fandomhigh | Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day

Entry tags:

!event: welcome picnic

Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day

Thankfully, the weather on the island today was fairly nice for the tail end of December, but there was still a medium-sized bonfire going in the middle of the lawn, partly due to tradition and partly due to the potential for shirtlessness (which, Zoe supposed, was also tradition.)

The usual tables were set up with warm foods, nametags, and lists for the new and old folks to find each other. Once everything was set up, it was time to celebrate a new year and the start of a new semester!

[OCD is up! I'm consolidating this down to one post, so bring all your new and old folks over here! Since it's outside, the picnic is open to all students, teachers, and townies!]

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And Sparkle could appreciate that. Up until fairly recently in his life, he'd had no idea what that was like.

"Well, I mean, I bet she'd appreciate it if I wasn't coming to her at all hours of the day and night, freaking out," he noted. "Options are cool..."

And he knew Eliot better. By virtue of having had like maybe three conversations more with him than with Kitty. Mostly during moments when he was freaking the hell out or expecting the worst, at that.

"Well, Hardison might get a little grumpy if you wake him up too many times, but he'll get over it."

"... I can try not to wake Hardison too many times," Sparkle replied, looking slightly chagrined. "I mean, if it gets to be too late at night, I can probably make do with some muffled screaming into a pillow."

Yes, Atton was sure to love that.

Eliot snorted. "A decent enough copin' strategy. But tell ya what, I'll put my phone on silent."

The vibration would totally wake him up, but less likely Hardison.

"Oh my god you are my hero," Sparkle replied, wide-eyed. "I'm running out of coping strategies otherwise, and I won't abuse it, seriously. If for whatever reason something goes so badly with my class that I need to call you about it in the middle of the night, something's probably gone really wrong."

Or he was just drunk. Either or.

"Or you're havin' a late night 'I gotta teach a class tomorrow and I have no lesson plan' freak out." Eliot had maybe been there. A few times now. "Either way."

"... Or that," Sparkle admitted, wrinkling his nose. "Oh god, I'm going to have to write up, like, a syllabus."

Oh hey! Early start on the freaking out!

"I mean, you can. I ain't never really bothered."

Eliot, this was how your class ended up attacked by killer robots.

It was really, really fortunate that Sparkle had yet to hear about the killer robots.

"Yeah...? But what sort of stuff do you teach?"

"I ain't actually managed to teach the same thing twice, I don't think," Eliot mused. "Well, I guess Parker and I did two sets of summer adventure classes, but we didn't really repeat anything. Hell, this time around they've got me on 'Home Ec'. I've barely even thought about that class since I was takin' it to get with cheerleaders in high school."

That was a long time ago, Sparkle. A looooong time ago.

Sparkle's expression went through a few different stages, from, 'Huh, people actually do that?' to, 'why the hell didn't I think of teaching something like Home Ec instead.' It settled on a sort of thoughtful, 'Okay, that doesn't actually sound like a disaster,' and there it remained.

"It's funny, there might even be some weird crossover between the stuff I teach and the stuff you do," he noted. "I mean, things like how to repair damaged clothes and stuff like that... they're lifesavers."

"I've definitely had to make use of that skill from time to time, yeah. Guessin' for slightly different reasons than you did." He was pretty sure Sparkle, for all he'd dealt with, had never been stuck in a third world prison with only one shirt. "What other sorts of things you plannin' to focus on?"

"A lot of the obvious basics," Sparkle replied, shrugging. "Food, money, shelter. And then stuff people don't even think about when they get all... fucking stupid, when they're like 'that homeless guy can't afford to eat but he's paying a monthly bill for that smartphone,' you know? Because it isn't like there are many phones these days that aren't smartphones, and a phone is vital if you ever hope to get a home or a fucking job..."

Eliot probably didn't need to be educated on that point, Spark.

"Or how the hell to keep clean when it isn't like you can just hop in a shower, or staying warm at night, or where not to sleep and I mean, I have to talk about drugs because they're a fucking trap, and... like. Lots of stuff."

Eliot nodded. He was familiar with all of that, from the outside at the very least. Though never as a teenager.

He was half tempted to try calling his father. Thank him for not kicking him out until he could at least join the army.

"How 'bout violence? Lots of gangs prey on homeless kids too, don't they? Or protectin' what little you do have from being stolen."

Sparkle nodded his agreement, adding both of those things to his mental checklist.

"And that's where I start getting into... muddy stuff," he admitted. "Where breaking points are. People draw these lines that they're never going to cross, ever, right up until they realize that maybe they're going to have to if they want to survive. And different cities have other things you're going to have to look out for. Like... Toronto's a hard city. For Canada. But it's still fucking Canada. I don't even know where half the students are going to be from yet."

Eliot shook his head. "You're never gonna know all the variables the kids are gonna face in their own worlds. But that's where you can get 'em to start thinking for themselves. Ask them to think about what sorts of challenges they'd realistically face in their own home towns. Get them to say where they'd draw the line, then challenge 'em on it. Push 'em further."

"Part survival class, part ethics class?" Sparkle wasn't even arguing. He was just taking a moment to consider all of those angles. Getting the students to think for themselves was half the point of this class, after all. "Bit of self discovery for good measure... I think I can work with that."

"You think there's no ethics in survival?" Eliot asked. "No one's ever gonna know where their lines really are until they're actually in it." Lord knew, at these kids's ages, Eliot had certainly never thought he'd be capable of the things he'd grown up to do. Both for survival and just for a paycheck. "Doesn't mean it ain't worth thinking and talking about."

"I mean... I lived it," Sparkle pointed out. "I know personal limits and ethics are going to play a part. I just... I guess I still have to get my head around being the one to talk about that part to students. I was the little asshole standing in the back of Skywalker's class yelling at him because his in-class exercises about privilege were shitty and cruel."

Literally in the back. The very back. It had been that one where students stepped forward and backwards depending on the questions.

"See, I'm pretty sure that means you're exactly the sort of person who should be talkin' to these kids about this kind of thing."

"Because I yelled at Skywalker?"

Because you cared about that sort of thing, Sparkle.

"Because you didn't just go along with the exercise and not yell at Skywalker."

"Well, it's a shitty exercise," Sparkle muttered, shrugging and bunching up his shoulders a little. "He asks questions like 'did you have parents who told you you could be anything you wanted growing up,' and has you step forward or backwards depending on whether the answer is yes or no."

Sparkle was reasonably sure he was one of the first people on the island who had been able to reach out and touch the back wall of the classroom.

". . . Did he ask if you had parents at all?"

"No," Sparkle replied, lip curling a little. "No, he did not ask that. But he asked if they graduated college and had a job."

Seriously. He'd been seven steps back and had wanted to punch the guy who had walked into the classroom telling his students to call him Master.

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