I came across this website a few years back when I was looking for worksheets about numbers that add up to ten (i.e. 1 and 9, 2 and 8, etc.). Of course the internet is full of math worksheets, but I didn't want just plain worksheets, I wanted something fun and useful. These types of worksheets / resources are hard to come by.

I couldn't believe it. I was in shock when I actually looked it up. This last year, I was making $30,000 less in Quebec than if I was working as a teacher in Alberta. I used to live in Alberta, and therefore I can't believe that I am worth so much less, just by living a few provinces down; and this doesn't even include the huge taxes that are taken off here in Quebec as opposed to Alberta.

A few years back I took a course on Expertise: how experts think, how they become experts, and what it means to be an expert. That course had a huge impact on my thinking. The huge revelation was that "Deliberate Practice" is the only thing that leads people to become experts in any field (Ericsson, 2006). So as the old saying says: "Practice makes perfect". But this practice needs to be "deliberate" which means several things, among them, there needs to be some sort of feedback mechanism (possibly a coach or a feedback of a musical instrument, or even a personal reflection). I always thought that practice is very important, but I never realized that this was really everything. There is no magic pill, no inherent talents, it's pure practice - 10 000 hours of DELIBERATE practice.

Of course there is much more to it than just saying: YOU NEED TO PRACTICE MORE! There needs to be the will to practice (motivation), the opportunity (appropriate environment), and of course there needs to be the appropriate feedback, so that the practice is deliberate. But when it boils down to comparing an expert and a non expert, the expert just put in more time into the field.

Ever since that revelation, I have a completely different view of the world. When I think about how my children learn, how they think, or if I read an interesting article about learning / teaching I go back to that idea, and then it all makes sense.

Recently I've been trying to teach my two and a half year old child to learn some letters from the alphabet. I want him to learn to write his name, and at least recognize all the letters of the alphabet. I figure this is not too early for him as he is really into drawing and "reading" books and even pretending he is reading the letters. So everyday I sit with him at the table, like a big boy, and we do "school work" for about 1/2 an hour. It's fun for him, because he thinks he's like my older two sons, doing his homework.