This summer, Julia Gooding of One Sky Education interviewed me in order to introduce me to her clients.
We had a much more powerful conversation than I expected! Find it here.
In particular, there’s a lot of valuable but hard-to-find advice here for parents who want to help but don’t want to helicopter, as well as parents of AMC competitors.
(It’s 26 minutes in all, so check the top comment to skip to the part that’s most interesting to you.)
We are all being called on to do more than we are used to.
For tutors, the job has always been understanding the student, and clearing away barriers to learning. It’s just that now, the barriers come in many more varieties besides just misunderstanding the material. Now students have more challenges:
For all of us, the challenge is figuring things out fast, and changing things fast as we figure out what works.
That’s how tutors can step up, because: the fastest learning team is a motivated student and an expert.
We wanted to share some great news. (My son) presented 3 posters at the (large conference) in (major city) last week. One of his posters on (interesting math topic) got selected as one of the top posters and he was invited to present it formally at the Abstract session.
(My son’s) confidence in math because of you has helped him achieve these amazing milestones.
Believe me, I really would love to take this credit.
But let’s be fair here: this student has gifts you would hardly believe. The entire family is inspirational: hard-working and accomplished, appropriately demanding but also warm and witty. It has been my great privilege to work with them, and with many such families and students. I hope to continue meeting and helping people like this far into the future.
Even so, I’m going to permit myself to let this note make my month and reinforce the importance of AMC and math competition prep. There tends to be many excellent long term outcomes with this type of preparation.
I really do appreciate the opportunity to do what I do.
As many of you may know, the AMC is right around the corner (Jan 30 2020), and success here can make a huge difference in college admissions for some students. (Here are a few short videos explaining why and how.)
You probably have a math-oriented student or two who could benefit. Please direct them to our AMC welcome site so they can get started.
If you have any questions about the AMC and how it might help one or more of your students, I’d be delighted to talk with you about it and help you however I can. Just schedule a call with me.
Let’s make those dreams come true!
My sister-in-law recently wrote this piece on modern work and its relationship to family and community. So I’m taking this opportunity to thank Adam, Aidan, Amy, Audrey, Debbie, James, John, Michael, Michael, Owen, Ollin, Rora, and Stephanie: you past-or-present teammates have all contributed materially to our shared success, and every single one of you has done it on hours that corporate America would consider unworkable.
(Goes to show you what real A-players can do.)
Thank you all for making work fit into your lives instead of the other way around, without ever compromising the quality of your work.