7 A New Way to Learn

7 A New Way to Learn When I woke up on Wednesday morning, my mom told me to put on my bathing suit. "Do I have the day off from school?" I asked hopefully. "Are we going to the beach?" "No," my mom said. "I got an email from Mrs. Jafee that said everybody has to wear a bathing suit today." That's weird! As I crossed Walnut Street in front of the school, the first person I bumped into was Andrea. "Do you like my new swimsuit, Arlo?" she asked me. "It has polka dots on it." "So does your face," I said. Andrea was going to say something mean to me, but she didn't get the chance.

Because as we came around the corner to the side entrance of the school we saw the strangest thing in the history of the world. There was a swimming pool in the playground! "WOW," I said, which is "MOM" upside down. Me and Andrea went running over to the pool. Mrs. Jafee was standing there in her

bathing suit with some kids. "Where did you get the swimming pool, Mrs. Jafee?" Andrea asked. "From Rent-A-Pool," she said. "You can rent anything." Mrs. Jafee told us to go to our class. She said she would call us down when it was our turn to use the pool. It felt like a million hundred years until Mrs. Patty finally made the announcement over the loudspeaker…. "Will Mr. Granite's class please report to the playground?" "Yay!" everybody yelled as we ran out of the classroom. Mr. Granite told us not to run, but we were all so excited to go swimming, it was hard not to. We were all out of breath when we got to the pool. "Can we go swimming now?" Ryan asked.

"Gee golly, no," said Mrs. Jafee. "I didn't get the pool for swimmin'." "Why did you get it then?" asked Michael. "For learnin'!" she said. "Studies show that guys and gals learn better underwater." "WHAT?!" Mrs. Jafee gave each of us a pair of goggles and a sheet of paper that was covered with plastic. The page had a bunch of words on it, like "Lincoln," "Union," "Grant," "Lee," and "South." "What are we supposed to do with this?" asked Neil the nude kid. "I want you to learn how to spell these Civil War vocabulary words," she said. "Okeydokey, everybody into the pool!" "Can't we just learn the words out here and then go swimming for fun?" asked Michael.

"No!" said Mrs. Jafee, and she pushed Michael into the pool. "You'll learn better underwater." "But I can't swim!" yelled Emily. "You'll learn to swim better underwater, too!" Mrs. Jafee said, pushing Emily into the pool. Then she ran around pushing the rest of us into the water.

"But this isn't any fun!" yelled Ryan.