Louis Riel Public School

<infobox> <title source="name"><default>Louis Riel Public School</default></title>

<image source="image"></image> <header>Basic Information</header> <image source="map"></image> <label>Type</label> <label>Location</label> <label>Inhabitants</label> <label>First Appearance</label> </infobox> Louis Riel Public, also known simply as the Public School, was one of the two schools in Kennet.

Geography/Description

A large, blocky building with a lot of windows. The windows have white ledges, stained with corrosion from the window frames. A wire-post fence surrounds the school.<ref>A big, featureless block of brick with a lot of windows, and a bit of corrosion from the metal around the windows that stained the white-painted ledges.  Lucy stood at the opening in the wire fence, leaning into the post. - Excerpt from Lost for Words 1.1</ref>

Residents

Known Teachers

• Principal Sauve<ref>This is Principal Sauve speaking.- Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.1</ref>
• Mr. Bader<ref name=":3" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":10">“Focus, Melissa! We need you here on Earth, not in la-la land!”
  
  “I could hear him from my desk in the classroom at the second floor,” Ms. Hardy said.
  
  “It’s not so bad,” Avery said.
  
  “Does he raise his voice to you?”
  
  “Some,” she said.
  
  “He’s a good coach,” Aubrey added.
  
  “Makes sense,” Ms. Hardy said. “He had some background.”
  
  Audrey had fetched the ball, kicking it over to one of the players on defense. The player maneuvered the ball to sit beside their little netted goal. She jogged up to join them.
  
  “He’s really good when it comes to training us in groups of two or three, when it’s just a couple of us who’re wanting to get really polished at something,” Avery said. “He’s good as a coach like this. But as a gym teacher…”
  
  “Hey,” Audrey said. “He’s fine.”
  
  “I don’t know if he knows how to deal with the students who don’t give a crap,” Avery said.
  
  “That, I can say, is never easy,” Ms. Hardy said.
  [...]
  “I’m a soccer player too,” Avery said. “And I didn’t say anything untrue. He was kind of a dick to my friend.” - Excerpt from Stolen Away 2.5</ref>
• Mrs. Fowler (probably)<ref>Mrs. Fowler, her grade two teacher, who had berated her in front of the class because she kept writing her nines like they appeared in the textbook, with curved tails. Nothing really said to Logan who had writing so indecipherable the letters looked like wingdings, or to Melissa, who took similar, intentional liberties with her ones, sevens, and zeroes. Lucy just hadn’t known better, and she’d gone home crying that day. Mrs. Fowler hadn’t let up either.
  
  She remembered reading in a book once that growing old was like being a baby again. Being in diapers, having trouble walking, sometimes even having trouble speaking. She wished there was a good word or thing to say to Mrs. Fowler that would make her like that. Old and helpless and totally alone, singled out and going back to her bed in the old folks home, crying. She hated that woman. Lucy had never really loved school again after that. - Excerpt from Lost for Words 1.6</ref>
• Ms. Hardy<ref name=":0">Lost for Words 1.1</ref><ref name=":3">Lost for Words 1.7</ref><ref name=":5">Lost for Words 1.8</ref><ref name=":9">It was a bit frustrating. Avery considered the time she’d opened up to Ms. Hardy about her loneliness to be a life changing moment. A few quiet questions from this cool, caring teacher and she’d broken down, opened up about everything. Her teacher had listened, considered, connected, and cared.
  
  But ever since, they hadn’t really had one-on-one talks. Bits of advice, yes, but always brief. Or slightly longer talks, if Ms. Hardy was going somewhere or Avery was going somewhere, and they happened to cross paths. If the conversation continued for more than a couple of minutes, Avery got this. The deflection, the guardedness of it, where Ms. Hardy would want to make it a group discussion instead. Mr. Lai had a gay brother and was Ms. Hardy’s friend, so he was usually the person there. Ms. Hardy and Mr. Lai had something like a general LGBT student group where Ian, Justin, and Noah from her class and a larger group of the older teenagers and their friends would go talk with the teachers as referees.
  [...]
  A few months ago, Ms. Hardy had reached out and Avery had broken down. The dam had cracked and everything had poured out. It had needed to happen. It had been important. It had been healthier in the long run. The dam wasn’t supposed to be there. - Excerpt from Stolen Away 2.5</ref>
• Mr. Kelsch<ref>If body types could be circle, square, pear, whatever, Mr. Kelsch was ‘noodle’.  Maybe a bit taller than her dad, but easily half the weight.  Maybe a third of the weight.  He was the youngest teacher at the school, but had a face that made him look younger still, in a nice sort of way, with a head of the sort of blond curly hair that had to be hard work to keep from going full ‘clown hair’.  She’d seen him around last year even if he hadn’t taught any of her classes, and if he went without a trim for a week or two he just very obviously lost all control over it, and very obviously hated it, too.
  
  He also wore exclusively boring clothes, always in shades of coffee, she thought.  Cream, tan, light brown, dark brown, nearly-black brown.  Ties in those shades were a staple.  As if he thought that would make people take him more seriously as a teacher, maybe.
  
  If he thought that, he didn’t need to. - excerpt from Fall Out 14.5</ref>
• Tony Lai<ref name=":1">[Lucy] found and put on a video by Mr. Lai. One of the kids in school had found his channel when he’d left his computer unlocked, and spread it around. A lot of people had been laughing, because Mr. Lai was this short, super-clean cut teacher who’d been born in China, and his channel had a ton of videos where he was dressed like a lumberjack and building a cabin from scratch, somewhere up north.
  
  But like… it was actually kind of cool. That single-minded focus. The skills involved. It was neat to see someone into that, and it kind of reminded her of some of her memories of sleepovers with Verona, when Verona was super into something obscure or weird, like a craft project. Those had been some of the best weekends, really, because that kind of steady enthusiasm was infectious. A part of her still hoped this practice stuff could be more like that.
  
  Mr. Lai’s accent was pretty tough, but if she didn’t really listen, like she wasn’t really listening now, then it just became a steady, pleasant noise, sometimes over the sound of saws and hammers. He kind of put her to sleep, like he had last year, but that was a plus right now. And watching like this gave him some views. Win-win, wasn’t it? He might not be super thrilled to know students were falling asleep to the sound of his voice, but… whatever. Win-win.
  
  She hit the like button and lay there, trying to let her mind wander and picture what he was putting together from the sounds of his voice, even if she couldn’t always catch the words.
  
  She heard a thumping noise, and picked up the phone with the video still playing, her eyes still closed and face still pressing into the pillow, and blindly thumbed at the screen until she could rewind the video a few steps. - Excerpt from Lost for Words 1.6</ref><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":7">“And it’s a much nicer system to be in when we’re good to each other and we cooperate. We don’t want to make mean comments, even in jest, right Brayden? Yes? Confirm or deny?”
  
  “Yes,” Brayden said, sounding annoyed. “Sorry Wallace.”
  
  Wallace snorted.
  
  B+, Mr. Lai, Lucy thought.
  
  [Extended discussion on ecosystems]
  
  Lucy looked up at Mr. Lai. “Thank you. Sorry, um. Thinking out loud. Thanks for letting us bounce ideas off of you. I’m going to read up on some of this stuff. I’ve already got some ideas and I think if I keep going, I could get more.”
  
  “Wonderful,” Mr. Lai said. “And confusing. But wonderful.” - Excerpt from Out on a Limb 3.4</ref><ref name=":8">“Creepy teacher?” an officer called back.
  
  “They’re asking a question. Yeah. I interviewed him earlier. He’s this Asian guy, had a bad accent. I don’t get the impression he’s been in Canada long. I quizzed him, asked if he heard anything weird. Stuff for my video, right?”
  [...]
  “I took a note. Tony Lai.”
  
  “We’ll look him up after.”
  
  “Ninety percent of the time, when I really press people like that, you find the stories don’t add up, or they’ve got some weird beliefs and fantasies.”
  [...]
  “Sharon, hon,” Verona said, “Leave. Go to Mr. Bristow. Go grill him like you told the cops to do to that poor teacher, Mr. Lai. Push him for those answers. It’ll be pretty illuminating.”
  [...]
  “You insulted my town, you pointed cops at a good teacher. You… you’re not a good person, Sharon. For the rest of it, you have to ask your landlord.” - Excerpt from Back Away 5.3</ref><ref name=":11" />
• Mr. Sitton<ref name=":11"> This wasn’t like Mr. Lai or Mr. Sitton’s classes, where everything on the test was said out loud in class. - Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.1</ref>
• Mrs. Morehouse<ref>Wallace hung back, talking to Mrs. Morehouse about something.- Excerpt from Fall Out 14.6</ref>

Students

Grade 8/9

Main article: List of Kennet Public 8/9 Class Students

Verona, Lucy and Avery's class during the 2019/2020 academic year. 33 students, ten of whom are in the school's only major clique, the Dancers. The class is split because the rest of Grade 9, which the trio would normally be in, were too large.<ref name=":2">There were no cliques in their class, not like there were in mom’s old movies.  Whatever there had been way back then had seemed to splinter and combine over time.  Other students made their way into the class.  The Dancers were the biggest contingent, but even they had their subdivisions and blurred lines.  They had thirty three students in their class, and ten were Dancers.  The other class in their grade had twelve.  Girls who were super into the gymnastics, dancing, and cheerleading things that were taught at the place down near the bridge.
[...]
No hard cliques, no specific sections at lunch tables like that one movie from years before Lucy was born, but Avery had had a tough time, and there were reasons for that. For one thing, the class was kind of cut in half, because they were combined grade eights and nines.  For another, when put together with the other grade nine class, they had all known each other since kindergarten.  She could count the kids who had moved away and the kids who had moved here midway through on the one hand. - Excerpt from Lost for Words 1.6</ref>

Dancers

Girls who attend dance, cheerleading, gymnastics etc at the Wavy Tree Yoga & Dance. 10 in the 8/9 class, 12 more in the main Grade 9 class.<ref name=":2" /> For some reason, Melissa Oakham keeps pestering Verona to join them.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> They frequently organize parties.<ref name=":3" />

Other/Unspecified

• Sheridan Kelly<ref name=":4" /><ref name=":3" />
• Declan Kelly<ref name=":4" />
• Kerry Kelly<ref name=":4">The Kellys had parked at the end of the road, and the kids were

unloading.  Lucy watched Sheridan get out, followed by Declan and little Kerry Kelly.

No Avery, which meant… - Excerpt from Lost for Words 1.6</ref>

• Vince<ref name=":6">Vince and Dylan were other guys in their friend group and they were the guys who stuck to Peyton a lot.  They got kind of hostile and crabby, especially if Gabe was hanging around for more than a couple of days in a row, and especially if Gabe was talking to Peyton a lot.  He’d had his one and only blow-up fight with Peyton after he told her he thought they were toxic, and that she should stop hanging around with them.  He was pretty sure that it had been their idea for Peyton to go silent for nearly a week after.  It was only after he found a chance to talk to her without them around that they hadn’t been able to stop her from letting him back into the group.
  
  Vince and Dylan had been hard to get along with since.  Ganging up on him, getting mad at the slightest excuse, and even taking seats next to Peyton so he couldn’t sit next to her.  It was childish.
  
  Childish and frustrating.  It wasn’t like the guys in his own class really talked to him, and his class was all grade eights and nines; when the boys in his class rejected him, they talked to other people in their grades and shut him out.
  [...]
  Things hadn’t been the same since Vince and Dylan had stuck their noses in. - Excerpt from Lost for Words 1.z</ref>
• Dylan<ref name=":6" />
• Peyton<ref name=":6" />

References

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