My ds ran a by-invitation math olympiad course for our city in the year before he went to university. And as the title says, he just got an email from one of his tutorees that 2 of them made the squad of 12 this week, with 6 to be picked for the IMO team to represent NZ. He is so chuffed!! These kids now take the BMO2, AMO, and APMO as team selection tests. Both of the kids are going into 11th grade this February, so have 2 tries to make the team. Super cool.

I have to actually get my planning started for my younger, but I'll try to get back to this later today. You should just hop a plane and come visit me in NZ, and we could have a lovely chat over a cuppa. 🙂

I so agree with the genetic component. My younger boy at the age of 2 would just sit. We would be at a friend's house with my older boy running around with friends on bikes, and my younger boy would sit next to me. I would hand him a car, and he would sit there for 2 hours, not even playing with the car, just doing nothing. People started to ask "is he ok?" and I would say "he does more at home." But as he got older, it got worse. From the age of 4-6 would just wait. Free time for him meant nothing. I would walk in a room and he would be sitting on the sofa doing *nothing*. I would ask him what he was doing and he would say 'waiting.' He was waiting for me to initiate something, and he had a horrible attitude about the waiting I was forcing him into. He had *no* internal drive at all, even from a very young age. None. It has taken me 10 full years to get him to the point he is at now, which is somewhat motivated to do cool stuff. He is much much better when he has activities to go to, because the timing and expectations are set. As we worked through helping him lay out a way to learn where he would take control of his education, he finally decided on a strict school schedule with exact times to the minute of starting and finishing each subject, each break, etc. This was the only way that he could motivate himself to do any work. But I have come to believe that if this is what he requires to be internally motivated, then he can just set this system up where ever he goes. So for this boy, the key to helping him with 'learning' was helping him work through a plan for 'motivation.' So when answering my own question, the instruction on reflecting how he could motivate himself, what structures did he need in place to make he actually do *anything*. This process of reflection took 3 full years to implement and have him own. Without motivation, he would still be doing nothing, and thus learning nothing. So to answer my question on what instruction impacted learning, for this boy it was instruction in self-reflection and motivation. We did trial and error of methods to improve his motivation and learning, and we did this for 3 full years. We kept charts about techniques and his attitude. We wrote daily journal entries evaluating how things went and how he could improve. I got him to trial reward systems, times of the day, subject changes, hands-on, program design, sleep schedule, food, drill, self-interest, on-line, on-paper, collaborative, independent, short sessions, long sessions, exercise, accountability, etc. You name it, we trialed it. Until he found a *way* to learn, he was not going to learn anything. Self-reflection was key. That is what I taught him.

Well, if the tests and assignments are well designed, learning equals completing assignments and passing tests. The book Engaging Ideas by Bean is exactly about this situation. *Learning* is supported by creating assignments that develop deep thinking and reflection. This is one of the ways that I think we can support learning through 'instruction'. The other way I think we can support learning is through improving attitude. But that is way trickier to describe on paper, but it is something that I do very effectively, and is where I really shine as a teacher. Now, I'm muddling around with what 8 describes as her instruction techniques. I think I do all these things with my younger, but without clear cut names for my techniques. What I love about naming complex tasks is that it helps you to focus more clearly on improving your performance in them. However, I need to think about whether I do these things with my tutorees.

Wow 8, thanks SO much for writing all that out! There is so much here to ponder, both in how to help my younger and how to help my tutorees. And I absolutely love your take on the purpose of play in young children. Very fascinating. Your response is spot on for answering my question about what you do to encourage learning if it is not top-down teaching. Thanks!

What I see is that the instruction that is the most effective for both my students and my younger son is not 'teaching' content (although I do that to), but it more about creating an environment. This just sounds so fluffy, but what seems to work is me acting to manage/teach self efficacy, motivation, executive function skills, all of which combine into self-regulated learning. For about 20% of my students, I tutor them in basically ALL their subjects (I'm pretty broad with all the homeschooling I've done). What I have found is that it is not just their worst subjects that kids have no idea what to do, it is for their best subjects too. Clearly, it depends on the kid, but I see much more of a dichotomy between kids than within a kid on the capability to learn, not from an IQ point of view but from a how-do-I-take-what-the-teacher-has-given-me-and-do-anything-with-it point of view. So I tell kids that there are 3 things they must be able to do: 1) identify what they need to know (testing requirements), 2) know what they know (metacognition), 3) find a way to get from one to the other (study skills). Most books you read are only about #3, but there are so many kids that can't do #1 and #2. So when I'm tutoring, I'm using a subject like math to teach these 3 things. Yes, I do content but it is like give a fish vs teaching a kid to fish. If I focus on content, I'm just handing them a fish. If I focus on developing self-regulated learning, I'm teaching them to fish. This is why I'm asking the question about how instruction impacts learning. What do you *do* that is not top-down teaching that actually impacts learning.

We are doing 'One and Done' for my younger. It is good in his major. We have toured and he loved it. It is close which he wants. It is reasonably priced, and it has guaranteed admission for exam scores which ds will have. So so much easier that the trauma of older ds.

Younger son is definitely an outlier as all 2e kids are. Nothing like 99th+ IQ with 5th percentile writing. And I do think that this dichotomy triggered/encouraged him to desire to always work with me/brother/father rather than try to align these two things that were impossible to align. However, I would say that 90% of my students were not self-regulated learners when they came to me (18 out of 20). And I have only been able to really impact about half of the other kids, and this is over 3-4 years of working with them. So Why do some kids develop these skills and other don't. This is kind of my PhD thesis idea. I think that self-regulated learning is the key to an effective education.

Not trying to shoot down your experience, I'm just particularly interested in those kids who you have to *teach* self-regulated learning. My older was like your kids, he just did it from a young age. But not my younger and some of my tutor kids. So why?!?! Why can they not do it? And how can I can I change my instructional practice (viewed in a broad way) to develop these skills?

Well, in 2 years I'm done with homeschooling. I can still tutor like I'm doing now to bring in the $$, but then how will I fill my school-hours?!?!?! My dad has an MD, a PhD, and a DMin, so I figure I can get 2 PhDs and still have time for one more. 🙂 And my grandmother lived to 103, so I'm not even half way there.

I would love to think that all kids can be self-directed and self-teach, but I have found that this is just not true. My older was, my younger so isn't. Some of my students are and some of them are NOT. Part of what I try to do is get them self-directed and capable of self-teaching, but I am definitely having mixed results with this. My younger boy in particular seems to require interaction to learn, and basically can't do much of anything on his own. It is impossible. I'm kicking around doing a PhD in education, and every time I think of topics I'm interested in, they require a 1 on 1 instructor/learner model. Kids in school fend for themselves. One of the research questions I am interested in is how self-regulated learning varies between students and whether it can actually be impacted in any meaningful way without tons of one on one time. I'm just not sure it can be. And even with tons of one-on-one time like with my younger, I am only just now with him starting 11th grade, getting even a small hint of this capability. It will be my full focus for the next 2 years, over any content goals. He will fail at uni if I cannot get this done.

I agree that content assimilation and self efficacy are related, but not really with learners who have struggled in the past and believe that they can't do it. It takes time and carefully well-placed comments to build up the belief in self. I do this all the time with my younger and with my tutor kids. One of the things I do is discuss with a kid what their strengths are. So for math I have a new kid who is really good at algorithms and has NO understanding of what she is doing. For her, I've started saying "well, you have a beautiful lay out of this algebra," while thinking to myself, OMG what a disaster because you have only memorized your way through math for the last 2 years. I tell my younger and my tutorees what specific skills that they can own as special to them even their learning is one hot mess. When parents call me an say that their kid has a terrible attitude and is failing and is convinced they can't do the work, I tell them "I can turn attitude around in 2 months, but fixing the math will take at least a year." Kids have to have a good attitude to actually engage in the work in a meaningful way. Bad attitude equates to only basic learning, because there will be no self-regulated learning. So I think that as an instructor, my first goal is to develop a positive attitude. I can do this with positive interaction with content, but I can't develop a positive attitude with 'get it done, stop complaining' approach. When I tried this approach with my younger last year with mechanics for physics, he got the work done and mostly stopped complaining, but there was not joy and no engagement and everything was forgotten within a month. However, on the other side, I have had many people on this board shocked that my dysgraphic boy is willing to work on his writing for 2 hours a day. This is because I work every single day on planting seeds for a positive attitude. And this positive attitude means that he owns the work and is thus motivated to do it. My second goal as an instructor is to teach how you how to make connections between content. I had a homeschool friend who helped me to understand this. He bough his kids a massive TV monitor for their computer that could display 8 sheets of paper at once. He told me that to be a high end learner you must make connections. And to make connections, you need to see the different pieces of the puzzle all at once. So when I 'instruct', I'm actually not thinking that much about how to teach the content, I am much more thinking about how to create a positive attitude and skills at connection.

As promised I'm keen to keep our more interesting discussions alive. This is a topic that I've been thinking about for a while. I've been a homeschool teacher for 16 years and been tutoring kids in math, science, and English for 5 years, and I have been working through lots of ideas about instruction vs learning. Now I'm working my way through Learning Theories by Schunk https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Theories-Educational-Perspective-8th/dp/0134893751/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=learning+theories%3A+an+educational+perspective&qid=1578339612&s=books&sr=1-1 I've come to believe that teaching is not learning. This seems like an obvious statement, but I used to top-down teach content in the most organized manner so that students (mine and others) could learn in the most efficient manner. I'm starting to believe that the development of attitude, motivation, and self efficacy are way way more important than content production and delivery. Two of my sisters are teachers (private HS science and Prof in Engineering at CC) and one is a counselor. The 2 teacher sisters decide what content to cover (unless dictated by AP exam or UVA engineering), produce and record lectures, produce handouts, design labs, and write and grade assessments. My counselor sister sits one on one with clients and discusses their issues, suggests alternative ways to interpret, and gives them homework in the form of journalling to help them change their perceptions of self and how they face their problems. As a tutor and a homeschool teacher, I have found that I am WAY more like my counselor sister than my 2 teacher sisters. And I have also found that as a tutor I am cleaning up the messes that the teachers are giving the kids in the form of content that needs to be processed. Unless you want your kid to just memorize or comprehend, then kids must do the complex task of integrating, analyzing, and evaluating content from multiple sources and with the previous knowledge that they have in their head. This task requires that they believe that they can actually do this work (self efficacy). For my kids (mine and tutorees), content understanding is the easy part; the hard part is the motivation to do the work, the belief that they can, and the executive function to accomplish their goals. This is called self-regulated learning, and as far as I have experienced in the 20+ kids that I have tutored for 250+ hours each, it is NOT taught by teaching and assessing content. This leads me to the question of what kind of instruction can actually help with learning. I'm thinking about a bigger understanding of instruction than just top-down teaching content. I'm interested in the role of us as homeschool teachers in developing an environment that encourages learning. So what is learning and how can you help it happen? Ruth in NZ

I caught up because I was *driven*. Driven to keep up with my older sister who set a crazy high bar. She went to Duke at 16 and at 20 was valedictorian of Duke engineering (and a woman to boot). That probably helped me get into duke the following year. 🙂 By 24 she owned a patent on the MRI. My high school experience was: work on the bus to school, do homework during all classes where the instruction was not good, go to Track/Crossing Country after school and RUN, drive home, eat dinner, work from 6:30-10:30 every night on homework. Sleep 8 hours, wake up and do it again. I brought my homework to the all day track meets on Saturdays and worked inside the parked bus. I worked all day Sunday except for church and youth group. I just worked. ALL THE TIME. Came in 7th out of 400 in my graduating class. I got to Duke, and it was easy in comparison to the crazy hard schedule I had had to keep in high school. My math intelligence was also far ahead of my verbal skills, which is why I think they thought I was smart. This led to my skipping a grade when I could not read and led me to being passed through school with not a thought to holding me back. In our society, if you are good at math, you are SMART. I think that was all that was considered in my situation.

DS got a 40K/yr leadership scholarship for CM. But that was the only money available for middle class families. As far as I remember, financial aid was for lower income families, but you would need to see how they defined income level. We were very impressed with CM and U of M. I've also heard great things about Ga Tech. And my nephew is at Va Tech and loves it.

I heard this about the Harvard math department from a NZ kid who attended.

Kind of an aside since OP is looking for higher acceptance rate schools, but last I checked, Princeton did not count house value when considering financial aid, but MIT does. We pay way more for MIT than my richer-than-me sister does for Princeton because we live in a high COL area and our 650sq ft apartment is worth double her big house, and seriously affects the cost we pay. So look at how a school calculates aid.

DS also applied to U of M and CM. Both had good vibes. CM had money to draw lower-income top kids away from the elites. But little money for high-ish middle income people.

What my ds says makes MIT special to him is that it has a cooperative atmosphere. Most Psets are done with friends and in his math classes he just has to say who helped him with each problem. There also is no class rank which reduces competition. He has found that the mixed-year dorms are key because freshman are integrated into the existing culture of the hall, and interact and get advice from older students. Also, anyone can get involved in research if they want, that experience is not competitive. Just ask, and professors will find you a project. So when looking for a university like MIT, it is not just the techie focus but also the culture that you should consider.

What do you mean by 'rather independent'? We have had a few discussions on the board recently about this exact issue, so it would be helpful for you to define what this phrase means to you so we are all on the same page. How do you imagine your kid's day playing out and what are your educational goals?

2nd grade (7): I remember *learning* how to read with Dick and Jane books. See Dick Run. Run Dick Run. See Spot Run. etc 3rd grade: For some horrible reason I skipped 3rd grade when we moved state. 4th grade (8): I could link words to pictures and have my 4th grade human body cut out with parts labeled in my handwriting. I also clearly remember reading a "Nancy Drew" book, where the first page was a half page with big print. I counted 20 words on that half page that I could not read. I also remember being in church in that state, crossing out all the words in the bulletin that I could not read, and then laughing to myself as I read what was left "the...and...its...how..." 5th grade (9): My parents sent me to an after school program to teach me to read. I attended for a full school year, but it didn't seem to help much. 6th grade (10): I remember copying phrases onto a poster linked with images about how much items costs. I do not remember reading *anything* that year, and certainly not a book, and my parents didn't read to me either. I never wrote a paper or even a paragraph. 7th grade (11): I moved to my 5th state at the beginning of 7th grade and remember learning Latin and loving it, but also remember being completely unable to read any worksheets given to me in any subject for homework. I do not remember reading anything in 7th grade except Latin. I remember doing everything by ear, but I also remember fill-in-the-blank single-words tests so I'm kind of unclear as to my level at this point. I did a lot of math. I was still never assigned a paper or even a paragraph to write. In the summer before 8th grade (12): my dad tells the story that I spent 3 *full* months for *many* hours a day trying to read The Hobbit. He says that I learned to read with that book. It is the first book of *any* kind I remember reading in my life. No readers, no picture books, no little novels. Nothing before The Hobbit. 8th grade (12): I read about 10 easy fantasy novels that year. I remember being assigned my first paper every in my schooling career and being completely unable to write it. I still remember asking and asking and asking my mom over the period of hours and having her finally say "I will NOT write this for you, Ruth." That was my first paper, and my mom was clueless as to my struggles. My guess is that I had been hiding things for years and the schools had just been passing me forward. 9th grade (13): One year later, they put me in honors English because I was one of the 'good' kids. They gave me 1984 as my first book, and I remember being *completely* unable to read it. At this point I also could not spell about 50% of words. The rest of high school was just a massive catch up. I say age 12, because that was they year that I worked so hard to learn to read with The Hobbit. It was a long hard road for me and I was in private school for 3 of those years (4th-6th) and had 2 parents with PhDs. I'm just not quite clear on what happened. I'm just one of those kids who slipped through the cracks.

Yes, this is the gift of homeschooling. I required he work with me for 2 hours per day to pound through English and Science (1 hour each). The rest of his daylight hours were for math and violin - 4 to 5 hours. Night time hours were for reading - Literature and Economist/National Geographic/Scientific American. He felt empowered to follow his passions and he had the time to do it. At this point, he is so broad that he is just starting to consider Scientific Ethics as his field rather than Physic Researcher. This is still in its infancy, but there is joy in his eyes when he discusses the work he has done in philosophy, ethics, and risk.

It is so interesting to me to hear about your schooling experience. Because I did not read until I was 12, and aspired to follow my sister to Duke by age 17, my high school career was intense, and what I learned was how to work crazy hard and to study effectively. I don't remember any of the content, but my skill set was superb so that when I went to Duke, it actually seemed easier to me than high school. I do remember being bored in certain high school classes, and that is where I learned the very useful skill of writing upside down and backwards in cursive at speed so I could take notes. That is a skill I still remember, but I'm not as fast as I once was. 🙂

Hi Chris and welcome to the board! I'm not clear on what you are planning to do. Are you saying you plan to do a PhD type of research project that you hope to complete independent of a university? Also, I'm not super clear on what your dissertation is focused on. My guess is that doing it on your own means that you will NOT want it to be interdisciplinary as that will be incredibly hard to do without an advisor (ask me how I know!!). What field/subfield does your question fall within? Once you know that, you will have a better chance of finding journal articles that support and expand your interests. Good luck! Ruth in NZ

Math facts are not math, they are just memory. So I would run two streams at separate times of the day, one for math and one for memory.