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Obi-Wan winced when he checked his email the first Friday of December and saw the email the office had sent him. All of his students had gone home for the day and he was meant to be prepping his teaching materials for Monday. He wanted to get it done as soon as possible so he could get home and relax.
The email explained that Obi-Wan was getting two new students in his class next week. Twins, it looked like too.
He loved all of his students and was happy to have others join his class, but it had also been a very long week, and he just wanted to go home and have a very long, hot bath. Instead he would need to scrounge up two more desks and chairs, label two new cubbies, and put together a classroom welcome package for them both.
Obi-Wan leaned back in his chair, took in a deep breath, let it out and stood. Right. He could do this. He ignored his aching soles and got to work.
Monday morning emerged dark and a little chilly. It was a struggle to slip out of bed and get ready for the day, but the morning was brightened by the fact that Obi-Wan knew all of his prep work was done and he actually had time to actually have coffee and breakfast before heading into the school.
By the time Obi-Wan was in his class and ready for his students to arrive, he was feeling much more alert and ready to face a new day.
About five minutes before the bell, the office tannoy speaker came on.
“Would Mr. Kenobi and Mr. Skywalker please report to the office,” Adi Gallia’s calm, even tempered voice said over the speaker. “Mr. Kenobi and Mr. Skywalker, to the office.”
Obi-Wan walked out of his class, excited to meet his new students.
“Are you in trouble, Obi-Wan?” Luminara asked teasingly from the open doorway of her classroom, next door.
“I’ve got some new students!” He paused and grinned back at his fellow grade two teacher.
“Oh, is that today?” Luminara asked, surprised. “They didn’t give you much notice, did they?”
Obi-Wan shrugged. Most new students didn’t come at this time of the year and when they did they tended to be surprises. He imagined his new students’ transfer to his class might not be under the best of circumstances.
“Well good luck,” Luminara smiled and shooed him off as the tannoy came on again.
“Mr. Kenobi and Mr. Skywalker to the office,” Adi’s voice said again over the speakers, her voice just on the edge of annoyed.
Obi-Wan nodded and headed down the hallway towards the staircase.
A man was standing beside the receptionist desk, speaking quietly to Adi, when Obi-Wan walked into the office.
“Hi Adi,” Obi-Wan said softly to the group so as not to startle anyone.
The man turned revealing three children standing tightly against him — two identical looking children that looked to be about the same age as Obi-Wan’s grade two students and a third blond boy that Obi-Wan guessed would be in Anakin’s class. All three were wearing backpacks and the older blond boy had his hands pressed protectively to the twins’ shoulders.
“Mr. Fett, this is Fives and Echo’s teacher, Mr. Kenobi.” Adi explained to the man Obi-Wan assumed was the boys’ father.
“Hello there,” Obi-Wan put on his best smile and held out his hand for a handshake.
Mr. Fett clasped his hand tightly, the man’s firm grip squeezing Obi-Wan’s hand, tightly. “Good to meet you,” the man — who looked to be in his early forties — said with only a hint of judgment in his eyes. Obi-Wan didn’t take it personally, most parents wanted to know their precious little ones were in safe hands.
“I’m excited to have Echo and Fives in my class! There are some really lovely students in our class, so hopefully the two of them will make quick friends with some of them.” Obi-Wan stepped back as Mr. Fett released his hand.
Adi handed a bus schedule and a school calendar to Mr. Fett before assuring him that his boys would be in excellent classes. Then she turned to Obi-Wan. “Obi-Wan, Mr. Skywalker hasn’t made it down yet. Could you take Rex with you and show him to his classroom on your way?” Adi asked, only the tiniest of twitches under her eye showed she was annoyed by that. Anakin was one of those teachers that always made it just before the bell rang. It wouldn’t surprise Obi-Wan if they got to Anakin’s class just as the man did himself.
Obi-Wan smiled charmingly at Adi and Mr. Fett. “Of course! I would be happy to! Mr. Skywalker’s class is on our way.” He turned to the three students, the twins looking nervous while the older boy watched Obi-Wan with suspicion. “Just follow me, friends!”
Luckily, Anakin’s classroom wasn’t too far from Obi-Wan’s.
As Obi-Wan had predicted, they came upon Mr. Skywalker’s grade 4 classroom just as Anakin was unlocking his door. Not a moment too soon either, the bell rang the moment the younger teacher stepped inside his room.
Children began to flood the halls as Obi-Wan brought the three little Fett’s into Anakin’s room.
“Mr. Skywalker, this is your new student Rex.”
“Good to meet you Rex,” Anakin smiled cheerfully as he hung up his coat. “Here let me show you where you put your things and which desk will be yours.” As he passed by Obi-Wan he whispered a “sorry Obi-Wan, I forgot that was today,” out of the side of his mouth.
Obi-Wan just shook his head in amusement and led Fives and Echo out of the room and down the hall to Obi-Wan’s classroom.
Obi-Wan was surprised at how easily Fives and Echo slotted themselves into his classroom dynamic. Fives was gregarious and friendly with the other students, fitting in easily with some of the other more excitable boys. And while Echo was shy and struggled to make friends quite as easily as Fives did, he also seemed content not to be as social as Fives; not to mention, Echo seemed to be incredibly engaged in the more academic parts of school.
The boys first week was a success, and when Obi-Wan sent his weekly parent emails, he made sure to add a note to Mr. Fett that the boys seemed to be settling into the class well and enjoying themselves.
He didn’t hear anything back from Mr. Fett, but then he didn’t expect to. Most parents didn’t contact him unless there was a problem.
The next weekend was when Obi-Wan usually began decorating the classroom for the winter holidays. He would start with some basic decorations: large plastic snowflakes hung from the ceiling of his class, Christmas lights strung around his whiteboard, a large evergreen tree-shaped fabric advent calendar that he hung on the wall, each pocket filled with journal writing prompts on slips of paper, a wreath with puppy dogs in Santa hats hidden amongst the greenery that he hung on the door, and a little cardboard house for the classroom Elf on a Shelf.
As expected, when the students came in on Monday morning, most seemed excited about the decorations and asked him all sorts of questions about them.
Next weekend he would also begin putting up some of their winter-themed art projects that they had been working on during class, as well as bring out his collection of plastic snow globes for the “calm down corner”.
Obi-Wan expected the added excitement and energy in the class this week, and all of his students did seem very excited, all except for two.
Fives and Echo both looked around at the decorations without any enthusiasm or interest. In fact both boys seemed a little… sad even. Obi-Wan wondered why. Usually, even students who didn’t celebrate Christmas seemed to enjoy his winter decorations. His decorations were generally non-religious and mostly just fun.
But Fives and Echo truly seemed morose.
So at lunch recess, when all of the children ran outside to play, he called the twins back.
“Hey, can I talk to you two for a minute?” He asked Fives and Echo jovially before they could slip out of class.
The twins looked at each other with expressions of nervous dread and they all stepped over to his desk so the other students leaving wouldn’t hear.
“Are you two alright?” Obi-Wan asked them kindly. “This morning you both seemed sad when you saw the decorations.”
Fives pursed his lips and Echo looked morosely down at the ground.
“Is there something… wrong with them? Or something that upsets you about them?” Obi-Wan asked gently.
“It’s not that,” Fives folded his arms, looking annoyed.
The second grader lapsed into silence and Echo continued to remain silent.
Obi-Wan sat down on his rolly desk chair and let himself lean back and relax. Obi-Wan wouldn’t push them. The twins would talk when they were ready, or they would ask to leave. But if they did ask to leave without talking, Obi-Wan would be watching them in the future more closely; some children who reacted negatively to holidays and reminders of being at home during the winter break were in bad situations and might need Child Services intervention.
“If you want to tell me another day, that’s alright. I know you’re both still getting used to being in our class. But I want you both to know that you can talk to me about anything you would like to,” Obi-Wan smiled gently at them.
For a second it looked like Fives was about to turn and run out of the classroom, but then Echo suddenly spoke up.
“It’s just that, back home, our class had Chanukkah decorations too!” Echo burst out.
Fives froze, then shot a surprised glare at his twin.
“Here dad hasn’t even had time to unpack the menorah and at school there’s no Chanukkah decorations either, Mr. Kenobi,” Echo admitted.
“Oh,” Obi-Wan said softly. He reached across his desk and gave a small squeeze to the boys’ shoulders. “I didn’t realize, I’m sorry. I will try to find some Chanukkah decorations for the classroom. Thank you for telling me. Is there anything else you wanted to tell me?” He asked them kindly.
The two of them both shook their heads no, Echo looking a little more awkward at having broken the silence and Fives looking a little spooked.
“Well then, why don’t you two go out to recess then?” Obi-Wan said to them kindly. And watched as the two ran off.
Obi-Wan spent his evening obsessively researching Chanukkah. There wasn’t a large Jewish population here like there was in New York where the Fetts had come from, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t make every effort necessary.
He also may have spent a little too much money on an online order that night. He hadn’t even been intoxicated, he didn’t have any excuses for his obsessively large order. And maybe the giant blow-up menorah had been a bit much. He actually wasn’t even sure that particular decoration would fit in his class.
Regardless, he did have a few things he would put up in his room this weekend once they arrived.
The next Monday morning his class arrived to even more new wonders. Obi-Wan’s snow globe collection was out, there were new books he’d ordered from the library in the reading corner, one for every winter holiday celebration he could find. There were at least three books alone about Chanukkah, and those ones had been hard to find. He’d ended up spending some of his Saturday driving to a couple different library branches in the suburbs because they had told him it would take them three more days to ship those ones to his local if he couldn’t go get them himself.
Also in the classroom was a large, colorful, wooden menorah on top of the back shelf. The menorah had empty slots to place wooden-shaped candle representations, since Obi-Wan wasn’t allowed to light real candles in the classroom. Each wooden candle was painted a different shade of blue with a fake lit flame sitting on top of the candle, and each day the lit candle representations could be placed on the menorah. He was hoping that Fives and Echo could help him put them up at the end of the school day, after they had finished getting ready for home. Today was the fifth day of Chanukkah, so they would need to play a little catch-up, but a little late was better than never.
Some of the other decorations he’d gotten were some blue streamers shaped in the Star of David that he had strung along the wall that featured the menorah. There were also some dreidel twinkle lights decorating the tiny plastic Christmas tree he’d put on his desk that weekend. And he had removed all of the sight words from his bulletin board and had instead covered it in banners. One banner read “Happy Chanukkah” in blue above a “Merry Christmas” banner in red, followed by a “Happy New Years” in a deeper shade of red. That was followed by a “Happy Kwanzaa” banner in green, then a “Happy Winter Solstice” in orange, and another that read “Happy Diwali” also in orange. They might have missed Diwali this year, but they could definitely still talk about it in class.
He’d maybe… no he’d definitely gone a little overboard on all the banners. But he wanted to use this opportunity to teach his class about celebrations all over the world. And… Well, he hadn’t wanted Fives and Echo to feel singled out. He knew most of his students came from either non-religious or Christian homes. He wanted those students to have questions and be curious, but he also didn’t want Fives and Echo to feel pressured to talk about their traditions if they didn’t want to.
At morning meeting that day, Obi-Wan’s students were full of questions, all of them wondering where the different holidays were from. Then after class meeting — during class read-aloud — Obi-Wan read his students books about Chanukkah, Diwali and Kwanzaa instead of the chapter book they’d been enjoying as a class. He let their questions come naturally as they went through each story, answering what he could and telling them he would find out and get back to them on the questions he didn’t know the answers to.
Then at recess, he pulled the Fett twins aside again, this time to show them the wooden candle representations for the menorah. He asked them if they would like to “light” the menorah with him each afternoon before they went home for the day.
For a moment, the twins just stared at the menorah and the candles Obi-Wan had set in it to show them how it worked.
“Yeah,” Fives said, his voice the quietest Obi-Wan had ever heard it.
“Mr. Kenobi, it's so cool! Thank you.” Echo said, tears whelming in his tiny eyes.
“Oh buddy, you’re welcome!” Obi-Wan smiled softly at the boy. “Do you want a hug?”
“I got it,” Fives muttered and pulled his twin in tightly.
Once the two of them had calmed, he sent them both out to recess and sat down at his desk with an emotion-filled sigh. These were the moments that meant everything to him, the moments that made him remember why he became a teacher. He wanted to bring joy, love and learning into his students’ lives and these small moments made him realize he was doing his best, even when he felt overwhelmed, even though sometimes he failed.
Obi-Wan leaned back in his rolly chair and smiled.
The next afternoon, they were running a little close to the bell when Fives and Echo came over to help Obi-Wan place the seventh candle atop the menorah. Their classroom clean-up had run a little long from a Winter Solstice art project that had involved lots of glitter, which meant that the bell had rung just as the twins had put up the candle on the menorah.
The rest of Obi-Wan’s students — already wearing their jackets and backpacks — rushed out to go home or catch their buses, leaving behind Fives and Echo to finish getting their warm clothes on before they could go, as well.
Obi-Wan opened his mouth, about to ask the two how they were feeling about their third week in class, when a familiar blond boy appeared at the classroom door.
“Come on slowpokes,” Rex Fett scowled at his brothers. His dark eyes swept over the room, skittering for a moment on the large menorah sitting on a shelf on the back wall.
“Sorry Rex,” Fives huffed and swung his backpack on before helping Echo with his.
Obi-Wan had noticed that Fives and Echo weren’t all that touchy for being twins, but on occasions like this, Fives seemed to want to grasp his brother and roughly “help” him. Echo endured it calmly though and it amused Obi-Wan. Fives’ caring, slightly rough “helping” made Obi-Wan think fondly about growing up around his own older brother, Feemor.
Soon the twins were out the door and Obi-Wan didn’t think again about Rex Fett’s awkward gaze when he’d looked at the menorah.
The rest of the week went by smoothly. The last day of Chanukkah was Friday, so Obi-Wan decided to do something special for the Fett twins and his class.
He had bought some dreidels and chocolate gold coins online and watched a few online tutorials on how to play the game until he was sure he could explain it to his students. He was hoping that Fives and Echo would be able to help him explain how to play, but in the case that they couldn’t or didn’t want to, he wanted to know how to explain the game himself.
The first three-quarters of the day went by smoothly and at last they arrived at the “Special Activity” he had put on their daily schedule.
Echo and Fives’ little eyes lit up with excitement when Obi-Wan brought out the bag of dreidels, gelt and paper instructions for any of his students that were more visual learners than auditory or kinesthetic learners.
The last hour of school that day was spent with joyful playing as the students raced back and forth amongst each other joining or leaving groups to try their hand playing against each other.
Finally it came time to clean up, and each of his students lined up at the door in their jackets, with at least five pieces of gelt each (Obi-Wan made sure to compensate those that had lost theirs in the games).
The bell rang and his students scattered, chattering excitedly amongst each other about how much fun they had had.
About ten minutes after they had all left, Obi-Wan had already reorganized his desk for Monday and was erasing his whiteboard when a knock sounded on his classroom door.
“Mr. Kenobi?” A deep male voice asked and Obi-Wan turned to find Mr. Fett in his doorway, Rex, Fives and Echo huddled behind him, looking worried.
“Everything alright?” Obi-Wan asked, catching on to the boys’ emotions.
Mr. Fett’s face was neutral, he seemed like the kind of man that would be hard to read. What Mr. Fett didn’t know was that to be a successful teacher, you had to be empathetic to the emotions around you; and Obi-Wan wasn’t getting negative emotions from the man, despite the boys’ expressions and body language.
Fett stepped into the classroom and towards Obi-Wan. “I…” Fett paused, seeming to need a moment to collect his words. “I wanted to thank you, Mr. Kenobi. For giving Fives and Echo a chance to light the Menorah everyday in class,” his eyes scanned over to the fully lit wooden Menorah, the man’s lips curling up in a tiny smile and the corners of his eyes crinkling.
Obi-Wan noticed the three boys suddenly relax at their parent’s words. Fett moved further into the classroom, looking around at the beautifully chaotic mix of Christmas, Chanukkah and winter celebration decorations, that tiny smile still pulling at his lips.
Obi-Wan had to look away, Fett’s smile was very… attractive, and Obi-Wan wasn’t allowed to fall for any of his students’ parents.
“When they came out to the truck, Fives and Echo said the whole class played dreidel today?” Fett asked, stopping in front of the Menorah, his hand reaching up to trace the edge of the wooden flame on the shamash candle, raised a little above the others.
“That’s right,” Obi-Wan stepped closer to Fett, feeling his heart begin to accelerate in his chest. “When the boys first saw the Christmas decorations in the classroom, they told me how upset they were that there weren't any Chanukkah decorations here or at home and I wanted them to feel happy and included in my class. And I thought… well I hoped they would have fun introducing lighting the menorah and playing dreidel to the rest of their classmates.” Obi-Wan blushed, worried he was rambling.
“That’s kind of you,” Fett turned his little smile on Obi-Wan, making him feel a little weak in the knees. “We were in a hurry when we moved out here. We recently found out my adoptive father, who lives here, has been diagnosed with liver cancer. I’m afraid I haven’t had time between caring for him and the boys to put up anything for Chanukkah. So I appreciate you made that possible for them here at school.”
“I’d do anything for my students,” Obi-Wan admitted freely.
“That’s admirable,” Fett said sincerely, “thank you.”
Obi-Wan blushed under the other man’s attention. “You’re welcome.”
“You know,” Fett turned to him, his eyes lingering as he took in Obi-Wan’s blue cardigan and dress pants, “a school year isn’t that long.”
Obi-Wan blushed, eyeing Fett in return. “No, it’s not.”
“Have a good weekend, Mr. Kenobi,” Fett's smile widened briefly before he headed over to where his boys were crowded around the doorway, watching the two of them with confused expressions.
“Thank you. You too, Mr. Fett.” Obi-Wan said and began to turn away, but then whipped back towards them, calling out to their retreating backs. “Oh, and Happy Chanukkah!”