The Ten in Black...

I've learnt many customs in Nanyang. Many traditions, many crafts, many types of litrature. Traditions as in Health Booklet Comparing, crafts such as Rubber Band Gun Designing and litrature such as Comic Book Composing and Awkward Song Caroling. But now that I'm in the ACS family, I guess their customs may sooner or later have to over-run mine, and I may forget my own customs in the process. So now I've decided that whenever I remember old customs of mine, I'll quickly type them down here so as to save them before they get trampled over.

Today, I remembered about Teacher Scouting.

Miggipedia Manuals: Nanyang Customs - Teacher Scouting

Chapter 1 - What it takes to be a Teacher Scout
Now Teacher Scouting is necesary for the protection of those in the class who are busy setling with matters not related to the next lesson (Homework from other teachers, chatting, ect.), concidering that the last teacher is gone. It is also useful for classrooms located in corners such that you can only see teachers as far as 2 classrooms if you stay indoors. Every Teacher Scout must be bold, swift, eligant and quiet when on duty at the exterior of the classroom, yet ready to respond to any situation and report it to the Light Siren with clear instructions as quickly as possible. This duty takes great wits as, depending on the positioning of the classroom, a Post Station coiuld be as far as 4 classrooms from HQ.

Chapter 2 - Safety First
Whenever you plan to scout the area, you must always be certain that the terrain is not supervised by any Major Staff Members. If you're caught, the whole class could suffer for that one mistake. So to ensure that everythings clear, everything should follow a strict proceedure, even standing at the front door itself.

To exit to the Exterior Boundaries;

Method A
No. of men involved: 1+Exiting Scouts
1) Both men must lie on either side of the door, leaning against the wall.
2) The man opposite the door handle opens the door to maximum.
3) Both men slowly walk out the door, facing each other so as to ensure that both directions of the aisle is being observed.
4a) If grounds are clear, men who want to Scout exit.
4b) If grounds are supervised, quickly go back into class.

Method B
No. of men involved: 1+Exiting Scouts
1) Plain Man goes to lockers and pretends to get something, but is actually Checking for clearance.
2) Plain Man then reports status when returned into class.
2a) If grounds are clear, men who want to Scout exit.
2b) If grounds are supervised, stay in class.

There are a lot more procedures to fllow after getting out ou the class, but just to keep it simple, 'Stay low on the ground, move fast and look at all directions at all times!'.

Chapter 3 - Signals
To help simplify matters, codes and signals have been invented to inform status of terrain around a classroom and how the class should respond. Just like the watch towers of the Great Wall of China, Teacher Scouts are positioned at particular intervals so that if one person spots a teacher, he could signal his or her arrival(s) to the other Scouts and to the Light Siren(s) as fast as possible. If done in expected coordination, the present location, entry point, direction, speed, mood and Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) of an arriving teacher should reach the Classroom in less than 2.5 seconds.

Codes
The order of reporting the arrival of a teacher is as so: Name of teacher. Entry Point. Radius Presence or Location. Direction. Speed. ETA. Mood.

For entry point, you either say Port or Starboard taking that one is looking out the Main Door. If you don't know, the two words are suppose to be used on ships for direction keeping, Port meaning 'steer Left' and Starboard meaning 'steer Right'.

In general, Radius Presence is a rugh guide of distance from the teacher to the door. This radius is measured in Classrooms and readings are estimated in multiples of 0.5. But if you aren't certain that the teacher is going to your classroom, you can also include the discribtion of the location of the teacher (e.g. At the Lift, At the Wavey Staircase, At Class 5H, ect.)

For direction, the normal Air Force method of describing it is used. For those who don't know what that method is, it's the 'o'clock' Method. Basically, you declare the position of a target like how you would read the number a minute or hour hand points on a number on the clock. (e.g. If the target is straight in front of you, you say that the target's at '12 o'clock'. If it's straight on your right, it's at '3 o'clock'. And so on...)

Speed can be told in LoPS, basically meaning Lockers Per Second. This is especially used when the teacher was spoted along a background of school lockers. The Scout would watch how many lockers the teacher would pass in a second, which also gives the Scout enough time to comfirm other details like location, direction and mood. ETA is made once speed is comfirmed. The average teacher has a speed of 7 LoPS. Ussually to speed things up, certain ranges of LoPS are given a name;

2> LoPS = Dead Slow
3-5 LoPS = Slow
6-8 LoPS = Coming
9< LoPS = Coming Fast

Mood is basically just to state how the teacher appears to be feeling. This is an optional statement to make and is just to prepare the class if they could slacken down a little or brace themselves for a storm of scoldings.

Signals
Signals follow the same format of reporting as codes, but can only spread Name of Teacher, Entry Point, Direction, Speed and Mood.

Entry point is easy to signal as all you need to watch for is the first Scout who starts running back to class.

Point towards the Direction.

Show number of fingers to show number of LoPS.

Mood is quite easy too. If the teacher's relaxed, the Scout would appear happy; if the teacher's angry, the Scout would look panicked.

The rest is basically lip-reading.

Chapter 4 - Informing the Class
When the Scouts return back to the classroom, they have to quickly warn the class of the arrival of the teacher. This is ussually easy when the class isn't doing something that he/she thinks is important (e.g. homework, mini-games, ect.), but this isn't always the case. Instead, the Scouts can even be ignored and if so, the class may not be prepared for the teacher. So to attract the class quickly, the Scouts use something that will definitely grab attention but won't make any noise to aleart anyone outside the classroom - the Classroom Lights.

There will be a person stationed at the Switches. This job is known as the Light Siren. The Light Siren basically stays at his post, prepared to hear the comand, which is basically to hear the Scouts rushing back to class. When the Siren hears this, he quickly switches off all the lights, making the classroom surprisingly dark. This, by right, should attract the attention of all the students, giving enough of it to the Scouts so that they could spread the message around that there's a teacher within radius.