and begins to twist it counter- and clockwise with slow repetition producing juice to collect in collection jar. ":What problems are you running into with your's, Lorna?:" he asks.
"It's just been a while. I mean, Alex and I have our degrees, maybe I'll mooch off his lesson plans…" Lorna grins a little and shrugs. "I can't just regurgitate what I learned in school, gotta work with the text books, or find one that gets the most right-you know?" She shakes her head a little. "The more we continue to research the worse these old books look. Gonna have to order some newer ones maybe."
Doug sets aside the first half orange and begins working the second half on the juicer. ":Do you want some juice?:" Doug asks before continuing the teaching discussion. ":Oh, hadn't even considered text books. Learning languages really doesn't follow book learning well from what I understand… not that I have much experience with traditional language learning.:"
"I always had a text book in language classes, but I hardly speak any other languages now…" Lorna grins a bit and nods to Doug. "Juice sounds great, thank you. And don't worry too much, you can always bug Jean about books and all that-that's her job now." She adds, a little mischief in her eyes. Poor, poor Jean.
Doug nods to Lorna and then realizes he forgot something. He reaches out with his free arm, stretching it to reach the correct cabinet and opens it, draws out a pair of glasses and then closes the cabinet before bringing the glasses to the table. ":Its just not the way the human brain is are wired for language acquisition is all. There's a natural process for learning and the way most schools teach it… lets say it works counter to how your brain wants to learn a language.:"
"I can believe that. Maybe reference some text for like, verb tables and good hand outs. The books do help with reading and writing language I think." Lorna suggests and considers her stack of books. "I need to order in some new text books on Earth Science I think, these just Jurassic park info movie dumb things down. Kids know when they're being talked down to." She sighs.
":Actually, I was thinking collecting Scrabble games for the various languages, for some of the more advanced classes of course,:" Doug says as he cuts a second orange and begins juicing it as well. ":Did you know that they even make a Klingon version of the game?:"
"I didn't!" Lorna raises her brows. "Why? I mean, how many people actually manage to be fluent in Klingon?" She wonders. There's a whole world out there to consider! "So your advanced classes would just play scrabble? Any other ideas for them?" She wonders curious now about Doug's take on language.
":Oh no, not just. But it is an excellent way to stretch your vocabulary in any language!:" Doug says addressing the Scrabble question first. ":There's a whole fandom subculture which speaks Klingon actually,:" he explains as he begins to juice the second half of the second orange, ":Although it was made for a fictional world its a complete conlanguage… short for constructed language… after all." He then ponders other ideas. ":Its important to immerse in languages. I figure class time will be completely non-English for anyone after year one in a language… and luckily we get Univision, that will help with the Spanish classes. I think we can get satellite feeds from other countries for other languages.:"
"I hear immersion is pretty good." Lorna nods and smiles at Doug, watching him juice oranges. "So like, tv shows and movies, that'll be cool. It sounds like you have a few ideas for what you want to do. I bet it'll go well once you hammer out a routine." She offers and looks down at her forgotten sandwich to steal a quick bite.
Having finished juicing both oranges, Doug pours half the resulting pulpy juice into one of the glasses and the rest in the other. With a wave of a hand he offers Lorna her choice of glasses. ":Well, I have done some studies on how language acquisition works to prepare for this. Its best to start young, but I doubt my students will be six or under so I'll have to adopt to that as well,:" he explains.
"The brain continues to grow into the mid twenties I've read. Maybe it won't be as good as the real youngsters, but I bet they'll learn fine. Maybe look into music too-same part of the brain right? Music, math, and language?" Lorna offers and picks the less pulpy glass. Sipping it slowly she smiles her thanks. "This is perfect, Doug."
":Yes, it does, but the optimal learning period is pre-adulthood. By the onset of puberty… around the age of twelve… the language centers of the brain have become locked in more or less into the linguistic patters learned before then. Before that 'lock in' occurs it is possible to learn multiple languages as a native speaker would. After that… not so much,:" he explains the language learning facts before picking up the other glass of juice. After taking a sip he smiles, ":Glad you like it, it helps to have good oranges. Especially if you don't add sugar like this.:"
"I've been really trying to eat cleaner. This is totally helpful." Lorna nods and pats her abs. "Not drinking as much helps, but still, my old X uniform is snug-tells me I've been slacking on my routine." She shakes her head and focuses more on the juice than the sandwich. "Maybe you can find a way to hack how the brain learns language for teens? If anyone could it'd be you or the telepaths maybe."
":Oh, yeah, the Professor's done that many times,:" Doug says, ":He can implant a language in your brain in total, but only as well as the 'donor' understands the language. You still have no memory of /learning/ the language and I understand it can sometimes be a bit disturbing.:" He finishes his glass of juice and then says, ":Not really the way a school should operate, but for 'oh, we need to be in Japan tomorrow' it works well for the X-Men.:"
"Right, but I don't mean like the Professor does. I mean learning, like how best to process the data that is language so it's not all surface knowledge and mostly gone by my age-you know?" Lorna shakes her head.
Doug nods and smiles, ":Oh, I follow you, yeah, that might work. Rosetta Stone's techniques are sound also so I may hack their system as a basis to work from.:"