Miss Skua and Miss Mockingbird’s Loop Headcanons
Miss Skua and Miss Mockingbird met at the Ymbryne academy and have been friends ever since
Miss Skua loves caring for children and always wanted a Loop with lots of them
Miss Mockingbird’s ambition is to learn every language in Europe
Miss Mockingbird has always loved teaching children more than the idea of running a household
The natural solution was for the two of them to make a Loop together
That way, they could care for more children like Miss Skua wanted
And Miss Mockingbird could focus more on the teaching side of Loop Life
There Loop very quickly became a Specialized Loop for non-English speakers immigrating to English speaking parts of the continent.
Miss Mockingbird teaches English mostly to French, German, Scandinavian, and Eastern European children (I don’t know European geography that well)
She learns their languages as well and would never punish a child for speaking their native language outside the classroom (as was common in that time period)
One time, Miss Skua and Miss Mockingbird got a group of seven children from the Outer Hebrides all at the same time who didn’t speak a lick of English
It was total chaos
Unfortunately, they didn’t know the language that the children were speaking either, which made communication tricky at best
Miss Mockingbird took this as a personal challenge and determined that she would not only teach them English, but would become fluent in their language too
It took her three times as long as usual to teach them English, mostly because of the fact that she couldn’t even communicate with them at all beyond miming to start out with
She thinks of it as her greatest achievement
She learned their language, which they told her was called “Gàidhlig”, pronounced ‘gaalic’
She later learned that, in English, it is called “Scottish Gaelic”
Another thing she learned is that Gaelic spelling makes no sense to an English brain and she can only assume that it’s the same on the other end
She doubles down on the spelling lessons after that
Caring for children that don’t understand you is difficult but Miss Skua is exceedingly talented at figuring out what children want and is a genius when it comes to non-verbal communication
Miss Skua and Miss Mockingbird’s Loop develops its own language, a horrific Frankenstein-like mashup of every language that has ever come under their roof
Miss Mockingbird’s inner language nerd loves every second of it