Vanessa joined her mother in the hall. “Yes, Principal Pike?”
“Vanessa, I know this is a fun game,” Mrs. Pike said, “but remember, it’s only a game. And if Margo doesn’t want to be your student, she doesn’t have to be.”
Vanessa studied Margo for a moment. “All right,” she agreed.
“Good,” Mrs. Pike said. “I’m going to be at the elementary school, watching Byron and Adam’s soccer game, but I’ll leave my cell phone on so you can reach me at the number posted on the fridge. Jordan is sleeping — just check up on him every now and then, and call me if there’s a problem.” She pulled open the front door. Then she leaned in closer to Stacey and whispered, “ ’Bye, and good luck with the persistent teacher.”
Stacey smiled at this description of Vanessa. “Thanks. We’ll be fine.”
When her mother was gone, Vanessa took hold of Margo’s wrist and pulled her toward the living room. “But you said I didn’t have to be a student!” Margo objected.
“You’re not going to be,” Vanessa told her. “I’ve made you an assistant teacher.”
“Oh.” Margo seemed warily interested in this. “What does an assistant teacher do?”
Vanessa took hold of Margo’s shoulders and pressed her down onto the couch beside eight-year-old Nicky. “An assistant teacher observes what a real teacher does so that someday she, or he, will be able to teach.”
Jessi and Stacey stood by the stairs and exchanged skeptical glances. But Margo nodded and stayed seated. Vanessa squared her shoulders and cleared her throat. “Now, class,” she began in a voice filled with teacherly authority, “today I will teach you about finding good subjects to write about.”
“I want to write a poem about soccer,” Nicky said.
Vanessa stopped to consider this, then shook her head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“What rhymes with soccer?” Vanessa asked.
“Mock her,” Jessi volunteered from the bottom of the stairs. Then she ran upstairs to check on Jordan, who was fast asleep.
“When Mallory plays soccer, the kids all mock her,” Nicky suggested.
“They do not,” Claire disagreed, scowling at Nicky.
“She’s not a very good player,” Margo said in the interest of accuracy.
“Yeah, but no one has ever mocked her,” Claire insisted.
Stacey recalled Mallory complaining about some boys in her class who had given her a hard time about her athletic ability, or lack of it. She kept quiet, though. She didn’t think bringing this up would serve any real purpose.
“All right,” Nicky said, giving in. “ ‘I know a girl who plays soccer/When she does, the kids always mock her.’ ” He turned to Claire. “Okay?”
“That’s better,” Claire agreed.
“But now what?” Vanessa asked. “There’s no place to go from there. Besides, soccer isn’t a very poetic subject. It’s not suitable for a poem.”
“Wait a minute,” Jessi spoke up as she returned to the kids on the couch. “In school I learned that you can write a poem about anything you want.”
Nicky stuck out his tongue at Vanessa.
Vanessa’s hands flew to her hips. “Who is the teacher around here?” she demanded. “I’m teaching poetry my way.” She turned to Nicky with a stern expression. “I saw that tongue, young man. You are on detention.”
“Oh, yeah? What are you going to do to me?”
Vanessa strode up to him and snatched an electronic game from his shirt pocket. “I will keep this until your detention is over,” she informed him.
Nicky leaped up from the couch. “Give me that!” He tried to grab it. Vanessa held it behind her back. Then she knelt and shot it across the floor, sending it spinning under the couch.
“Vanessa!” Nicky shouted indignantly. He dropped to his stomach and tried to fish it out. “I can’t reach it!”
Vanessa grinned. “You’ll have to wait until one of the triplets comes home to help you move the couch.” She peered at Margo and Claire. “See what happens when you act up in my class?”
“But I’m a teacher,” Margo reminded her.
“A student teacher.”
“You said assistant teacher.”
“It’s the same thing,” Vanessa replied. “Now, if we might get back to class, please.”
“I’m not playing,” Nicky announced.
“Nicky, I think you are playing,” Vanessa said confidently. “Because if you aren’t, I can report on a certain someone and his friends who stomped all over the bushes by the driveway the other day while trying to catch a ball. Right now, Mom and Dad think Pow did it.” (Pow is the Pikes’ basset hound.) “But I know what really happened.”
“It was an accident!” Nicky cried.
“You can discuss that with Mom and Dad. You know they told you to play ball in the backyard, not the front.”
“It’s not nice to tattle,” Claire said. “I won’t play either if you tell on Nicky.”
Vanessa’s hand went to her forehead. “I just thought of another poem. ‘I know a girl named Claire, who hates to brush her hair/So, what she did, the brush she hid. But I could tell her mother where.’ ”
“I didn’t hide it,” Claire protested.
“I know. You threw it in the garbage, which is even worse.”
Stacey stepped into the living room. “Vanessa, you can’t blackmail them into being your students. This was supposed to be fun.”
“No, it wasn’t. It was to teach poetry. It’s serious.”
“But I can’t even write yet!” Claire cried.
Vanessa folded her arms and studied her students. “You know, I’ve noticed that Margo and Nicky don’t write very well either.”
“I write fine,” Margo said.
“Not really,” Vanessa disagreed. “Your handwriting isn’t the greatest.”
She took some white paper from the coffee table and handed them each a sheet. “Take out your pencils. We’re going to go over basic letter formation. We will begin by making capital A’s. I want twenty of them on your papers.”
Claire was interested in this. “I make very good A’s,” she said.
“I’m not doing this anymore,” Margo shouted, slamming down her pencil.
“Fine,” Vanessa said. “But Mom and Dad will be so disappointed in you when they hear how you were scolded today for blowing straw wrappers in the lunchroom.”
“I didn’t start it,” Margo said sulkily. She went back to making A’s.
“Should we stop this?” Jessi asked Stacey. “It doesn’t seem right. It’s as if they’re her prisoners.”
Stacey sighed. “But what if Vanessa really tells on them?” Stacey asked to see Vanessa alone in the kitchen. “You wouldn’t really tattle on them, would you?” she asked.
“Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn’t.”
“You can’t force them to play,” Stacey insisted.
“Oh, they really want to learn poetry,” Vanessa assured her. “You just have to know how to control the class if you’re going to be a teacher.”
“Your teachers don’t threaten to tell on you if you don’t obey the rules. They don’t blackmail you.”
“Of course they do. They say, ‘I’ll report you to the principal.’ Or, ‘Your parents will be getting a note about this.’ It’s exactly what they do. Where do you think I got the idea from?”
Stacey was stunned. She didn’t know how to argue with this.
“Excuse me, but I have to get back to class,” Vanessa told her.
Jessi poked her head in the kitchen door. “Did you get through to her?” she asked.
Stacey shook her head. “Not even a little.”
Jessi looked out into the living room, where class was continuing. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know, but we have to do something. Nicky, Margo, and Claire can’t be held prisoners in The Vanessa School of Poetry forever.”
The TOT program was scheduled for a day on and then a day off. In ot
her words, we taught only every other day. So on Tuesday, I was off.
I was surprised at how light and free I felt that morning as I opened my locker. I was a plain old student again and was glad not to have to think about Ms. Walden or Cary Retlin for a whole day.
Or so I thought.
Then I looked up from my books and saw Ms. Walden striding purposefully down the hall, her sights locked onto a definite target. Me.
“Thomas, I need to talk to you,” she said. “When will you have a minute today?”
“Ummm …” I was so startled that I couldn’t even think. “Before lunch?” I suggested.
“Fine,” she confirmed. “See me in the phys. ed. office.”
“Is everything all right?” I asked anxiously.
“We need to talk about some things.”
If I had to wait until lunch to find out what this was about, I’d lose my mind. I certainly wouldn’t be able to pay attention in my classes. “Is it about yesterday?” I asked.
“We’ll talk later,” Ms. Walden replied. “Hurry, or you’ll be late for homeroom.”
As she walked away, I made a decision. I didn’t like Ms. Walden. I didn’t know if she was different from last year. Maybe I had been different, younger, and didn’t mind her gruff bossiness then. Whatever. I absolutely did not like her this year.
I knew Mallory had gone through a phase when she despised her. Then, when she joined the archery club, which Ms. Walden ran, she didn’t loathe her as much. That was because she enjoyed archery and did well at it.
But all along I’d told Mallory that Ms. Walden wasn’t so bad. I’d been wrong. I owed Mallory an apology.
I wondered how Mal was doing today. At the BSC meeting yesterday she’d been quiet — too quiet. I’d asked her how her conference with Mrs. Simon had gone.
“Okay,” she’d replied. “She suggested I forget about teaching a story poem and teach a poem I really love instead. I’ll choose something by Emily Dickinson. I’m not sure which one, though.”
As you might imagine, all I thought about that morning was what my talk with Ms. Walden would be like. Was she angry that I’d lost control of the class? Was she about to fire me?
How humiliating would that be?
Thrown out of the TOT program!
I’d never live it down.
The BSC members would hear about it. Sure, they’d be nice. They were my friends, after all. But would they lose respect for me? Would they stop listening to the rules I made for the club? I imagined them showing up late, missing jobs, and not paying dues. The club would fall apart.
And what about Kristy’s Krushers? Would the kids ever obey me again if they heard I was fired from TOT?
Calm down, Kristy, I told myself as I sat in math class. That won’t happen — none of it.
For all I knew, Ms. Walden might have something good to tell me. Maybe Cary is the one being fired! Or at least transferred to another class. Now that would be great news.
I considered every wonderful possibility.
Cary had quit.
He’d been bumped from the program due to complete lack of seriousness.
He had been hit on the head with a soccer ball and was now wandering around somewhere with amnesia.
I didn’t care why he might be gone, just as long as he was out of my way.
When I finally arrived at Ms. Walden’s office, I found her sitting behind her desk. “Have a seat,” she said, nodding at the chair across from her.
“I don’t have your lesson plan from yesterday,” she began. “Did you bring it?”
“I … I … didn’t do one,” I admitted. “I had one in my head, of course,” I added quickly. “I didn’t think gym teachers did them either.”
“Why did you think that?” Ms. Walden asked, unsmiling.
“I don’t know. It didn’t seem to fit the subject,” I answered.
“Perhaps if you’d done one, class would have gone more smoothly yesterday.”
“Oh, I knew what I wanted to have happen,” I assured her. “But you saw how Cary was. He ruined everything.”
“Cary isn’t my concern. You are.”
She had to be joking! Wasn’t she? Surely she’d seen how Cary undermined every attempt I’d made to run a normal class. She had to know he was impossible to work with.
“How am I supposed to work with him?” I demanded.
“Teachers have to learn to cooperate with one another, Thomas. We don’t all like one another any more than you kids all like one another.”
That was a stunning thought. I’d always thought of teachers as being this team of like-minded educators, moving through school as a single unit. If you ever complained, if you ever said, “Mrs. So-and-So is such a crab,” to another teacher, that other teacher would always reply, “Mrs. So-and-So is an excellent teacher.” The idea that they might disagree with one another, might not even like one another, was completely strange to me.
“How do teachers manage, then?” I asked.
“You have to give a little,” Ms. Walden said. “Things can’t always go exactly as you think they should. You have to allow other people to have input.”
“Cary has no input,” I pointed out. “His idea of student teaching is to let the kids run wild!”
“And what’s your idea of how it should be?” she asked.
“Well …” Here was my chance to tell her how I thought she might improve her own teaching. “Kids should learn, but in a fun way. You don’t have to yell at them and punish them all the time.”
“I heard you do quite a bit of yelling yesterday,” Ms. Walden said evenly.
“That was because Cary was making the kids crazy!” I cried. My voice was louder than I’d intended, but I couldn’t believe that she was disagreeing with me. It was as if she hadn’t even been there yesterday.
Ms. Walden leaned toward me. “Concentrate on what you want to accomplish. Write it down in a lesson plan. Go over it with Cary and get his input. Then the two of you need to make a combined plan.”
“Cary and I have already talked,” I said, referring to the decision we’d made to coach separate teams.
“That’s good. Now get it in writing. If I don’t receive any submissions from you, I can’t sign off on the extra credit.” She slid a paper across her desk toward me. “This is a class list. I thought it might be helpful in preparing for your next class.”
I took the list. “Thank you.”
She nodded, and I got the feeling the meeting was over. So I stood and left.
I headed to the lunchroom, highly annoyed. Ms. Walden had treated me as if I were the one who’d messed up yesterday.
But — okay — I’d meet her challenge, get the class under control, and Cary under control too. And it would all be submitted in writing, nice and tidy.
* * *
That evening, after supper, Sam and Charlie went to the high school for a meeting. Mom, Watson, and Nannie took Emily Michelle and David Michael with them to a friend’s house.
Karen had a cold, so she stayed home with me. While she watched TV, I sat in my room, determined to write the greatest lesson plan of all time. Not only would I write the plan, but I’d add all sorts of additional lists for Ms. Walden.
I sat up in bed and began to divide the class into teams. That would eliminate a lot of confusion the next day. I didn’t know the kids, so I couldn’t divide them by ability or anything like that. I just split them up evenly.
Karen came in and flopped down on my bed. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“Planning my class for tomorrow,” I said a little sharply. “It’s really important, so you can’t bug me. Okay?”
“I’m not bugging, I’m asking,” Karen replied.
I softened. Karen’s a good kid and I know she looks up to me. “I’m a student teacher and I have to write down everything I do,” I explained more patiently.
“So what are you writing?”
“First, the warm-up exercises I have planned,” I said. When
I came home from school that afternoon, I’d watched all the workout videos in the house, writing down the exercises I thought were the best. I was already planning a brand-new routine.
But I felt a little shaky about the exercises, not sure I knew them perfectly. Although I could do them with the tape, I wasn’t positive I’d be able to teach them.
Then I had a brainstorm. I went over the exercises with Karen, making her do them with me. All the while, I watched my digital clock and noted exactly how long each one would take.
When we were done, I started my lesson plan. New warm-up exercises — twelve minutes and ten seconds.
How was that for planning?
I was sure my next class would be a big success.
Not even Cary Retlin could stop me.
Only one part of my class preparation was left undone when I arrived at school that Wednesday. I hadn’t gone over it with Cary as Ms. Walden had suggested.
I couldn’t bear to.
He’d just make snide comments about my lesson plan, and I really wasn’t in the mood for criticism, especially not from a jerk like him.
That morning, I couldn’t stop admiring my lesson plan. I’d take a look at it every chance I got. Everything I’d written was so neatly presented. I’d retyped it on the computer. In my opinion, it was a masterpiece of organization.
I decided that even if I didn’t require the BSC members to do a lesson plan, maybe I’d do one for myself. It really was a great tool for staying on track.
Armed with my lesson plan and feeling very optimistic, I headed for gym class. In the hallway outside class I met up with Cary. “Hello, Kristin,” he said.
“Cary, we need to talk,” I replied, trying to sound as businesslike as possible. “I’ve worked up a plan for today and —”
“Oh, so have I,” he said, cutting me off. Reaching into the back pocket of his jeans, he produced a rumpled piece of lined paper. As he unfolded it, I saw his sloppy, smudged pencil writing. It looked as if he’d done this in two minutes, probably on the bus to school.
I took the paper from him, and without meaning to I must have wrinkled my nose in disgust.