Ran into the kindergarten teacher that taught my two youngest. A finalist in 2017 for The Golden Apple Teacher of the year in Marion County. I think I have mentioned it before but when volunteering in her class for my middle (same time as she was being honored for how great she was as an educator)…she made a comment about her daughter needing help in Calculus. I offered to save her paying a tutor. Well after getting her lesson. I realized there had been massive advancements in the 15 years since I had seen Calculus and sadly informed her it would be better to pay for help than have me spend the time to relearn what I had not seen in 15 years. That said my oldest is now in that same class. Likely same teacher. And I was able to teach her the fast method of derivatives and integrals her teacher had not shown them yet but was going to. With all that said her daughter wanted to go to BC but ended up going to UF for undergrad. Had a great 4 years and is now in Law School at American University. The other day Brett Kavanaugh spoke to the class. Then one of her classmates is texting in class and she is wondering why. Apparently they know Kavanaugh well enough that now she is having coffee with her classmate and Brett. Cool story. Super awesome to see her daughter crushing it! Plans to do International Law!
I recently stayed in a hotel for a few weeks while I was having surgery on both eyes. Struck up a conversation with a former Euro math instructor who now teaches at a small college in Oregon. I mentioned that the Russians have very high standards for students studying math and physics. The teacher told me in his country they don't let kids fall behind. If you do you get rigorous tutoring. He said in his former country (might have been Poland) they have started teaching kids calculus at a very young age. If I'm recalling correctly, at ages as young as 5 yo. And somehow they do very well at it. Reminded me of Tiger Woods hitting golf balls when he was 2 yo (if not younger). Start them young I guess
