//------------------------------// // Chapter 3: Lesson Plan // Story: A New Life // by arc5162 //------------------------------// Once she agreed to let me teach her, I started drawing up a lessons plan for her. Because she grew up in the human equivalent of the bronze age, I decided to start from the beginning, reading and writing. Because her village already spoke my native language of Irish Gaelic, that's what I taught her. “First things first,” I said to Maple, sitting at a makeshift desk, “I’ll teach you how to read and write.” Maple looked confused for a moment, and then spoke up. “What is reading and writing?” “Oh, sorry, I forgot, your village probably hasn’t discovered the alphabet yet.” “The alphabet?”, she said, trying her best to pronounce the word that was new to her. “Let me explain.” I wrote out the full Gaelic alphabet from A to Z the turned back to face her. “These are letters, they make up words. Think of it like preserving words forever on paper.” “Really?”, she said with excitement. “Yes”, I said while writing out my name, “For example, this is my name written out, see?” She looked at the word with confusion for about a minute, then decided to speak. “These lines mean your name?” “Yes”, I said, “and I can teach you how to write anything you want.” After that, The lessons began to go very well. She picked up letters and words faster than I thought, and after about a month, she fully understood The written language. However, with this came a new challenge, teaching her to write. “This is a pencil”, I said, holding one up for her to see, “This little tool allows you to write your own words.” Maple looked at it with childlike wonder. Now that she was fully healed from the wound she came here with, she was more eager than ever to learn. “Here, you can use this one”, I said as I gave her the pencil. She took it in her hoof and immediately was curious. “How do I write with this?” She asked. “You remember the shapes of the letters and how to structure words right?” “Yes.” “Use the tip of the pencil to replicate the shape of the letters.” She looked at the tip of the pencil with curiosity, then slowly, but surely, wrote out her name. It was far from perfect, and to be perfectly honest, it was somehow actually better than my own handwriting, but it was decently a good start. “Good job”, I said, Maple looking back at me with pride, “That’s a good start, now I can teach you how to improve it.” We then spent the rest of the day practicing writing out each letter one by one, improving her hoof writing bit by bit. 2 Months Later “What is this?” She asked, looking at the sheet of paper I gave her. “It’s called a test, see these words here”, I said, pointing at the words I listed on the paper, “I want you to write each of these words on the blanks beside them, that will let me know that you are good at writing.” “Ok”, she said, getting right to it. 15 minutes later. “I’m done”, she said, holding up the paper. “Ok, lets see how you did.” I then took her paper and began to look it over using my scanners. One of the perks of this body I made is that I can scan anything using only my eyes, and when I was done scanning it, I stopped, eyes opened wide. I cross referenced her writing with my data base to see how well her writing would be compared to humans. Her writing had no mistakes, even the best human writers had some mistakes, her’s was flawless, comparable to a printer. After taking a moment to collect my thoughts, I sat up and walked over to her. “Maple, I’m so proud of you.” “Really.” “This is the most perfect writing I’ve ever seen.” “Well, I had a good teacher”, she said, proceeding to hug me. “Thank you so much for teaching me”, she said, eyes filled with tears of joy. “You’re welcome.”