A/N: One might think, "What a weird thing to crossover" and so did I at first. It was originally just a silly fic, but it turned into so much more in just a weeks' time. It is not based off any certain episodes or time lines so if it contradicts, so be it. Enjoy~
"Well, Liz. How do I look?" The frizzy haired school teacher looked to her lizard friend with a little smile, after taking one last look at her appearance in her full length mirror.
The lizard shook her head.
The teacher sighed. "I know. It's not 'me', is it?" she frowned, looking back into the mirror again. She was wearing a plain purple blouse and black pencil skirt—far from her usual. She was starting a new teaching job at Springfield Elementary School that day, and she could not risk wearing her usual outrageous clothing until she had a feel for the atmosphere. She did not want to get fired on her first day. "Oh, I know, Liz," the woman stroked the lizard's head. "I'll be back to myself soon. Don't you worry. I'm sure the other teachers will be very nice and accepting. I bet the students will be great fun, too!"
Liz smiled a little, but cocked her head to the side, seeing the teacher get a nostalgic look on her face. Indeed, she missed her old students, but that is why she had to get away. She needed to start anew with different students and a different school altogether. The lizard jumped onto Ms. Frizzle's shoulder and kissed her cheek, making the woman snap out of her trance and giggle. "Thank you, Liz." She glanced at the clock. "Well, I better go. I'll be late for my first day of work! Will you be alright here by yourself?" She couldn't possibly take the lizard to school—not on the first day. That would be highly unusual to her new co-workers and students.
Liz saluted the woman, as if to say she would be just fine.
"Well, alright. I will be back here right after school, I promise," she waved to the lizard before heading towards the door. She stopped and turned back. "Please don't eat too much sugar while I'm out. You know what happens when you do that."
Liz smiled sheepishly. She could get pretty hyper when she ate sugar. She waved a hand as if to dismiss the thought. The teacher shook her head with a smile and then was off to work.
.
Ms. Frizzle's first day of teaching at Springfield Elementary taught her many things. For one, the teachers weren't very cheerful. She did not expect them to be as spontaneous as herself, but she thought all teachers actually enjoyed teaching, and these teachers seemed to wish they were anywhere but in the school. She was astonished. Not only that, but they smoked during school hours…in the school building! Valerie found this very odd; she wondered if she would fit in at this school at all. It seemed the only thing she had in common with them at the moment was her clothing, and that most certainly wasn't what she normally wore. What would they think of her regular clothes? Dare she dress the way she liked?
"So, Ms. Frizzle," Edna Krabappel said, trying to strike up conversation. "Do you smoke?" She held out a pack of cigarettes as she leaned against the counter of the teacher's lounge, bored.
Valerie looked around at the teachers, the majority of them smoking cigarettes. "No," she said politely.
"Suit yourself," Edna shrugged.
"Smoking is terrible for the environment, your health, and the health of everyone around you. Plus, it's a terrible example for the students!"
"What they don't know won't kill them!" Ms. Krabappel laughed, and Ms. Hoover and the others joined.
"But what about your health?" Ms. Frizzle questioned.
"After going through a divorce, boyfriend after boyfriend, endless nights of canned soup, and day after day of snot nosed children, you just stop caring."
Ms. Frizzle was bewildered. "Don't you like teaching?"
"Eh," the teachers all said in unison, one of them muttering, "The pay is crap."
"I take it you like teaching?" Edna asked.
"I love teaching, and I loved all of my students. They were all so bright, and it was so enriching knowing they were learning because of me."
Edna blinked. "Then why did you come to this hell hole?"
Ms. Frizzle was silent a moment. She could tell that there was something more to Ms. Krabappel than your typical cranky teacher. What she mentioned before—the divorce—she was obviously lonely. Valerie could relate, but she made the best of the situation. Teaching gave her a lift in spirits. To Valerie, teaching was no job. It was both escape and entertainment. "You poor woman," she said simply, putting a hand on Edna's shoulder before shaking her head and walking out of the teachers' lounge, making note to not visit that room much.
"What a strange woman," Edna said after Ms. Frizzle left. "She's never going to make it at this school. Ha!" she laughed and shook her head, putting out her cigarette.
.
By the end of the day, Valerie had gotten more paper balls and spit wads thrown at her than she knew was possible. Never in her life had she seen such misbehaving children! She supposed it was because she was new, and they were trying to take advantage of her. Well, she could be their friend, or she could be their enemy; whatever it took to teach those children. But of course she planned to try to be their friend first; she wanted to be their friend, but she wanted them to behave, as well. The next day she planned to wear one of her normal outfits and be herself. If they saw how fun she could be, surely they would learn to love her.
Edna let herself into the principal's office, with not so much as a knock and said, "Seymour, your new teacher is strange."
"What do you mean?" Principal Skinner quickly put away the paddleball he had been playing with back in the drawer with the other confiscated items and cleared his throat.
Edna smirked and walked over to his desk, sitting on the edge of it. "Well, for one thing, she had the nerve to come tell us that we shouldn't be smoking because it could harm the environment! Ha!" When the principal didn't say anything, she continued. "And she's so enthusiastic about teaching. She finds joy in it! How can someone be that excited about teaching?"
Principal Skinner blinked. "Are you trying to get yourself fired?"
Edna blushed slightly. "Of course not! I like teaching…But she is over the top excited about it. She has a passion for it like I have a passion for…" She trailed off, wondering what she even had a passion for anymore. "Well, you get my point."
"Hm…Next time you see the woman, tell her I want to see her."
"You're not going to fire her, are you?"
"Of course not. I think she is going to make a fine addition to this drab school, actually. This drab school with its drab teachers…" Seymour walked over to the window, looking out it, thoughtfully. "It's about time we had a bit of life here."
"Drab?" Edna said quietly.
Seymour blushed. "I-I didn't mean you."
"Sure you didn't, Seymour," Edna rolled her eyes as she turned towards the door. "See you tomorrow, 'chief'," she half joked, walking out the door.
"Yes, yes," Seymour replied, still staring out the window in thought. When he hired this new teacher, he had no idea she would be so enthusiastic about her job. Maybe the students would actually learn something, and their test scores would rise. Their school had been in the gutter for years, not only financially, but academically, as well. This could be just what they needed. What was that woman's name again? Seymour racked his brains. Ah, Frizzle. Valerie Frizzle, he thought to himself, with a thoughtful smile.
.
When Ms. Frizzle got back to her apartment, she found Liz had been waiting for her. She had probably gotten quite bored during the day all by herself. "Oh, Liz," the woman said with a sigh as she tossed her briefcase aside. "I did not think being in a school could be so depressing!"
Liz cocked her head to the side.
Ms. Frizzle sat down at the kitchen table and sighed again before explaining her day to Liz, who seemed shocked herself. "Shocking, isn't it?" she said, and the lizard nodded her head. "I'm so used to happy, smiling faces at school, and people who follow rules. Our last group of students were pretty well behaved weren't they?" Sure, they had the occasional mishap, but everyone made mistakes, everyone got a temper sometimes, but on the whole, they were very well behaved. And they also had loved their teacher very much. They would never humiliate her in such a way as her new students had.
Liz came over and patted Valerie's shoulder to console her. "Don't worry, Liz. Tomorrow I'm going to march right into that school and be my happy self. I'm going to wear what I want to wear, and if they don't like it—tough! I'm going to teach those students in whatever means I must!"
The lizard smacked her fist into her palm. "No, no!" Ms. Frizzle laughed. "Perhaps not by any means, but if those students act up, I'm just going to still treat them respectfully. I'm going to try to befriend them and teach them in the most fun ways I can come up with. Surely they'll get tired of being mean to me and start adoring me like my older students did!" The woman smiled. She wasn't completely confident of this, but it was worth a try. Surely the students weren't complete animals.
Her next day at work seemed to start out no different. The students started throwing paper at her the moment she walked in the door. She was wearing her solar system dress, though, because the class would be learning about, well, the solar system.
"What's on your head?" a student asked, cheekily.
She knew the student was being cheeky, but she answered him as though he wasn't. "Oh, this?" She pointed to her head. "My solar system cap? You like it? I made it myself!" She put the cap down on her desk and smiled to the class. "Now, let's take roll, shall we? I would like to get took know you all better!"
Once she got to Lisa Simpson's name, Lisa smiled politely. "Here!" she said brightly and then added, "Don't mind my classmates. They are quite ignorant."
"Don't listen to Lisa!" one kid said.
"Yeah, she's not even supposed to be in our class! Ms. Hoover got tired of her and moved her here!"
"Ah, Ms. Hoover is the second grade teacher, correct? Well, we've got ourselves a very smart young lady in our class, then, to have moved up a grade." Ms. Frizzle smiled at Lisa, who grinned back.
"She's not so smart!" one kid teased.
"I'm smarter than the average second grader, and that was enough for Ms. Hoover to move me up a grade."
"No, you were so annoying that she kicked you out!"
"Annoyed by my intellect, perhaps," Lisa turned back to the front, ending the conversation.
"Oh, excellent debate, class!" Ms. Frizzle said, confusing the students.
"We weren't debating; we were fighting!" a boy protested.
"Oh, no, no. It was a debate! A debate of intellect. How about we challenge Lisa's intellect with a bit of a game?"
She smiled as she watched the students' faces brighten at the idea of a game. Her tactic was working; they seemed to be getting more comfortable with her.
They played a game of Jeopardy, using categories about the solar system. Many of the students were quite bright, but none as bright as Lisa. Ms. Frizzle was both shocked and pleased. The class, however, was only annoyed. They seemed to have fun, though, nonetheless.
At lunchtime, the students left the classroom, cheerfully waving goodbye to their teacher, with the occasional, "See you later, Ms. Frizzle!"
Lisa stayed behind to say, "I'm sorry that my classmates got a bad impression of you. You seem like a very nice person, who doesn't mind showing off her unique style and speaking her mind. You also clearly know good intellect when you see it," she smiled slyly.
Ms. Frizzle patted Lisa's head. "You are quite an intelligent little girl. You probably know more than the average third grader."
"I do," Lisa answered quickly, making Ms. Frizzle laugh.
"Quite confident in yourself, too, I see."
"Sometimes," Lisa admitted. "Not a lot of kids like me too much because they only look at my smarts instead of my personality."
"Well, Lisa, be proud of your smarts because one day, you will be even smarter and have the capability to be whatever you want to be, and a lot of people don't have that chance. A lot of people just have to settle, but with brains like yours, you can literally do anything you want."
"I like you," Lisa smiled.
"I like you, too, Lisa," Ms. Frizzle smiled.
Lisa went off happily to lunch, knowing she had made a new friend. Ms. Frizzle seemed like a wonderful woman, and most likely she was the type of teacher who didn't necessarily need the answer key, unlike the rest of the teachers.
Ms. Frizzle was getting ready to set up lunch right at her desk. She did not necessarily feel the need to go to the teacher's lounge that day. However, there was a little rap at her door, and she turned her head to see Ms. Krabappel. "Sorry to bother you, Ms. Frizzle, but Seymour—I mean, Principal Skinner wants to see you." It was not necessarily an accident that Edna said the principal's first name; she just liked to throw it out there that she was definitely on first name basis with him.
"Oh, does he?" Ms. Frizzle tucked away her lunch and stood up, straightening her dress. "Whatever for?"
"I haven't the faintest," Edna pursed her lips slightly. She remembered well the look Seymour had had on his face the day before, and she hoped she wasn't going to have competition now. She knew Seymour had broken up with her six months before, but she always had that hope they would get back together.
"Well, thank you, Ms. Krabappel," Ms. Frizzle smiled and made her way to the principal's office. She hoped that he did not want to see her because her clothes were too outlandish for his taste. Surely not, but she did slightly fear that. Some people just did not understand her style.
Ms. Frizzle made her way to Principal Skinner's office and politely knocked on the door.
"Who is it?" Skinner asked.
"Ms. Frizzle," Valerie answered.
"Ah, yes! Do come in." He smiled when she let herself inside. "I've been expecting you."
"Yes, sir. You wanted to see me?"
"Sit down," the principal suggested, and the woman obeyed. Skinner sat back in his chair and said thoughtfully, "Edna tells me you are very enthusiastic about teaching."
The woman sighed. "Is that such a bad thing? I don't understand why loving your job is so wrong." She stood up. "I became a teacher for a reason. I wanted to teach students and show them that learning can be fun, as well. I wanted to make sure that they made the grade and learned enough information so that they will do well in the real world. I wanted to see them succeed because it makes me happy. I take joy and pride in my work and seeing my students do well!"
The principal chuckled a little at her feistiness. "You…are one hell of a woman," he said bluntly.
Ms. Frizzle blushed. "Sir?" she said, confused.
"You are just what this school needs."
"I am?" Valerie smiled a little.
"Yes. I've had enough of this drab school. We need to shed some light on it, and you are just the woman to do it, I believe! These students are going to learn, by gosh, and we're going to have the best third graders in history!"
The principal was getting so excited that Ms. Frizzle had to try hard to hold her laughter in. "I can't promise you the best third graders, but I can promise you that I will do my very best to teach them as much as I can."
"Good," Skinner smiled. "That is all."
Ms. Frizzle nodded and smiled. "Thank you, sir."
She started to leave his office when he stopped her. "Oh, um, Ms. Frizzle?" The man cleared his throat.
"Yes?"
"You're a very pretty woman."
"Well, thank you, sir," she smiled and quickly left his office to hide the growing redness in her cheeks. Was that normal for a woman's boss to tell her she is pretty, or was he flirting with her? In either case, it was out of the ordinary. And many things were not seen as out of the ordinary for Ms. Frizzle, but this was.
Edna had been watching in the general direction of the office from behind a row of lockers, and upon seeing Valerie walk out blushing, she became very suspicious. What on Earth did Seymour say to her? To risk being caught spying, she darted into the teacher's lounge. She decided to leave it alone for now, but if there was anything more suspicious, she would be having a talk with Seymour.
