Valorie looked around, noticing others making fists. It took her a moment to realize what was going on. ...Geez! She really hadn't expected this! Between her exhaustion and the skirt she was wearing she felt completely out of place almost instantly. Joining the other students she made a fist of her own. It was an alright fist, probably slightly mis-aligned around the knuckles, but otherwise fine. Making a fist was probably the easy part. Throwing one was an entire other skill to learn, one that was significantly harder to learn. She honestly didn't expect to be allowed to sit out of class, as she was pretty big on doing well academically.
Valorie seemed a bit unsure of herself to say the least. What did she need to use her fists for? She had pokemon! Confusion ran through her head as she attempted to justify this to herself. The teacher asked one of them to approach and strike her and Valorie just sort of froze up. She felt very uncomfortable. She was being asked to /hit/ someone? A teacher no less? The idea felt wrong to her. Normally, she was quick to volunteer, but in this case she was kind of afraid. Standing there looking slightly upset Valorie abruptly felt a light shove to her shoulder blades, stumbling forward a step before regaining her balance.
"..."
Another student had, reasonably subtly, volunteered her. Feeling a bit frustrated, Valorie reluctantly moved forward and attempted to hit Ashara. Her punch was pretty poor. It was one of those highly telegraphed, very reluctant strikes that probably wouldn't have really hurt much at all even if it did hit, which was arguably unlikely even with Ashara's back turned unless Ashara let her.
Olivia's expression went blank briefly as she realized that she wasn't quite late, after which she returned the teacher's smile. Moving to take a seat, which was harder harder than it looked because of her hair, Olivia considered the teacher's offer to answer any questions she had, trying to think of any she might want to ask. The only obvious ones she had were regarding what they'd be doing once class started. Thus, after a moment she decided on waiting and seeing for herself. After all, she doubted anyone liked repeating themselves everytime a new person entered and wanting to know what the class was going to be about.
Looking around her, Olivia spotted quite a few students; unfortunately she found she recognized exactly none of them. This didn't bother her though, as meeting new people was potentially fun! That and she was still very new, meaning it would be pretty lucky if she /did/ recognize anyone. She had after all only socialized with a few students so far.
Elizabeth watched as half the class seemed to...well...ignore her attempts at garnering attention. She wasn't really sure what to do, seeing as she was highly inexperienced compared to the average teacher at the whole teaching job thing. Sure, she'd had years of experience battling on the streets and had incredible knowledge to be bestowed, but she had never even /been/ to school before! Or at least she didn't think she had. If she had, she didn't remember it.
Needless to say, she was frustrated and unsure what to do. Was she supposed to punish someone for being 'disruptive'?
After several moments she attempted to try again. This time her voice was raised, though it lowered to a quiet tone after only a moment.
"Can I have your attention!!...if you please."
This time most of the class stopped what they were doing and turned their attention to her, though some of them looked annoyed. It was probably because she had the body and therefore the voice of a ten year old girl. It was probably hard for students to respect her because of this, though this was lost on Elizabeth. Though, she did have the sense to understand that she wasn't like other teachers.
When she next spoke, it was in her normal tone of voice, which was unfortunately not very loud and a bit slow compared to your average person. However, as much of the class had stopped talking one should be able to hear.
"I am called Elizabeth, and I'll be your teacher t-today..."
Elizabeth was feeling all sorts of pressure and stares, and she honestly hated it. However, she was a person whom was somewhat okay with personal discomfort. Thus, she attempted to tolerate it.
Hilda looked around. A good portion of the students hadn't brought boots and she sighed in an exasperated manner, supposing she probably shouldn't have expected otherwise. One boy went out of his way to /deny/ boots and Hilda just sort of raised her eyebrows slightly at him. Was... he attempting to impress her? She would have to make sure he understood exactly why she had stressed so urgently for people to bring boots, which brought to attention a question another boy had asked. After acknowledging the various student's answers with her eyes she turned to Mark.
"Well, that is an /great/ question. You see, today we're going on an adventure."
She looked around at all the young boys and girls gathered around her.
"And every good adventurer should be properly equipped with comfortable, safe footwear for long walks. Today we're going to be traveling through a very... swampy area of the island. You could wear sneakers, but you'll wish you hadn't when they get soaked and ruined."
Glancing at Alice briefly as she continued, who had been very nice about the whole boots ordeal, she offered the student her light smile, seemingly reassuring.
"If you /didn't/ bring boots, you should get some--and I don't mean cloth boots. If you don't have boots, or won't get boots, somebody will have to carry you."
She glanced at Kilik at that last part, making it clear that they were not throwing safety out the window so that he could impress...whomever.
"If your pokemon is at least three feet tall they can do it, but I /don't/ recommend walking without proper footwear. You might find a bug nibbling at your toes~"
She smiled at that last part. It was a joke, but she was all too serious about not wearing proper footwear being dangerous. The water in the swamplands was disgusting as it was. Disease and infection was all too present, meaning safety was very important. Taking the box she had in her hand and opening it, it turned out that there were not boots inside, but rather cheap mouth masks, the kind you might expect a doctor to be wearing during an operation.
"That being said, the wilderness is a dirty place, especially places where water tends to pool up. You don't need one of these, but if you don't think you can avoid touching your face, you may want one to help protect you from getting sick."
At this, Hilda held out the box, offering it out to nearby students, seeming to be asking with her eyes whether they wanted any. Some students would take them, some wouldn't. It didn't seem to bug Hilda either way.
"I've got ooone more thing to go over after this before we can get going."
Hilda appeared to be waiting for everyone to get a chance to take a mask before continuing, however.