Moving Forward (Completed)

Chapter Fifty Seven

Just like the summer before, Katherine had opted to do the minimum professional development required by the district. It wasn't because she disliked leading workshops, despite the complaints while actually doing the prep work, she actually enjoyed them. It was to spend more time with MJ.

When she had decided to become a teacher she'd always thought she'd be a mom as well, and that her summers off would be spent building wonderful memories with her children. After marrying Scott that particular dream had been deferred, then overanalyzed to a point that she feared she'd miss the opportunity. Of course now that the prospect of actually having a child was back in the realm of possibilities she found herself becoming excited. This didn't negate from the relationship she was forming with MJ. She was determined to be the best... she hesitated to use the word mom since Amber would always be MJ's mom... substitute mom maybe? No... Adoptive mom? That didn't feel right either...

"Kate?" MJ's voice came with a light knock on the office door. "Are you busy?"

Katherine slid the papers she was reading through into an envelope, placing them in the middle of Rafael's desk so he would see them when he set his briefcase down after work. "Not really, what'd you need?"

"You minored in math right?"

"I did... it was a long time ago though." There was no telling what she could remember from her college classes.

"I'm struggling to wrap my head around writing proofs in my geometry class. I can get the correct answer when working through standard problems, but this breaking it down and giving reasons for each step thing is tedious." MJ grumbled as though the word she wanted to use instead of tedious was unnecessary.

Katherine grinned. "That's because you've always been in a rush to get your answer, understanding things without having to think about them too hard. In math true understanding is the ability to break your work down into those tedious proofs. Anyone can work through a formula, it's a lot harder to justify why that formula works."

"So you'll help me?"

Katherine had liked the idea of her intro to proofs class more than the actual class, but it had revolved around proving sequences and linear systems. Her geometry classes had consisted of what she referred to as baby proofs, more simplistic phrases used to justify the same work used to solve the original problem. She'd loved geometry proofs. "Let's see what I can remember."

Once they'd returned from Europe, the remainder of summer had been spent exploring New York. Katherine had taken MJ and Isabel to Coney Island on more than one occasion, they'd spent countless hours exploring museums, and visited other touristy spots... even ones they'd been to before. Lunch in Central Park had become a favorite activity on pretty days and was usually followed by a walk. They'd also watched movies as they lounged around the house, these usually included Isabel and resulted in a sleepover. Katherine's parents had also spent a week visiting in late July.

Now that school had started back up, MJ was taking more academic focused classes than Katherine had originally wanted her to, but half a semester in seemed to be doing just fine. Arts, the actual creating aspect, held no interest to MJ. If her school had offered an art appreciation class she would have been excited to sign up, but as it hadn't, she'd opted to take only the required hours to fulfill her fine arts credits. More of her elective slots had been filled with academic classes and she'd somehow convinced her counselor to let her take both Algebra II and Geometry in the same year.

"Do you ever wish you'd decided to teach high school math?" MJ asked once she felt comfortable with working through the Geometry proofs on her own.