Information For Teachers

Here is some information you will find useful during your time as a teacher or member of staff at Xavier's school. The page is quite comprehensive, but we ask that you take the time to read it over carefully for it contains valuable information you will need during your tenure at the school. Please do not share this page with non-teacher PCs. You may refer to this page for your own use at any time.

Faculty Channel

We urge you all to join the Faculty channel ('addcom fac=Faculty'). You can use this to communicate amongst yourselves, plan events and field trips, or just vent about difficult students (please keep the complaints about IC behaviour however). We may also use this to quickly contact those faculty members who are online, so it's important you make use of this channel if you want to stay up-to-date.

Student Behaviour

Students are bound by Xavier's School Code of Conduct.

Discipline

We encourage faculty and staff PCs to deal with IC discipline as they see fit and are comfortable. Low level breaches of the code of conduct can usually be dealt with by detention, punishments, or short-term grounding (for the sake of RP that you run past us any grounding beyond 2 days in duration).

Corporal punishment is strictly forbidden ICly. However, teachers may otherwise do as they see fit for punishments, such as making the students do menial chores around the school, write lines or an essay on their behaviour, do laps or physical exercise, give a speech to other students about the folly of their ways, apologize to wronged parties, pay out of pocket for damages (within reason), etc. For behaviour that goes above and beyond what the teacher can or feels comfortable with handling, please submit a +request with a summary of the problem and what's been ICly done about it so far.

Training and Classes

We invite teachers to run RPed classes or discussion groups at the school. You can submit a +event or simply grab available students for some spontaneous RP.

Teachers are also encouraged to help the students with powers training. Not all training needs to be done 'on camera', but we invite teachers to use this as an excuse to RP with students outside of classes. Training can be done in groups or one-on-one. You can set up a +event or simply do an open call.

Extra-Curriculars

We encourage but do not insist that teachers run extra-curricular activities outside of the classroom. This is meant mostly just as a fun excuse to RP for both you and the students. Extra-curriculars can take the form of short-term or on-going projects with a group of students and a teacher advisor. They can be on any topic in which the students and teacher are interested. If you would like to run one, please submit a +request, so that staff can keep track and point interested students in your direction.

Field Trips

Teachers and school staff may also opt to lead a field trip for all or certain students. Students may be chosen based upon merit, age, inclusion in an extra-curricular, interest, etc. However, teachers are asked not to limit the inclusion to players with whom you are OOCly friendly but to choose an IC basis for the selection. Field trips can be as simple as a boat ride out on the lake, a carefully supervised trip into the city, or even an overnight trip somewhere. It is best if the trip has some sort of academic purpose, however tenuous (eg. going to a rock concert to study the socio-economic trends in American adolescents), though strictly 'fun' trips could be offered as rewards for IC behaviour.

Hidden Secrets

The school is also outfitted with a series of secret passageways for use in emergency (or for fun RP inspiration). All the students and faculty should be aware of these tunnels. Feel free to use this as an RP excuse with new students at the school, or even reviewing them periodically with the established students. For your reference, here is a list of the available routes. They can be accessed by typing 'hp' in any room containing a passage:

Woods Tunnel
Runs from the library to the woods.
Gate Tunnel
Runs from the second floor landing to the front gate.
Lake Tunnel
Runs from the East Wing to Breakstone Lake.
Cove Tunnel
Runs from the West Wing to Spuyten Dyvil Cove.
Garage Tunnel
Runs from the parlor to the garage.
Basement Chute
Runs from the east attic through the study hall and to the basement.

Student/Teacher Interactions

It has often come up as a slight problem at the school just how friendly and familiar the faculty should be and can be with students. Unlike most schools, Xavier's serves for many of the students and staff as a sort of makeshift family. With this in mind, neither Xavier nor the staff of the game want to limit this type of RP. However, it is important to remember that the school (and therefore anyone employed by the school) is acting in loco parentis to the students that are in attendance. Which isn't to say that students and teachers can't be friends, but that teachers must always maintain their authority for the good of the students.

Legally, this means the school is supposed to serve in the place of parents or legal guardians to those under 18 years of age. The school (and therefore teachers and staff) must act as would parents of the students, not their peers. However, beyond the usual parent/child relationship, the school also has the disadvantage of being an institution, which means less exceptions can be made for particular individuals, and that the government would monitor much more closely for poor decision-making. This means that teachers may sometimes have to make the unpopular decision and not sanction bad ideas for students. OOCly, none of us want to cut off RP options by having a teacher come down on the students, but ICly, it is going to be the teacher's behind on the line if anything goes wrong.

In this sort of instance, we suggest that the players work out the matter OOCly in advance of a formal scene requesting the go ahead. Students wanting to do something ill-advised, dangerous, or against the code of conduct are generally going to have to do so without faculty permission, and take the risks of getting caught and punished inherent in that. This is meant to be all in good fun, and the punishment can lead to RP development of its own. Please do not feel obligated OOCly to agree with something brought to you by the students. If students do not want to risk being told not to do something, they might just be better off not asking in the first place. While we're not saying your character has to ICly agree with the code of conduct and rules of the school, and may opt to fudge around the rules a little or feign ignorance to some rule-breaking, the more they do this, the more they risk getting pulled in for an IC disciplinary meeting, following our usual ICA=ICC policy.

This isn't to say that Xavier's is all that more strict than your average school. Student complaints to the contrary, it is in many ways more lenient. Students failing to get their homework done because they were having problems with their powers, for instance, will likely find that more teachers understand. They are free to come and go throughout the day as they please, as long as they don't miss class or curfew. They are encouraged to take safe risks within the boundaries of the school, and even occasionally injure themselves in the name of improving their powers. But we must remember that the world is currently a very dangerous place for mutants, and that one student being discovered could risk exposing the whole school. With this in mind, teachers may have to make difficult judgement calls when students wish to do something. Just remember that it is a teacher's job first and foremost to keep these students safe. If you or the students need help reaching a compromise between IC safety and OOC desire for RP, please contact staff.

In terms of a student/teacher romance, this would be heavily frowned upon. While an 18 year old janitor might get away with dating a 17 year old student, it becomes more of an issue when a teacher, of whatever age or previous relationship, dates a student in his or her charge. Because the teacher holds authority over the student, and because the teacher needs to be as fair-minded and as free from bias as possible, it would be seen as a conflict of interest. While we don't OOCly forbid students and teachers from dating discreetly (as we don't wish to tell you how to RP your characters), we suggest you veer away from such things, and you're warned that should this be discovered ICly, disciplinary action will be taken, which may include the teacher losing his or her job. As well, if the student is under 17 (the age of consent in the state), the teacher may face legal repercussions.

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License