Kristy in Charge

  Logan Bruno is Mary Anne’s boyfriend. He’s also an associate member of the BSC. That means he doesn’t come to meetings, but we call him for a job if no one else is available. I’d assign him to teach a gym class, since he’s athletic and loves sports.

  Our other associate member is Shannon Kilbourne. She could teach any class she wanted, since she’s a real brain. In fact, we invited her become a full-time BSC member, but she is so involved with after-school activities that she couldn’t give the time to the club.

  After Dawn left for California (and Shannon turned down our offer to join), Abby moved to town. She lives two houses down from me, which is how we met. Almost immediately, we invited her to join the club. We also invited her identical twin sister, Anna, but she said no. Luckily, Abby said yes.

  That shows you how different they are, despite the fact that they both have curly dark hair, dark brown eyes, and the same even, slightly pointy features. Abby’s hair is long, while Anna’s is short. Abby prefers to use contact lenses, and Anna wears glasses. Abby is athletic. Anna is musical. Abby has asthma and lots of allergies. Anna doesn’t, but she does have to wear a brace for the next few years because of a curved spine condition called scoliosis. (She wears it under her clothing and you hardly notice it.)

  Abby’s class could be gym. But she could also teach a class in comedy. She’s always making wisecracks and puns.

  Things haven’t always been so funny for Abby, though. When she was nine, her father died in a car accident. She says she barely even smiled back in those days. That was when the Stevensons lived on Long Island.

  After Mr. Stevenson’s death, life was hard for everyone in the household. But slowly, Anna and Abby began to laugh and enjoy things again. Their mother kicked her career as an editor into high gear, worked super-hard, and was promoted to an important executive editorial position. People call her a workaholic. Personally, I think that’s an unfair label to put on someone who loves his or her job and gives everything to it. Abby complains, though, that she doesn’t see as much of her mother as she’d like to.

  “Hello … Kristy?” Stacey was waving her hand in front of my face.

  I’d been so involved in my thoughts that I hadn’t been paying attention, which isn’t like me. “Sorry. What?” I said.

  “I asked you if you thought it would be all right to spend the club dues on a new notebook. This one’s full. And we need new Kid-Kit supplies.”

  The BSC notebook is a journal in which we write down what happens on each sitting job we take. It was my idea, and a lot of the members wish I hadn’t thought of it. They think it’s a chore, except for Mallory. But it’s important that everyone knows what’s going on with all our clients. Say, for instance, a kid is afraid of the dark. A sitter can read the notebook before going to the job and she might think to bring along a special night-light or to play flashlight tag. Little things like this make us very popular and effective sitters.

  “Definitely get a new notebook,” I agreed.

  “What about the Kid-Kits?” Stacey asked. Each of us has a box of fun stuff — art supplies, stickers, little toys, etc. — that we bring on sitting jobs that might be difficult.

  “Is everybody low on supplies?” I asked.

  “Pretty much,” Stacey reported. “We can afford to give everyone five dollars toward new stuff.”

  I nodded. “Okay. I don’t need anything, though. I still have enough.”

  The phone rang again. It was Dr. Johanssen, looking for a sitter on Thursday afternoon for her daughter, Charlotte. “There’s no one who can do it,” Mary Anne said without having to check the record book. “Abby, Jessi, and Claudia are busy, and the rest of us will be at TOT training.”

  “Better call Logan or Shannon,” I suggested.

  “Okay,” Mary Anne said. “But I’m pretty sure Logan wants to do TOT too. We should call Shannon first.” Thank goodness Shannon doesn’t go to SMS. She attends a private school called Stoneybrook Day School. Hopefully, they weren’t doing TOT there this week.

  It turned out that Shannon was at the Stevensons’ house, since Anna and Shannon are good friends. Abby phoned her there and she agreed to sit for Charlotte. (There’s nothing I hate more than having to turn down a client, especially a steady one like Dr. Johanssen. I always worry that the client won’t call back again.)

  “I can’t wait until Monday to sign up for TOT,” Mallory said eagerly. “I’d love to teach a class on poetry. Maybe I’ll be able to do Emily Dickinson. Lately I’ve been reading her poems and they’re so amazing.”

  “Slow down,” Claudia said with a laugh. “What if you have to teach an algebra lesson?”

  Mallory giggled. “I’ll write a poem about it.” She put her hand over her heart and a dreamy expression came over her face as she began to recite. “The value of X?/What could it be?/This I’ll say/Don’t ask me.”

  Everyone laughed. “Oh, I’m sure the math teacher will adore that,” Stacey teased.

  “You’re right,” Mallory agreed. “It might not be the best thing to do. Keep your fingers crossed that I get to teach an English class.”

  On Monday morning I spotted a sign in the school lobby that read TOT VOLUNTEER SIGN-UP IN CAFETERIA TODAY.

  “See you later,” I said to Abby, who takes the bus with me to school. “I’m going in right now.”

  “I can’t believe you’re so psyched about this,” she said, shaking her head.

  “I can’t believe you’re not,” I replied as I headed for the cafeteria. I entered it and found the sign-up table to my right. Mallory was already there. “Hi,” I said. “Where’s everyone else?”

  “They wanted to get to their lockers first,” she explained, “but I couldn’t wait.”

  “Me neither.”

  Behind the table were Mr. Zizmore, a math teacher, and Mrs. Amer, a guidance counselor. “They’re the TOT coordinators,” Mallory told me.

  We stood together, watching, as kids filled out the forms on the table. Cokie Mason was there. So was her friend Grace Blume. Alan Gray was filling out a form — the head lunatic, eager to take over.

  “I can’t believe those kids want to do this,” I commented in a low voice. “They barely do their own schoolwork. Why would they want to teach?”

  “Extra credit,” Mallory reminded me.

  “Yeah. They probably need as much of it as they can get. Besides, I know Cokie views this as a chance to miss her own classes.”

  A boy with dirty blond hair approached the sign-up table. “Cary Retlin!” I gasped. “Oh, no! Can you imagine him as your teacher?”

  “You probably wouldn’t have to do much work,” Mallory observed.

  Cary Retlin and the BSC have a bit of a history. In his cool, mellow way, Cary has decided that it’s his role in life to keep the BSC from becoming “complacent and boring.” As if he even has a clue about what we do and how boring we are not.

  Mallory clutched my arm. “What if I’m in a class Cary Retlin is teaching?” she asked, her eyes wide with horror.

  “Just hope you’re out teaching another class,” I replied.

  Cary must have sensed that we were talking about him. He looked up from the form he was filling out and grinned.

  “Why does he always act like he’s got some private embarrassing secret he knows about you?” I fumed.

  “That’s just how he is,” Mallory said.

  We waited for him to clear out (which he did with an irritating wave in our direction) and then we approached the table. “Here you go, girls,” Mrs. Amer said, handing us each a form.

  Mallory and I sat on some nearby folding chairs and began to work on the form. There wasn’t too much to fill out — name, address, stuff like that. Then a question followed: Why are you interested in the TOT program?

  I wrote what I honestly felt. During my time here at SMS I’ve seen some teaching I thought could be improved. I’d like to show how I think classes should be run.

  I glanced over at Mallory’s sheet to see what she?
??d written. I hope to share my great love of books, reading, and literature with my fellow students.

  That made sense. What did I want to share? I wondered. My love of … what? Sports, I guessed. SMS didn’t offer a business management class or a course in baby-sitting. So sports would have to be it.

  I would especially love to teach in the athletic department, I added to my form, since that is an area that I particularly enjoy.

  Mallory and I handed in our sheets, then raced to homeroom. At the end of the corridor, we went our separate ways. As I hurried toward my locker, I noticed that the hall seemed unusually empty. Everyone must already be in homeroom. I knew I had only a minute to get to mine, so I began to run.

  “Ms. Thomas!” a voice behind me bellowed like an army drill sergeant. I froze and slowly turned to face Ms. Walden, one of the gym teachers. “Why are you running in the hall?”

  She made it sound as if she’d caught me stealing a car.

  I smiled anxiously. “I’m late.”

  She folded her arms. “Why is that?”

  “Oh, because I was signing up for the TOT program,” I said enthusiastically.

  “That is no excuse for running in the hallway,” she barked.

  “Sorry,” I said, even though I was more annoyed than sorry. What was the big deal? There wasn’t even anyone else in the hall. All right, it was the rule — no running — and I’d broken it. She was right. I knew that. Still …

  My annoyance must have been apparent because Ms. Walden shot me a hard, angry look. “Get to class,” she said. “And walk!”

  I walked away, feeling her cold stare digging into the back of my head. What I resented most was being treated like a baby. A baby and a criminal — at the same time.

  Once I turned the hallway corner, I was tempted to run again. But I didn’t dare. Instead, I race-walked to my locker, grabbed my books, and race-walked to homeroom.

  As I hurried along, I thought about how great it would be to teach. Then I’d be the one calling the shots, not the one being bossed around by people like Ms. Walden.

  Last year she’d been my gym teacher and I’d thought I liked her. I defended her to the kids who hated her. And there were a lot of them, believe me.

  Now I thought that those kids might have had a point. Maybe she really was overbearing and tyrannical. Maybe it was just my love of sports that had made me try to like her.

  In truth, she picked on the kids who weren’t athletic. She yelled all the time. And sometimes she expected us to perform impossible feats, such as sinking five free-throw baskets in a row during the basketball unit.

  I resolved then and there that if I were assigned a gym class, Ms. Walden would be my model for how not to teach.

  “Ms. Walden!” I gasped that Thursday when we received our teaching assignments. I was with the other volunteers in the auditorium, waiting for our first session of student teacher training to begin.

  I’d just been handed a slip of paper saying I would be student teaching for Ms. Walden during her seventh-grade gym class. Yikes!

  Stacey was in the second row seat to my right. “Ms. Walden? That crab? Oh, well. You can show her it’s possible to run a gym class and still be a nice person.”

  That’s true, I thought. A picture flashed in my mind — kids smiling and having fun in my gym class; Ms. Walden in the background, watching carefully, vowing to herself to be nicer to the kids in the future.

  “Who do you have?” I asked Stacey.

  “Seventh-grade math,” she reported with a pleased expression. “Mr. Peters’s class.”

  “He’s okay,” I commented. “I had him last year.”

  Mary Anne leaned forward from a seat in the row behind Stacey. “I got seventh-grade social studies, Mr. Redmont,” she said.

  “That’s good,” Stacey remarked. “Is it what you wanted?”

  “Yup.”

  I noticed Mallory sitting beside Mary Anne. She was slumped in her seat and scowling at the paper in her lap. “Didn’t you get English?” I asked.

  She nodded but didn’t look up from her paper. “I got it,” she mumbled.

  “Then what’s the —” I was interrupted by Mr. Zizmore, who had walked to the front of the auditorium and stood in the center aisle.

  “Attention, everyone, and welcome to the Teachers of Tomorrow Training Seminar,” he announced. “The first thing we will talk about is how to create a lesson plan.”

  I didn’t think this would apply to me. How much of a lesson plan would you need to teach a gym class? While Mr. Zizmore spoke, I gazed around at the other volunteers to see who had signed up. Nearly fifty kids had.

  At first I was impressed by the number. I was surprised so many students were interested. But, as I continued to watch them, I grew a lot more skeptical.

  While Mr. Zizmore explained the lesson plan, Alan Gray was sailing paper airplanes across the room. Cokie Mason was applying makeup. Cary was using a piece of paper to create static electricity in the hair of the girl in front of him, Kara Mauricio. She kept giggling and batting him away, but not as if she really meant it.

  Hopeless, I thought, looking around. If these kids were the Teachers of Tomorrow, then I felt sorry for the students of tomorrow.

  “You will have to stay on the topic the teacher for your particular class is teaching,” Mr. Zizmore said.

  “You mean I can’t teach creative paper folding?” Alan Gray called out, holding up his paper airplane.

  “Not unless you are teaching an art class on origami,” Mr. Zizmore replied. Stacey smiled at that one. She loves Mr. Z. “But that brings up an excellent point, Alan,” he continued.

  I laughed to myself. Alan was trying to be a wise guy, and Mr. Zizmore had turned things around so that it seemed as if Alan were making excellent points.

  “You will have a great deal of flexibility within your given unit,” Mr. Zizmore continued. “For example, if you are assigned a literature class, you can decide what story or poem you will teach.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at Mallory, thinking she’d be happy to hear this news. I tried to make eye contact, but she was still staring down at her assignment paper as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

  Mr. Zizmore asked someone to turn down the lights. On a screen on the stage, he projected a slide showing an enlarged lesson plan. Different slides highlighted the various aspects of the lesson plan.

  The amount of time spent on each part of the subject was broken into fifteen-minute segments. The plan he showed indicated fifteen minutes for teaching a lesson on the history of World War I, then ten minutes for class discussion, five minutes for the class to write a quick response to the question “What was the immediate cause of World War I?”, then a final fifteen minutes discussing the difference between immediate causes and background causes of a war. A fast-moving forty-five-minute class.

  “With this kind of plan you don’t fall behind,” Mr. Zizmore explained in the darkened auditorium. He flipped to the next slide, which showed how this plan was laid out in a lesson-plan book — a special notebook designed especially for teachers. The slide after that showed a blank lesson-plan page.

  “With a lesson plan, you also keep up a lively pace. You don’t become stuck on one aspect of a subject. And a lesson plan helps you make sure you are meeting state curriculum requirements.”

  He snapped on the lights. “We teachers periodically turn in our lesson plans. Mr. Kingbridge checks to see that each teacher is on target covering the curriculum for that year. You, too, will have to turn in your lesson plans to your master teacher.”

  Alan Gray called out, “Yes, massssterrr,” as if he were Igor speaking to Dracula.

  Mr. Zizmore ignored him and continued to talk about how we should construct our lesson plans. “Be realistic about how much time you will need,” he suggested.

  I found this fascinating. With my admiration for organization, I was truly impressed with this system. I still couldn’t see how it would apply to a gym class,
but I wondered if I could use it for the BSC. Could I get each member a lesson planner and ask her to chart how she intended to use her time during jobs? It might be very useful. But could you actually chart baby-sitting time as you would class time?

  I became caught up in this question and stopped listening to Mr. Zizmore. I had the basic idea of it anyway, and didn’t need to go over it a million times. (Although it was probably a good idea for Mr. Z. to repeat it for kids like Cokie and Alan.)

  Could a lesson plan be used effectively in the BSC? I came up with reasons why it could — games could be planned, TV viewing charted, kids’ homework time accounted for, suppers served on time, etc. There were also reasons why it couldn’t — kids don’t always like schedules, they ask for extra stories, want to see extra TV, get sick, quarrel, fool around, and so on. Besides that, we’d have to budget for everyone to have lesson planners, which would continually need to be replaced.

  In the end I decided lesson planners would not work in the BSC. My timing was good. Just as I decided this, Mr. Zizmore dismissed the group. “See you all tomorrow for session two,” he said.

  Immediately I swung around in my seat. “What is the matter, Mallory?” I demanded. I reached out and took the paper from her hands.

  I saw the problem right away. Mallory had been assigned to Mrs. Simon — to my English class — which meant they’d given a sixth-grader an eighth-grade English class.

  “That’s a compliment,” I said, handing the paper back to her. “They must think you’re a brilliant English student.”

  “Eighth grade?” Mary Anne asked.

  “Maybe it’s a mistake,” Stacey suggested. “You should check with Mr. Z.”

  Mallory’s expression brightened as she bolted from her chair and hurried to the front of the room. Mary Anne, Stacey, and I watched while she spoke to him. Mr. Zizmore was shaking his head, and Mal looked more and more despondent by the second.

  “No mistake, huh,” I said as she slouched back to us.

  “No. What am I going to do? An eighth-grade class won’t listen to me. This is horrible.”