7 Ch7-Teacher for a Day

Chapter 7 Teacher for a Day The news about the big chocolate party blew through the school like a hurricane. Even kids who were allergic to chocolate wanted to go, just so they could see Mr. Klutz kiss a pig on the lips. "Where is he going to get a pig?" Ryan asked during lunch the next day.

"He could try A.J.'s house," Andrea said. "That's so funny I forgot to laugh," I said. "I'm not entirely sure that pigs have lips," said Emily. "Of course they have lips," I insisted. "If they didn't have lips, how could they whistle?"

"You know," Ryan pointed out, "Mr. Klutz is just trying to trick us into doing lots of math problems. That's why we're having a chocolate party." "Who cares?" Michael said. "As long as we get the chocolate."

"I think that only students who do math problems should be allowed to come to the chocolate party," said Andrea. "Could you possibly be any more boring?" I asked her. As it turned out, everybody was doing math problems. The whole school started doing math problems like crazy. Even Ryan. You would have thought that Mr. Klutz was giving us gold and diamonds instead of chocolate. "I did math problems for twenty min- utes last night," Ryan bragged while we were waiting for Miss Daisy after recess. "Oh, yeah?" Michael said. "Well, I did math problems for forty minutes last night.

Forty is twice as many as twenty. See? I just did another math problem right there!" "Well I did math problems for an hour last night," I said. "That's fifty whole min- utes." "An hour is sixty minutes, dumbhead," Andrea told me. I was going to tell her that Sixty Minutes was a TV show my parents watch, but Mr. Klutz suddenly burst into our classroom. He told us that Miss Daisy had a dentist appointment and we would have a substitute teacher for the rest of the afternoon... Mr. Klutz! We all gasped. "You're not a teacher!" I told him.

"I used to be a teacher," he said. "I taught for many years before I became a principal." "What did you teach?" Ryan asked. "Physics," he said. "What's that?" I asked. "Is that like phys ed?" asked Michael. "Mr. Klutz, do you know that this is second grade?" Andrea pointed out. "Physics is something high school stu- dents study." "Poppycock!" said Mr. Klutz. "You're never too young to learn something new. You may find you're smarter than you think." "Well, if you say so."