Ann Martin: Baby-Sitters Club 122

"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. King-bridge 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 babysitting 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." "I'll be there," I said. "Mary Anne too. We'll make sure it goes all right." That seemed to help. Mallory smiled. "Okay," she said. "Thanks." Now it was the look on Mary Anne's face that worried me. She bit her lip and frowned at me as if to say, Why did you promise something we can't do?

Chapter 5.

That afternoon, while Abby was at the allergist, Jessi was at her ballet class, and the rest of us were at TOT training, Claudia sat for Vanessa (age nine), Margo (seven), and Claire Pike (five).

The moment Mrs. Pike left, Vanessa swung into action. She popped up from the floor, where she'd been lying between Claire and Margo, watching TV. "Mallory may be a TOT. But all alone she is not," Vanessa sang out dramatically. "I can be a teacher too, and -" she pointed to her younger sisters - I am planning on teaching you!" "Nice poem," Claudia said, laughing. Like Mallory, Vanessa also wants to be a writer. Her specialty is poetry.

Claire leaped to her feet. "You're teaching us?" she cried eagerly. "What are you teaching us?" "Poetry, of course," Vanessa replied.

Margo ducked her head and covered it with her hands. "Oh, no-o-o," she mumbled.

Vanessa straddled her sister and pulled her up by the shoulders. "No hiding. You need to learn about poetry." Claire turned off the TV. "Come on, Margo, come on. It's fun to play school.

"Oh, all right," Margo grumbled as she rolled away from Vanessa. "You'll both bug me until I do it anyway." She looked at Claudia. 'Are you going to play?" "Sure," Claudia agreed. Normally, school wouldn't be a game she'd suggest, but she thought that maybe Vanessa's version would be fun.

Vanessa instructed her students to sit on the couch while she ran upstairs.

"I'm learning to write in school," Claire proudly told Claudia. "I can spell some words. Cat, C-A-T. Dog, D-O-G. House, H-O-S-E." "Very good." Claudia applauded.

"Why did you say good?" Margo demanded. "She spelled house wrong." "Did not!" Claire shot back.

"Did too!" The girls looked to Claudia to solve the argument. "Well..." she began.

"If you spell mouse, M-O-U-S-E, then house has to be spelled H-O-U-S-E because it rhymes with mouse," Margo insisted.

"Did someone say rhymes?" Vanessa asked as she scurried down the stairs. She was holding a piece of light blue poster board in one hand and a box of colored markers in the other.

"I said house rhymes with mouse, so it must be spelled the same," Margo explained. "Isn't that right?" "No," Vanessa said with a knowledgeable shake of her head. "I mean it might, but it doesn't have to. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Spelling is totally unimportant." "It is?" Claire squinted her eyes at Vanessa. That wasn't what she'd been told in kindergarten.

"Well. . . that's what I've always felt," Claudia admitted. "But I'm not sure that - " "Absolutely unimportant!" Vanessa maintained, swooshing a red marker dramatically through the air. "In poetry, sound is what matters." "Wait a. minute, Vanessa," Margo objected. "Won't everyone who reads your poems think you're dumb if they're all spelled wrong?" "They won't be spelled wrong because someone else will fix the misspellings," Vanessa informed her.

Margo wasn't buying this. "Like who?" "Like a secretary or an editor or someone like that," Vanessa replied. "Besides, spelling was made up by a bunch of crazy people who wrote words in the strangest ways they could think of, just to confuse everyone else." "That's the truth!" said Claudia. At last, someone who understands the problem, she thought. Vanessa might only be nine, but she was on to something. At least in Claudia's opinion.

"I can spell, but I think worrying about spelling gets in the way of making great poems," Vanessa said. "The first thing you must know about a poem is that it has to rhyme." "My teacher says it doesn't," Margo protested. "Haiku poems, written in Japan, don't rhyme." "That's Japanese poetry," Vanessa replied irritably. "The rules are different in America." "I don't think all American poems rhyme either," Claudia said gently. She remembered learning this in English class.

Vanessa stamped one foot. "My poems rhyme and that's what I'm teaching - rhyming poems." "I like rhyming poems," Claire said. "I know one - 'Little Miss Muffet/Sat on a tuffet/Eating her curds and whey . . .' " She stopped and made a confused face. "What's a tuffet?" 'And what's curds and whey?" Margo asked.

Claudia shrugged. "I've always wondered about that myself." 'A tuffet is something you sit on and curds and whey are something you eat," Vanessa said in a patient voice.

Margo scowled at her. "We knew that! What we wanted to know was - " " 'Miss Muffet' is a nice poem, Claire," Vanessa cut her off. "But it's not a great poem. In my class, you will learn to make up great poems that express your true feelings." She propped her poster board against the TV and used her marker to print the word fly. "Today we will make a poem by rhyming the word fly. Class, what rhymes with fly?" "Sky!" Claire shouted.