Math and Science, Oh My!

"Now for our final warm-up question, can anyone tell me what five minus two equals?" asked Mrs. Ishitaki "Anyone? Anyone at all?"

A boy with tawny hair and curled ears to match raised his hand, "Yes Subject 684-463L?"

"Three." the boy, now addressed as Subject 684-463L responded. She smiled.

"Good job, bud," Mrs Ishitaki praised. "What about sixteen minus nine?"

Subject 684-463L began to count on his fingers, his nose crinkling in concentration as he did. When he next spoke, his answer sounded more like a question, "Uhm...seven?"

"Excellent work!" she said, this time with a clap. "But let's try to be a bit more confident in your answers okay everyone? If you're unsure on whether or not you're right, count once or even twice more if you have to."

"Yes ma'am!" We responded as one.

I never understood why they put us through advanced learning at five years old. Sure we still learned how to read and write and had time to play games and nap, but did giving us work meant for first graders to make it easier to figure out which kids needed to learn through either a hands-on, auditorial, visual, or active and consistent stimuli approach early? Or was it simply them wanting us to be above and beyond our human peers?

"Now I want you all to get into groups of three, take out your textbooks, and turn to page sixty-eight," Mrs Ishitaki called as she handed each of us a spiral notebook. They were dark blue and had our number written on the front. "Because today we'll be discussing how to understand place value."

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Unlike Mrs. Ishitaki's obvious quirk changing her entire body, our science teacher looked relatively normal. Known as Isamu Rin, he could increase the feeling of bravery one felt. He stood at the front of the class with an excited grin plastered onto his pale face, his blue hair draped neatly over his shoulders as he scanned us with eyes of molten gold.

When we got to our seats, he went behind the larger desk sat in the center, and pulled out a couple of magnets; one shaped like a horseshoe and another that was disk-like.

"Normally when you enter my classroom, I'm always hitting you with rapid-fire questions about our last lesson before you can even get your butts in your chairs," Mr Rin said. "But since you all have a pretty good grasp on how these little guys work with metal objects, especially you Subject 356-986O with your control over magnetism, I figured we'd just skip the whole review process and move onto the day and night cycle."

At the mention of his name, a pale boy with tall gray ears poking out the mess of equally silver curls a top his head summoned a stream of paper clips from Mr Rin's pocket. He smiled brightly as he used his now glowing fingertips to form them into a smiley face above his head. Mr. Rin chuckled at him.

"Case in point," he said. "Now as I'm sure you're already aware, daytime is when you can see the sunlight and feel its heat while nighttime is the opposite as due to the sun being on the other side of Earth from where you are, the light and heat won't reach you."

"We get day and night because our planet rotates—or spins—on an imaginary line called an axis. This causes the differing parts of the planet to either face the sun or away from it," Mr. Rin continued as he drew a picture of Earth on the board before splitting it into two halves by running a line through it. "Twenty-four hours is how long it takes for Earth to turn all day way around to give us one day and one night every week. Also, for a year the length of daytime changes depending on what part of the planet you live on. Days are also longer in the summer and shorter in the winter."

He then wrote down how Japan had the sun rising and falling an hour later during last year's spring and summer before retrieving a plastic world globe from beneath her desk and turning to smile once again.

"So which of you lucky kids would like to test your luck at guessing which countries are experiencing night right now?" Mr. Rin asked.

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Originally I was going to use what I wrote for SOARING, but since the last subject these guys would learn would be social studies, and Google isn't giving me any concrete and simple answers on just what exactly Japanese kids learn as a part of this class, I just decided to scrap it in favor of finishing the chapter.

Now next up will be a bit more classwork and an introduction to the other's quirks.

I can't wait to see you guys in the next chapter