Chapter 36

Mrs. West looked across the classroom with a frown. It was a small class; only five students had signed up for calculus. This was the smallest class of her entire teaching career. She had been teaching math for thirty-four years and this was her last year to teach before retiring. The chances of finding a jewel in the rough this year was just as bad as they had been the previous thirty-four years. She looked down at the roll and said, “Susan Culbertson.”

“Here,” Susan said in a bored voice.

“Sid Eddings.”

“Here,” Sid said staring at the floor.

“Susan Emery.”

In a bright clear voice, Suzie said, “Here.”

Leaning over to Suzie, Sean said, “That was well said.”

“Thank you,” Suzie said with a smile.

“Sean Michaels.”

Sean stood up and said, “Sean Connery Michaels, also known as Agent Double-o Zero, present and accounted for.”

“Do you have a problem?” Mrs. West asked looking at Sean.

“Not really, ma’am. I am relatively problem free,” Sean said with a smile.

“Then what was with the excessive response to my calling your name when I’m going through the roll?” Mrs. West asked in a cold voice.

Sean smiled and said, “This is the first day of class and I want to make a great first impression. I’m excited about the chance to learn some math.”

“Some math?” Mrs. West asked.

“Yes, Ma’am. I think math is really neat,” Sean said.

Mrs. West shook her head. She’d heard that kind of statement from mediocre students every year. She said, “We’ll see if you feel the same way by the end of the year.”

“Are you saying that it is going to be pretty hard?” Sean asked.

“Yes,” Mrs. West answered.

“Alright.” Sean sat down and leaned over to Suzie. He smiled and said, “This class is going to be so good.”

Mrs. West raised her eyebrows and looked at Sean. Parents had wilted under her intense scrutiny. Even other teachers had wilted when she looked at them like that. This kid just smiled back at her. She looked down at her roll and said, “Jerry Walker.”

“Here,” Jerry said.

Mrs. West stood up to hand out the five text books. She handed the first one to Sean since he was seated directly in front of her. She then handed out the rest of the books to the rest of the students. She had just made it back to her desk when Sean said, “Hey, Suzie. Look at this stuff on page 95. This is so cool.”

“That is a limit,” Mrs. West said after glancing at the page.

Sean said, “Yeah, I know. You’ve got to admit that is a pretty neat concept. I mean, finding the value of a function at some point by evaluating it at nearby points is pretty neat. You get ever closer to the answer as the distance between the point you are evaluating it at and the actual point diminishes down to zero. It works even when the function isn’t defined at the point of interest. That is so cool. Are you going to teach us about that?”

“Yes,” Mrs. West answered staring at Sean.

“Suzie, we are going to have so much fun in this class,” Sean said. He hunched over and looked in the book. He flipped a few pages while looking at the equations. He looked up and said, “Hey, it even works when the function is discontinuous. That’s so cool.”

“Uh, yeah,” Mrs. West said staring at Sean for a moment. Frowning, she said, “If you’ll turn back to page ten, we’re going to review some material.”

“Aw,” Sean said. He flipped to the correct page and said, “Look at this. Algebra! We had this junk last year.”

Jerry sat back and said, “I might as well take a nap for the next two months.”

Susan yawned and said, “This is so boring. If I didn’t need this class to get into college, I’d be taking art or something else just as stupid.”

Mrs. West asked, “Are you saying that you’d rather skip the review?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Sean shouted.

“Sure,” Jerry said.

“You bet,” Susan said.

Sid said, “Let’s get to the neat stuff.”

“Okay,” Suzie said looking at the book with a small sense of dread. She hoped that she remembered enough of her algebra to get through the class.

Mrs. West flipped forward through the book. She stopped on the third chapter and said, “Let’s start on page ninety-three.”

“Alright!” Sean said raising his arms in the air.

Thinking this class might be a little different; Susan sat up and looked at the book. She looked over the page and said, “Sean is right. This is interesting.”

Sid said, “Wow. There’s an elegance to this that is rather surprising.”

“You can say that again,” Jerry said.

Mrs. West said, “Now if...”

Sean leaned over and pointed to a figure in the book. He said, “Suzie, look at this. See how when you get closer to the target point from above and from below, the function approaches the desired value.”

“Yes,” Suzie said seeing exactly what he meant.

“Check out the formal definition on the bottom of page ninety seven,” Susan said.

“That’s the...” Mrs West started to say.

“It says here that this is the delta-epsilon form,” Suzie said pleased to discover that all of that algebra was coming back.

Looking up from his sheet of paper, Sean said, “I got the first five problems without much difficulty, but this sixth one is a problem.”

Suzie looked over and said, “The answer is eight.”

“Oh, right. Stupid me,” Sean said erasing his work on his sheet of paper.

Mrs. West said, “Ah...”

“Hey, look at this stuff with infinity on page 105,” Susan said.

“You’ve got to draw some of this stuff to see what’s going on,” Sid said. He could see that the function was oscillating around some value as the function was evaluated at larger and larger numbers.

Picking up his book, Sean said, “That’s easy to solve. Let’s go to the board.”

“Good idea,” Jerry said grabbing his book.

While her five students gathered around the blackboard to work some limit problems, Mrs. West took a seat and watched them correcting each other’s work. She muttered, “I spent thirty- four years trying to drag students kicking and screaming into this subject. I must have been doing something wrong.”

The bell rang, but the students didn’t move from the board. Mrs. West stood up and said, “I hate to say this, but you better get to your next class.”

Walking over to her desk, Susan said, “I’ve got social studies next. I want to die.”

“I bet they don’t even have any statistics in that class,” Jerry said with a groan.

Sean said, “What good is social studies without going into demographic data?”

“Useless,” Suzie said packing her book into her book bag.

Sean put an arm around Suzie and said, “This is going to be a fun class.”

“I think so,” Suzie said.

Walking towards the door, Sean said, “I don’t know why everyone says that Mrs. West is a witch.”

“Got me,” Sid said shrugging his shoulders.

Suzie said, “I think she’s a pretty good teacher.”

Jerry said, “It’s because of that book, The Wizard of Ooze.”

Sean asked, “Did you ever read any of his other books?”

“Yes, I read the whole set,” Jerry said.

“Compared to all of the others in that series, The Wizard of Ooze wasn’t all that great,” Sean said.

“You’re right,” Jerry said.

“See you tomorrow, Mrs. West,” Susan said stepping out of the class.

Sean stepped out of class and ran into Mr. Charmers. He said, “Hello, Principal Charmers. I keep running into you after every class. Isn’t that a co-incidence?”

“It sure is, Sean,” Mr. Charmers said with a smile.

“You don’t have to worry about me, I promise not to kiss Suzie in the hallways,” Sean said.

“You might not have a choice about that,” Suzie said with a grin.

“Oh,” Sean said. Looking at Mr. Charmers, Sean said, “Never mind.”

“Stay out of trouble, you two,” Mr. Chalmers said. He watched the young couple walk down the hall towards their social studies class. He noticed Susan and Jerry arguing while walking down the hallway. It was the first time he had ever seen either of them looking animated. He looked in the classroom and saw Mrs. West seated in her chair. Her hands covered her face and her shoulders were jerking uncontrollably. It looked like she was crying. Concerned, he rushed into the room and asked, “Are you okay, Mrs. West?”

She sat up and uncovered her face. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. She grinned and said, “I can’t stop laughing.”

“What?”

“This has been the best class I’ve ever taught in my entire career,” Mrs. West said. She shook her head and said, “They pushed me out of the way and started working through the book. I never had a chance to say a word and they got through a week’s worth of material in a half an hour.”

“Oh,” Mr. Chambers said.

Mrs. West grinned and said, “The rest of that group’s teachers had better know their stuff. Those five will roll right over them. I can’t wait to hear the talk in the teacher’s lounge.”

“Oh,” Mr. Chambers said turning pale.

Mrs. West said, “You don’t look well. Is something wrong?”

“They are all headed towards social studies,” Mr. Chambers said.

“Man-hater Molly?”

“Yes,” Mr. Chambers said.

Ms. Hawkins paced across the front of the class scanning the class role. She frowned while looking at the composition of the students. There were more males than females. She was convinced that it was a plot to prevent the women of this class from learning the truth of the woman’s movement. If she had her way, Mr. Charmers would be returned to the classroom and she’d have his position. She smiled thinking about the changes she’d make in the school.

Sean entered the room with his arm held around Suzie’s shoulders. She was snuggled under his arm with her head on his chest. Seeing the pair, Ms. Hawkins said, “Get your hands off of her!”