Xavier remains the teacher during this roster window. That distinction is worth keeping visible, because these issues end before the next phase of the school begins. He belongs…

Xavier remains the teacher during this roster window. That distinction is worth keeping visible, because these issues end before the next phase of the school begins. He belongs here as the adult responsible for the students, rather than as another member of their field lineup. The expanding class makes that responsibility harder to define. Sam and Dani are developing as leaders. Amara needs help with both destructive powers and an unfamiliar society. Illyana has knowledge and experiences that resist the comfortable assumption that the professor can explain every problem in the room. Doug and Warlock stretch the school's understanding of what a useful ability, or even a familiar student, looks like. The series keeps finding dangers that ordinary lessons cannot prevent. Dani's Demon Bear reaches into the lives of her friends. The powers affecting Roberto and Rahne demand outside help and a journey into Limbo. Karma's absence eventually leads back to an enemy with whom Xavier has his own history. His role therefore includes an uncomfortable amount of catching up. The school can provide shelter, training and a place to build friendships, but the students bring histories that don't stop at the gates. Some of the most important help they receive comes from one another, including classmates whose abilities the adults are still trying to understand. That doesn't make the school irrelevant. It makes the relationships formed there more important than any promise that its walls will keep everything safe. The children have somewhere to return to, and people who know their names when the larger world sees only dangerous powers. By #34, Xavier's small founding class has become a much stranger household. The teacher is still present, but the students are already proving how much of their survival depends on the family they are building among themselves.