A couple years ago, my oldest son went to preschool. He was a bright kid, and also my first, so I spent a lot of time with him before hand, teaching him the letters, numbers, shapes, etc. By the time he started preschool, he knew all the letters, and of course he knew how to write his name beautifully. I was so proud of him, and was excited for him to go to school and continue his learning.

Recently I went to the doctor for my son's yearly check-up. Our doctor is fantastic, and I am so lucky that I was fortunate enough to get him. Everytime we go, I learn something very interesting, this time was no exception.

The Doctor started asking standard medical questions: Was Jakub seriously ill this past year? Any ear infections? etc. Then he turned to his mental, social and physical development. And he asked me:

For a long time I really didn't understand how people learn.    Since I am a teacher I see people learning all the time.  How is it that some students understand what I am talking about when teaching them math, while others can't, or are only aware of it on the surface, or just pretend to understand at all.  After a while, I wasn't satisfied with no explanation, so I decided to go back to school, and tackle this question.  Every course I took, every article I read, every discussion I had during the course of my Masters, brought me closer to a full picture of how people learn.  Here is the my model of learning:

As children are exposed to many environmental stimuli they make millions of connections in their brain.  The more they are exposed to certain situations, the signal travels through those neurons and they get stronger, while the ones that are not used as much get weaker and after a while those weak connections are cut or "pruned". 

An example of this would be the different sounds an English versus Spanish native speaker recognizes

My friend told my about an online mathematics tutoring site. Her son is homeschooled and a very bright student. She was the reason I contemplated homeschooling for my own kids (Should I home-school my kids?)I taught her son math and science before I moved away from Montreal, and now she found this online math teacher / tutor.

She has nothing but rave reviews about this teacher and the site:

...it’s an online teaching/tutoring thing. My son is in a class with only one other student right now (in the fall they were 5 or 6) - the other guy is in Montenegro, [my son] is here in Montreal, and the teacher is in Nevada (I think). He’s great. It’s “pre-algebra” but they do topics like exponential functions and completing the square (and last week he was talking about string theory which Cedric found extremely cool - now he wants to learn about anti-matter and I don’t know where to go…) so I’m not really sure where the “pre” part ends…but [my son] is learning a lot and I work with him through the week supporting the homework.

I'm impressed! Hope this idea takes off - why not bring the world closer together?! Can't find a tutor in your own town, well, there's a whole world out there full of awesome teachers! Check it out for yourself: www.mathperfect.net.