Scott understood. Probably better than she could have guessed.
"Let me tell you something not many people know." He leaned forward, clasping his hands on top of his desk. In fact, maybe only Jean and Professor Xavier were close enough and had known him long enough and well enough to know something as seemingly insignificant as this.
"When I was your - well, younger than you - first starting high school. I hated math. Worse than that, I was horrible at it. Nothing made any sense to me, especially word problems. I couldn't imagine how it would possibly help me to know how long it would take two trains to meet each other if one train was traveling south at sixty miles per hour, and the other traveling north at fifty-five. It was pointless.
"The next year, I got a new teacher, and everything changed for me. First of all, I truly wanted to do well, like you do now. That's the first step. Instead of thinking about how pointless it all was, I started thinking about it as just another challenge. If graduation is the final goal, and you have to pass so many classes to graduate, it doesn't necessarily matter what you have to learn, does it? You still have to.
"But the most important thing was that my teacher didn't just try to teach me how to find the answers to math problems. He taught me out to think about the problems themselves." On a spare piece of paper, Scott scratched out a quadratic equation and the quadratic formula.
"You see stuff like this all the time in geometry classes, but usually you're focused on answering for x, right? Or a, b, or c, depending on what you don't have a figure for. Our problem is - mine back then, and others now - is that we're so focused on that x, that we don't think through what the other steps mean. What exactly the problem is asking us, step by step. "
Scott left the paper in front of her, but put down the pen and gave her some room. "What I'm saying is that to pass calculus, you're not just going to have to work harder, you're going to have to work smarter. But in classes the size I teach, it's very difficult to teach that many students how to read math the way Cypher reads languages.
"So what I suggest, since you'd likely have to wait until next semester to start with a full class, that you and I set aside an hour every school day for a one-on-one class, to be taken at your own pace. I won't test you on a regular basis, only when you think you're ready to be tested. Only then will we move on to the next unit. This means that you could finish Calculus anytime from the end of this semester, to the end of summer, even through the end of next semester, if that's how long it takes, although I doubt it will."
Looking up Cessily's information, he wrote down her e-mail address and phone number, passing the paper to Megan. "I believe you know Cessily Kincaid? This is her contact information. She's doing some tutoring, at least through this semester, and in addition to our classes, you can set up sessions to get some extra help from her. And, of course," he added with a smile," if you have any questions, you're always welcome to stop in and ask. I can't promise I'll always be in, or that I'll always have too much time, but I'll give all that I can.
"How does that sound to you?" he asked, one eyebrow raising, Spock-like in manner.