“Decades in Weeks” and “Both Jordan and Will Perdue played basketball”: 2 observations while educating a Kindergartener

Here’s trying to get back into the writing habit again…

Just 2 observations, and 2 quotes, as I try to get back into the flow

“Both Jordan and Will Perdue played basketball for the Bulls” - I wish I remembered

When I worked at YouTube, I watched at lot of Sal Khan’s videos, but more out of curiosity and not deliberately with the intention of learning something. Now that I have a kindergartner whom we’re trying to homeschool, I find myself trying to teach him basic math almost everyday. We started using the Khan Academy videos a few weeks ago, and I find myself so impressed everyday by the choices Sal Khan makes and how engaging the videos are. My son seems to follow along so much better than when I try to teach him things, and makes solid progress every single day on the exercises.

It reminded me of the quote above (I read it a long time ago and can’t find the source). It’s also because I’m obsessed with The Last Dance right now. Jordan was, well… Michael Jordan (this Obama quote about him sums it up, if you’re the best in the world at anything you’re the ‘Michael Jordan’ of it) whereas Will Purdue was arguably the least celebrated player on the Bulls at the time.

It made me realize just how much the gap can be between someone mediocre (me) and someone who’s very good (Sal Khan) at even something as basic as teaching addition and subtraction…

… which brings me to my second quote:

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen” — Lenin

Everyday now for the last few weeks, my son’s kindergarten teacher sends a morning message with what he should try to work on for the day, with generally one or two videos of her covering concepts and ideas. She reads and encourages them to write poems, shows math problems, helps them learn new words etc. etc. They have Zoom calls twice a week where she engages the entire class of ~20 kids even as we deal with flaky wifi in our house. She emails me every week if I haven’t posted any updates, and even shares specific videos for my son. It’s like she’s been doing this forever.

What’s amazing to me is how fast the change happened. Our school district wasn’t expecting the lockdown. We got an email on Thursday saying the school was still going to stay open next week (with special protocols continuing in place) and then on Friday morning they announced it was the last day of school. So the teachers didn’t have that much time to prepare — and remember these were kindergartners they are teaching. In the first couple of weeks, it was apparent all the teachers were struggling. It was clear his teacher (who is an amazing teacher — I volunteer regularly in my son’s class so get to see her and her aide in action) wasn’t comfortable with technology — she had bad Internet at her home and was still learning to use the school tool system. She was clearly conscious and figuring out how to use the camera in the first few videos.

Fast forward to just a couple of weeks later and she’s making incredible videos, and her and teachers in adjoining rooms are sharing content, and are delighting my son while helping him learn — as are the Music teacher and others. We email back (or post in the system) videos/audio of him reading/writing and post photographs of his work. I’d argue that because we’re pushing him everyday using online tools, he may actually be further along in some dimensions than he would’ve been at school.

It isn’t the same as going to school, but it’s definitely been a very different experience than I’d expected. Some of this change for him and for his teacher, who for now has as much in common as an expert YouTuber as a teacher (she makes multiple videos a day after all!) is permanent.