Hey everyone, so as anyone who has been here for any amount of time can tell you one of the problems we constantly have here is that we'll begin each school year with 13 classes and teachers, but two weeks in 3-4 classes will be cnacelled because of no teacher posting, and then another two weeks in a couple more will close, and even the classes still being offered don't necessarily get posted on by the teachers nearly as often as they should, and classes just stop. Obviously there's always a few classes (the ones who's teachers are super active) that go on fine with no issues. So, I'm writing this blog for two reasons. The first is to clearly write down what's expected if you're offering/volunteering to teach, and the second is to open up the comments below to any ideas to help this process. I'm willing to listen to and entertain any idea reguardless of how wild, but they may not be implemented, so just keep that in mind. Anyway, let's start with the expectations and such, then we'll get back into ideas of how to improve this process.
So, when you volunteer to teach any class I expect your teacher to be a fully mature adult who's willing to side with the school/Headmaster and not be just an older version of a student. Think about the teachers in the books...they were different and had their quirks, but they were all adults and mature. Secondly, I expect teachers to be decent at all varities of magic, and exceptional at what they're teaching. I haven't had too many issues with this...but if you're volunteering to teach please be sure to actually study and make your you know (OOC) the subject before trying to teach it. The students you're teaching shouldn't know the material better than you. Next up (thirdly) is that when you agree to teach, you are agreeing to post in your classroom and roleplay on it at a minimum twice a week. This is necessary to keep students engaged and to keep the lessons moving. It can be a bit time consuming having to make 7 posts (one forr each year) at least twice a week, but by signing up to teach you're committing to doing this every week for the whole semester. I know it may sound like I'm trying to scare you off...and honestly I am. I'm tired of having teachers who say they'll do this, and then don't, lowering (in my eyes) how much fun Hogwarts is. The lessons should be fun and exciting, but if a teacher never posts or responds, students aren't going to enjoy it. This whole wiki is primarily based AT HOGWATS. Yes, we have the ministry and there's always a lot going on there. Yes we have lots of locations and other characters you can rp with. ...but the wiki's focus has been and always will be on Hogwarts. So, that being our focus, we need to put some work in to improve that.
Sorry about getting off track, so back to teachers. Teachers are required to monitor their classroom and when it gets too full archive their own classroom. I know that this has always been a requirement for teachers, but I also know that it's not heppening and admins/bcrats are doing it for some teachers. Please don't! When a classroom isn't getting archived that quickly points out to mee that students are interested and posting there, but the teacher isn't doing their job, and brings it to my attention. If you don't know how to archive ASK! It's really easy! Believe it or not, teachers are also required to help students. That involves being available in their classrooms or offices for roleplays, and responding to roleplays in these places in a timely manor. Teachers are alwso required to post some sort of grade at the end of the school year, and can be based on whatever the teacher wants. We can have participation grades, results of homework assignments, finals, honestly whatever the teacher deems important to showing the students progress. Teachers are alsoo required to give House Points, and help record them (which the Bcrats have come up with a way to hopefully make this easier for the next school year). Finally teachers are required to teach the minimum material outlined in the Ministry Requirements, which I can pooint any teacher to. In fact, they are:
- Vote: Class GLEs pt.1
- Vote: Class GLEs pt.2
- Vote: Class GLEs pt.3
- Vote: Class GLE pt.4
If you look at these and don't know the materials, or think they need updated, let me know and we'll update them! That's all that's REQUIRED of teachers. Let me list these out again for you:
- Mature Adult Teacher Characters
- Exceptional at the Subject their teaching (so know the subject OOC as well)
- Edit and update your classroom at least twixe a week
- Archive your classroom
- Help students
- Post grades
- Give and record House Points
- Teach the required material
Now, lots of teachers do extra things such as posting homework assignments for students to complete and finals for them to take, and then taking the extra time to grade them. This is excellent and though I appriciate teachers doing it, this isn't required. The same goes for finals, they're great to have and take, but again not required. All teachers don't have to be completely loyal to the Headmaster, and can disagree with him if they like. Teachers can have their own opinions on things, have different personalities and quirks, but they still must follow all the rules above. Overall there's a lot of room for variety when making a teacher, as if all teachers were the same, the lessons would be extraordinarily boring.
Alright, so above is what I expect from teachers. If you're still interested in teaching next year, please go to my userpage and using your teacher's word bubble post in the top section what class your teacher would like to teach for the next school year. Don't worry if someone else has already posted the class you want to teach. Either we'll split the class, move teachers around to make it work, or find a soluntion, but I need to see everyone who's interested in each class to come up with a full schedule and listing of teachers. As for Head of Houses, I will pick and appoint those, and I may rant on that in a minute too. First however, I want to take a moment to talk about something else...extra classes. Over the years we've had a lot of different extra subject taught here at Hogwarts, and though I'm always willing to allow new subjects to be taught and give them a try, most have failed. I think this is usually due to eaither inactive teacher, or no material on the subject so even though it sounds really cool, three weeks in the teacher doesn't know what else to teach. So, if you want to make a new class and teach it, there are a couple requirements. First I need to know you have enough material for the class and can fit in a full 9 sessions of teaching. Second the topic has to seem interesting and relevent to the world. By that I mean it has to involve magic (we are a school of magic) and relate to the environment. I wouldn't allow a dark arts class to be taught. There are subjects like Occlumency that I don't think should be taught to a room full of students. If you offer to teach Muggle Studies, but haven't been around the wiki and know about the war and technology here and such, I will turn you down. One of the things our wiki does exceptionally well is making Hogwarts and the magical world believeable, and any class that seems fake or unrealistic, or doesn't fit I won't allow. Now that that's been said, feel free to post on my page too with subjects you wish to teach that don't exsist yet, or in the comments below, but be ready to answer my questions and justify your thinking to me before I'll give approval.
Alright, next up I'm going to give the topic of Heads of Houses and Deputy Headmaster/Headmistress a quick run over. These positions of power are offered by the Headmaster who has full authority to put people into these positions or remove them as he sees fit with no other say, opinions or approvals. That may seem unfair as it's based solely on one persons opinion, but as the school headmaster, that's how it is so tough. It seems like every year I get multiple requests for these postions, but I base who I appoint to these on a couple things. First, unless I absolutely have to, I will never pick a new teacher for these postions. I will always look at those who have already taught at Hogwarts, because they have already proven their teaching ability and skill roleplaying to be able to fill them. I also look at how often you post, and the quality of your posts. You have to be available for the students, because a studeent should always go to their Heads of House with issues and problems, NOT up to the Headmaster's office (pet peeve...oh, or maybe I should make a pet Peeves to scare them off!). This means they have to be around to help students. They also should be willing and able to work with the Headmaster and other Heads of Houses to solve issues happening in Hogwarts. Heads of Houses will also be responsible for selecting which students will be their House Prefects, and overseeing their House Quidditch Teams. They appoint the Quidditch captain to do the team roster and such, and if the captain isn't around it's their responsibility to find a new one, or make sure the House has a team to play. Just as a side note, I know I (me personally) failed this school year where quidditch is concerned, and I'm sorry for that and already working on solutions to ensure it doesn't happen again next Year. Heads of House are also responsible for their House Commonroom (archiving) and being in the commonroom and dorms if there's an issue requiring a teacher there. The Deputy Heads (I can have 2 if I wish) need to do all these things for all the houses if they're not a Head of House, and if they are they need to be counted on to step into the Headmaster's shoes if something were to happen or while he's away and take care of the buisness in the Headmaster's office. All these things colate in making these jobs not easy, and overall we've had some excellent Head of House. I just felt that putting all these requirements in a single place would help make sure everyone's on the same page.
- Selecting House Prefects and Quidditch Captains, and replacing them if inactive
- Archiving Common rooms, and keeping an eye on roleplays there
- Being responsible for your students (So, not letting them roleplay in the Forbidden forest, being there when needed in the Hospital Wing, giving detentions for trublemakers)
So, as you can see being a Head of House is a huge responsibility, and if I see one not doing all the things shown above, I reserve the right to replace them. Now, I'm nicer than that and will generally ask why they aren't doing what they should be and try to work it out, but know that I hold the power to do this at any time. It also requires being active on the wiki and keeping up/track of your stundets roleplays. This is hard to do, and guage, but I'm throing it out there as something they should be doing too.
Alright, so now that I've written a huge blog about how I see things at Hogwarts, and how I think they should be, I want to hear your ideas about how things can be improved at Hogwarts. However, when giving your suggestions in the comments below, please make sure you're thinking about what I've written. We have a highly descriptive and realistic environment. Will your suggestions take away from that? We're focued on roleplaying, so will you're suggestions cut down on opportunities to roleplay? How hard are they to implement or sustain. If an idea's easy to implement but incredibly hard to keep going, it may not be worth it. These are the sort of things I'll be thinking about before implementing any ideas and making changes. So, let me know what suggestions you have so together we can get this portion of our wiki back to where it should be.