“You useless dogs! It’s simple! Simple! You’re useless, all of you!”
Saer turned his back on the bewildered Zelvorian volunteers he had been trying to train and stomped off angrily.
Ph’woar saw what had happened, asked his own class to keep up the swordplay exercises they’d been doing, and casually wandered over to his crewmate.
“Having trouble teaching them?”
Saer scoffed. “They know nothing!”
The Deltan thought, remembered his own training in his youth by the finest swordmasters his parents could afford, then asked: “did you always know what you do know about fighting? Do you remember what it was like to be like them?”
Saer would not have taken even this constructive criticism from many, but for all his foppish ways he respected Ph’woar for his ability to handle a blade.
He watched the Deltan as he worked with his class of novice warriors for a while. Saw how he used their eagerness to learn to fight, how he had them work together, how he explained and built each step in their training on what had gone before. Then he sat and thought how he himself had gone from an eager stripling to the seasoned warrior he was now. He reflected on how his knowledge and skill had been constructed out of his experiences, and how he had learned from others in his time. Thought about how he could help these Zelvorians do the same.
He got up. Stomped back to his rookie soldiers.
“Right, you lot! Who wants to put a bullet in a slaver? All of you? Great! And how do you think we are going to get ourselves ready to do that? First, we get comfortable handling weapons! Form up…”
The above is from my write-up of a scene in a science-fiction RPG I play in. I found it fascinating. “Saer” (or rather, his player) had failed a die roll to train some rookies. “Ph-woar” was played by a senior academic, a SFHEA, and his intervention was both in and out of character – I don’t think he could see a failed teaching without wishing to support his (fictional) colleague. I, being on my path to PGCPHE and FHEA, found myself relating the fictional scenario which had arisen to my reading and understanding of andragogical theory.
Stirge Country 