Wonderful golden rule days (School mingle log)

[a_shadow]

Who: Students (of all ages) and teachers
When: June 15-30th
Where: The classroom OR the library OR name your location
What: Mingle log for education-related activities—feel free to post a starter as well as tagging around
Warnings: None as of now (let me know if something ends up needing added)

With the disappearance of Alice, Tex has changed the way the school is run. Instead of homework and tests, she lets all the minors of school-eligible age know that she is switching things to a student-directed model, with a simple question-and-answer interview assessment wrapping up each topic. She hopes this will lead to more students signing up for the excitement of learning.

Tex puts out an announcement about the change in administration on the network, linking all who view the announcement to the student roll so they can sign up for classes, if necessary. She also makes mention of the fact that art classes and archery lessons are available for students who keep up on their studies.

Comments

Agent Texas | OTA

[a_shadow]

    The Classroom

Tex arrives to open the classroom every day at 0800 ship's time. She tends to stick around until 1200 whether or not anyone shows up, but stays until later when students are actively using the facility. When a student enters, she looks up from her position where she's working on something or other, whether it's reading something at her desk or taking care of other business.

"Hey," she says, more often than not. "Ready to get to it?"

    The Library

Tex can be found sporadically in the library, when someone has requested help with a topic that requires more of her understanding. There's no Dewey decimal system in place here, so she's left to do her best wending through the stacks and picking out books that might be helpful. She doesn't tend to even look up when someone enters, but if she notices a student of hers seems to be having trouble with making their selections, she'll set her book aside and come help.

    The Shooting Range

It's not until the visit to The Collective that Tex was able to make this room everything she'd hoped for from the beginning. In addition to the accessories that made the shooting range more useful, she'd also purchased a practice archery set for the kids to use. She's using it as an incentive—get youyr schoolwork done and get the opportunity to learn to shoot. Students who take the lessons seriously and excel may be able to move on and learn to shoot a gun.

classroom

[songoftime]

It's been... a while since Link has come to the classroom. He'd been taking personal math classes with Alice for the better part of a month, until everything got... busy. Alice's trial. Fi's arrival. Training. Amissis-Re and the Reverse Ingress. Link falling asleep for a week, his stay in the Medbay. And now, a couple of weeks into their stop at this peaceful place, a couple of weeks of allowing himself to enjoy it, he thinks it's time to get back to it.

But... Alice isn't here any more. Someone else is in charge of the school now. And things... aren't going to be the same any more. Link doesn't entirely understand. But then, he doesn't understand a lot about schools in the first place.

He comes early, not long after the classroom opens. He lingers in the doorway, hesitant even after having been addressed.

"Hi," he says, voice on the quiet side. He wears a very long sword, a shield, and a leather bag on his back, in addition to his Moiran uniform. "I... have some questions, first."

[a_shadow]

Tex has seen Link around, of course, but she wasn't all that invested in the school as things sat with Alice in charge. She took the entire month when they were on the skywhale planet off, for example, and things have been pretty sporadic since that time. So Tex isn't that surprised to find that Link is treating her like a stranger.

Tex nods, then gestures toward the nearest desk with her head. Link can pull up a seat if he wants. "Sure, go ahead," she encourages.

[songoftime]

Link finally enters the room. Maybe it's just the way he's holding himself, or the fact that he's wearing a sword and a shield, but he looks incredibly out of place in the classroom, with all of its high tech. It isn't his first time here, and he's been on the Moira long enough to adjust, but right now, he's feeling uncertain, and it's very clearly showing.

"You said you were changing the way classes work," he says. He hasn't sat down, but he's standing awkwardly next to the desk she motioned towards. "What does," and he actually pauses to look at his MID, checking the message she sent so he gets the phrase right, "'student-directed model' mean?"

[a_shadow]

"It means you get to decide what topics you cover in class," Tex says. "Is there anything in particular you want to learn about next? If not, I can decide on something for you, based on your skill level." She's fairly flexible with the whole thing, and she hopes this helps the students feel invested.

[songoftime]

"Oh." Link blinks a few times, then his brow furrows. "What if I don't know anything about what I'm studying? I didn't go to school at all before I came here. How do I pick topics?" He tilts his head a little, already thinking of possible answers to his question. "Is there a list?"

library

[hyperkinesia]

Finding Trish going through books at the library isn't a usual sight, but it's not completely unheard of either. Of course, Bruce doesn't really notice that this isn't Trish, although if he spent more than a couple of seconds looking at the woman before stepping a little too close, mildly suggestive smile on his face and a book of his own in hand, then maybe he wouldn't be making himself look like a complete ass right about now.

"What's a girl like you doing in a place like this?"

[a_shadow]

It's circumstance that has kept her and Bruce from running into each other until now, really—and Tex has no idea at all that Bruce's interest in her activities is actually interest in Trish's.

Luckily for Bruce, Trish and Tex sound nothing alike.

Tex finds his approach amusing, but barely smirks in response, instead giving him an appraising look. "What's a guy like you doing using cheesy pick-up lines in a place like this?"

[hyperkinesia]

The voice would've been a dead giveaway by itself, but even failing that, the woman's posture is different, her expressions, the way she reacts to him— Bruce is attentive to a lot of things, and once they all start pinging alarms in his head, it really doesn't take hearing her voice for him to know he screwed up.

"You're... uh. You're not— God." Trish definitely mentioned another woman with her face on board. Yep. Nice work, Banner. He groans inwardly, closing his eyes for a moment and just barely managing not to hide his face behind his book. "I'm sorry. I thought you were someone else. I promise I wasn't trying to hit on you or anything."

[a_shadow]

"I'm not Trish?" Tex says. "Funny, she never told me I had to worry about a gentleman suitor." Of course, she and Trish have barely spoken since that first time they ran into each other. This is a later development, probably.

[hyperkinesia]

"Maybe she's just embarrassed of me. With good reason." Even if he says that in a joking tone. He did kind of make himself look like an idiot just now though, so. "Again, sorry. I'm Bruce. Bruce Banner."

Nathan Drake | Gen Ed & Languages | The Classroom | Open to students, teachers and bored crew

[sketchycharacter]

Nathan doesn't actually know what he's doing. He never trained as a teacher, never finished high school—hell, he never finished middle school, and just about everything he knows that could possibly fit into a classroom was self-taught. (Sully taught him plenty of other things, but he's teaching general education and languages, not general education and theft.)

So during his initial days on the job, he mostly sits back and lets the students come to him. There's a schedule, but he doesn't go around hauling in truants. It'd be pretty hypocritical, and anyway he definitely has no idea how to teach someone who actively doesn't want to be there. This either makes him a really cool or really shitty teacher.

Between classes, such as they are, he spends his time reading books or sketching, and will probably be found doing one or the other.

Re: Nathan Drake | Gen Ed & Languages | The Classroom | Open to students, teachers and bored crew

[that_cost]

Well, at least he has one person that arrives as scheduled. Leigh is here, a new backpack over her shoulder as she stands in the doorway, warily peeking into the room. Man, it was weird being in a classroom and since Nathan looks busy drawing, she decides to start off the day with a joke.

"Two guys walk into a bar. Bartender goes to the first guy and asks 'What'll it be?' First guy answers with 'I'll have some H-two-Oh.' So the bartender pours his drink and hands it over before going to the second guy. 'What'll it be?' the bartender says. Second guy goes 'I'll have some H-two-Oh, too.' Bartender hands over the guys beverage, guy takes a drink and falls over dead."

Yes, she knows it's morbid, but look, she's smiling. She doesn't smile a whole lot.

[sketchycharacter]

Nate keeps drawing as she rolls out the joke, but starts smiling as she goes, and is snickering at the finish before he gives his drawing a final touch and shuts the sketch book.

"That's terrible. I love it," he says, grinning up at her. "Hey, Leigh. Decided to acquire some knowledge?"

He may or may not be able to help with that. They'll have to find out together.

this is some of my favorite cr i can't deal with it.

[that_cost]

"It's one of my favorites," Charlie replies, smirking and chuckling some. She made someone laugh. It works for her. It makes her feel like maybe she's capable of doing something right.

At his question, she seems to really, deeply consider her response, chewing her lower lip before answering.

"Prrrobably. Maybe. I think that's why I'm here, anyway." Which is to say, hell yeah.

aw yay c:

[sketchycharacter]

"That's convenient, because it's why I'm here too." He lifts his hands in a mock-'hurray' gesture. "I imagined something more like an actual class, but maybe starting small is the best way to go about it."

As if he knows. Personal instruction or mass lecturing, it's all the same to him, i.e. he's clueless about it. But hey, motivated people do make better students, or at least he did.

"So you said you were home schooled," he adds. "Where'd you leave off at, subject-wise? What do you want to learn?"

[a_shadow]

Tex has arranged for the other teachers to cover the shifts when she's not available, so that third day after his orientation, when Nathan walks in, Tex stands to walk right out. She takes her position as a teacher seriously, but she has other duties she also attends to on a daily basis (even if no one has actually said she needs to do so much patrolling).

"Looks like it's a slower day today," she says. "Nobody's come in yet."

[sketchycharacter]

"Yeah, I'm not surprised," he says, shrugging his messenger bag over his shoulder. "I never knew a lot of people who liked school. Can't be that different in space."

Then again, he dropped out when he was 12, so he's possibly not the right person to talk about this.

"Does that mean we have to figure out a way to make learning fun or just say fuck it and chill out until someone decides to get some education?"

[a_shadow]

"We have a truancy officer on board. Or, you know, self-assigned. I don't make a huge point of going after the kids, that's her gig. She's good at it, too, she just must not have made it a priority today."

Tex looks over at him then.

"She's a giant goat, by the way. She's called Toriel."

[sketchycharacter]

Immediately, Nate tenses. Shit. Of all the goat women in the world, he just had to pickpocket a semi-coworker.

"Yeah...we've met," he says hesitantly. "Had kind of a misunderstanding down on the beach. We sorted it out, but I'm not sure she likes me very much."

Well, the second half of that is true.

'Leigh Manders' | Classroom | Library | OTA

[that_cost]

So Charlie's actually pretty excited to be going to school again, self-taught fashion that it is. She doesn't really mind that aspect of it, considering she's not good with groups of people, and despite what Andrew said about others like her...no, sorry...like them around, she's still not ready to put too many of her cards on the table.

But here she is, at the Library, quietly studying something and occasionally getting up to either work (because she's employed there) or to get a book for herself to read through. There are journals full of notes that she won't be letting anyone read, but for the most part? She's fairly approachable, if a bit distracted.

Or maybe she's in one of the classes, giving whoever is speaking her full attention. There are minutes left in class, but she's still all for whatever's being taught. So, to whomever is teaching, have one attentive student who won't ask a lot of questions just yet and who will most likely just happily listen.

[a_shadow]

Somehow Tex has gotten onto her favorite topic, that of finanaces—something that's not really that applicable to this universe, as it turns out, as so many things are purchased on the barter system. Yet obviously there's some type of currency, as the captains were able to give them access to unlimited funds. Or so they said.

Tex doesn't really believe it.

"So the thing about inflation is that the more money you print, the less it's worth," she says, a conclusion to what she'd been discussing.

[that_cost]

Despite the gap in her education, this actually made sense to her. It wasn't something that was covered in her previous few years of schooling, but she could follow easily. So she writes her notes and underlines this and that and finally gets what was being said.


"That's part of why prices rise? Because of inflation."

Well, she gets it to a point.

[a_shadow]

"Right," Tex said. "And that's actually the word people use to mean that prices have gone up. But it actually means purchasing power has gone down."

Tex loves money and talking about money. It pleases her that Leigh is catching on so well. "Money is a symbol. It represents a unit of work. When there is less money in the system, you have to work less to gain a unit of currency."

[that_cost]

"That kinda makes me wonder what kind of money the captain is using and what it's worth, if he gives us no limit over it."

She's mostly kidding, to be perfectly honest.