It was an odd time of year. School wasn't starting for several weeks, which meant Elizabeth was both super busy but also had plenty of free time. Well, maybe not a lot of truly free free time, due to her new responsibilities with the X-Men, but still. She didn't have papers to grade or anything like that, but she did have to start getting into the mindset of planning and prepping for the oncoming academic year.

This open house was one of the ways she didn't have free time but yet didn't have much work. This was a chance for parents and prospective students to come visit the school and get a sense for what went on there. It served as an orientation, a meet-n-greet, a recruitment event, and so much more. Lots of parents were hesitant about sending their kids away, sometimes across the whole country or even from other countries, to attend the school so it was helpful to give them a taste before the year began. And unlike scheduled campus visits, this open house was likely to be attended by other parents and kids as well, so everyone could further get a glimpse of who else went there.

Liz had set up her classroom with a few different example projects she'd had students do in the last year. Her goal was to show off the more fun labs and cool experiments, to get kids excited while also helping them feel like they could still be normal at this school - science was still science, even if everyone had mutations.

In fact, mutations were something she delved a lot into in her class, and one of the prominent displays was all about evolutionary benefits and advantages and "What is a mutant?" was written in large letters on her whiteboard. An ant farm was on one counter, beside a half-dozen small aquariums that were examples of self-contained ecosystems. Her pet African Grey parrot, Nico, was on his perch by here desk (he wasn't a display but he liked to be mentioned and included anyways). A few plates of gene-spliced bioluminescent bacteria were on another counter, and then one table was filled with flasks and chemicals and everything you needed to make elephant foam.

And after a third time checking to make sure everything in the room was just-so, Liz waited for the first parent or student to walk in.

Shin must have signed Lee up for some sort of school mailing list or something because she had gotten an email about an open house meet and greet thing for Xavier’s Sister School. Lee was already very familiar with the mansion, the tour she had arranged with Shin had been for Kevin’s benefit, with the happy bonus of being able to have Tarin see the mansion to see that it wasn’t anything risky like that sort of thing would have been on the other side of the rift.

So Lee had immediately trashed the email. Kevin was still in Texas, anyway, and wouldn’t have been able to go.

But as the days passed, Lee found her thoughts going back to it. She knew about the mansion, could find her way around, could probably find her way to the infirmary in her sleep, and had trained in the danger room, Lee really didn’t know much about the school part of the mansion beyond the fact that there was a school.

Yes, Lee knew that Kevin would be able to get his high school diploma there, possibly even get a couple college credits when he was a bit older. But beyond that, Lee didn’t really know anything about the academics at the mansion. Shin taught math, Lee knew, so that was going to be a whole thing, but she actually didn’t know any of the other teachers.

Maybe this open house thing would be good to go to after all.

So Lee had pulled that email out of the trash and actually looked at the details. On the day, Lee arrived at the mansion and made her way inside. And made her way straight to the classrooms through the surprising to her number of parents with young mutants wandering around.

Finally stepping into the first open classroom she came across, Lee glanced around what looked to be a science classroom. With what appeared to be projects and displays around the room. As she made her way into the room, Lee walked over to the first one, though her eyes kept looking over at the white board.

Liz perked her head up just moments before a person entered her room. The blonde smoothed down her white lab coat and made sure her safety goggles were secure on her forehead before hopping off a stool to approach the woman.

Elizabeth generally didn't dress like a classic scientist, at least not on non-lab days, but she was here to make everything look as fun and appealing as possible and what could be more fun than science stuff?!

"How do you do?" Liz said with a friendly smile and an outstretched hand for shaking, trying not to come across as an overly-eager salesperson but not entirely sure she was successful. "I'm Ms. Sundance, biology and general science." Liz didn't recognize the woman, which didn't mean a whole lot since she rarely interacted with any parent at any time, other than pick up and drop off days.

"Do you have a current student here? Or are you just checking out prospects?" she asked, waiting patiently and trying not to hover.

Lee turned toward the woman approaching as she got close, but before she spoke, and gave a friendly smile. ”Lee Smith,” she returned the introduction as she shook the woman’s hand. The science teacher’s hand. That made a lot more sense with the lab coat and apparent experiments around the room.

Did Lee have a current student at the mansion? No, but this also wasn’t a prospective school. ”Neither, actually,” Lee admitted before going on to explain further. ”My son is going to be starting here in the fall. But I realized that other than seeing where the classrooms were during his tour, I didn’t really know a whole lot about the teachers or specific classes or anything like that, so realized that it would probably be good to come over here for this today.”

Elizabeth's smile continued unabated through the handshake. Lee Smith! Liz tried to quickly remember the name, in case she'd have need to use it again in the conversation.

The smile wavered just a bit as the woman chose a third option. Liz nodded. "An excellent idea!" she said brightly, her face lighting back up. "It never hurts to get the lay of the land ahead of time. For the most part, our classes are much the same as any public or private school," she began. "We have the core subjects of math, literature, science, social studies, as well as other common classes like art, music, et cetera, of course. We generally accept most academic credits and are happy to work around particular educational paths that students might require or simply desire."

She gestured at the whiteboard behind her. At the same time, her parrot jumped off his perch and swooped through the the air at the front of the classroom, past the "What is a mutant?" writing, to grab a dry erase marker, which he then dropped into her open hand before coming to a fluttery halt on her shoulder.

"This is my pet, Nico," she said. "While the subject material is standard, the application of it can vary. Although we have separate courses for helping students learn to develop and control their mutations, I find it to be incredibly useful to incorporate a little of that into lesson plans as well."

She reached up with her free hand to run the back of a few fingers across Nico's feathers. "How old is your son? What grade is he going into?"

Lee nodded as she listened to Ms Sundance explain the academics there at the mansion. That was pretty much what Lee had expected, but it was good to hear all of that from one of the actual teachers here.

And they could work around different educational paths? That was interesting. That was good to know; Kevin was definitely smart, but it was sometimes impossible to get him to apply himself if he really wasn’t interested in something. So that was definitely something for Lee to keep in mind for the future if there were issues.

”Kevin is 13, heading into grade 8,” Lee answered. Then nodded toward the whiteboard. ”And things like that will keep his attention more than almost anything else. From the moment he was old enough to understand what mutant powers were, he has been absolutely fascinated by learning what people’s powers are when he meets someone new.”

Lee paused. She knew that Ms Sundance wasn’t going to be able to tell her any specifics at all about how the mutation control lessons would be taught. There were far too many individual variables for each person that would change how, where, when, how often those lessons would be given.

But after a couple moments, Lee did ask a question. ”Who is it that teaches those classes on control?”

Elizabeth's eyebrows raised and Nico bobbed his head. "13? My oh my, a bit on the early bloomer scale!" she said. Mutations generally didn't emerge until teenage years, but even then 13 was on the younger end. 15-16 was the more common time frame, in her experience, although she herself had gained her possession powers at 14. "Has he had his powers long?" she asked. Probably not, if he was only now getting enrolled in the school.

She chuckled lightly. "Ah yes, the classic mutant greeting, 'What's your name and what's your power?'" she said, knowing that social pattern all too well. It was the only thing that linked their community after all, and was a built-in way of connecting. "It's one of the main reasons I pursued science, actually. Mutations are utterly fascinating!"

Liz brushed an errant lock of wavy blonde hair out of her face. "Well, Kevin will certainly have a lot of chances to discover a whole lot of different abilities here," she said. "We don't tend to have a large amount of middle school-age students, but he won't exactly be alone and many of our courses are mixed ages anyways, such as those power control classes."

She nodded at Lee in acknowledgement of her question. "Mr. Johnson teaches those classes. He'll pick up a PE course from time to time as well, but there tends to be a lot of physical activity in his regular classes as it is," she said. "He can handle most powers, but some types require a little extra attention or personal expertise, so most of us will take on small classes or one on one tutoring. I tend to work with a lot of psychic students myself."