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What we covered:
– Most kids are not intrinsically motivated to do the hard things: practice their soccer drills, do their math homework, eat their broccoli. Getting them to do the hard things often requires gamification and/or incentives.
– A little gamification goes a long way. Jason gamified drills for his kids’ soccer team to get the most out of each practice (e.g., “zombie attack”), and it was unreasonably effective. The XP leaderboards on Math Academy are also unreasonably effective.
– A good incentive can change kids' behavior overnight. The incentive doesn’t need to be big; it just needs to be something the kid really cares about. Find the thing the kid would rather be doing, and use it to motivate them to do what they’re supposed to be doing. They won’t need the incentive forever; as the kid gets used to the feeling of a new behavior, it gradually turns into a habit that they can maintain on their own.
– Even when you’re doing what you love, there will be grindy phases. But kids typically don’t understand this. They might get interested in a talent domain and want to become good enough to build a life around it, while simultaneously resisting doing the hard work to make that happen (i.e., stage 2 in Bloom’s talent development process). It’s often up to parents, who can see the long game, to push their kids through the difficult parts in paths that they find rewarding.
– For instance, the most mathematically gifted student I ever worked with, who was drawn into math by his own intrinsic interest, still needed to be pushed to learn calculus. Now he’s having the time of his life working on physics-y, calculus-heavy research-level math problems in high school. Even after finding something he loves and is good at, he still needed to be pushed to do the hard work to unlock more of it.

Timestamps:
00:00:00 - Most kids are not intrinsically motivated to do hard things – homework, drills, practice. They usually need incentives to get through.
00:08:16 - A little gamification goes a long way. Jason gamified drills for his kids’ soccer team to get the most out of each practice (e.g., “zombie attack”).
00:14:05 - A good incentive can change behavior overnight. It doesn’t need to be big, just something the kid really cares about, and they won’t need it forever. It’s about building a habit until they can maintain it on their own.
00:54:16 - The most mathematically gifted student Justin ever worked with needed to be pushed to learn calculus, and now he's having the time of his life working on calculus-heavy research-level math problems.
01:11:54 - Even when you’re doing what you love, there will be grindy phases. It’s important for parents to help kids push through those grindy phases so that they can unlock more of what they love.

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The raw transcript is provided below. Please understand that there may be typos.

Justin (00:00) Why don’t we talk about incentives? ⁓ In particular for kids. It’s one thing that we’ve we’ve kind of noticed that there’s there’s kids who take naturally to Math Academy, right? Or just kind of many forms of math instruction. There’s kids there’s kids who like math for math.

And they’ll just, you don’t have to convince them to use the system. There’s other kids who are like, maybe they don’t, they don’t love math, but they don’t hate it. And they like to do what makes the parents proud. The parents proud if they are doing well academically, doing, learning a bunch of math and they’ll use the system. No problems. There’s other kids who maybe are a little resistant to it at first, but they’re

also kind of excited about it at the same time. And you just, you sit down next to them, you get, you kind of, maybe they’re, they’re blowing through all the questions that, and like not reading work examples, getting stuff wrong. You’re like, on kid, let me, let me, let me just show you how to do this. And then they start doing it and then it’s, it’s working out well, they’re succeeding. And that kind of feels maybe like a video game in some sense. And, and then they’re off to the races. But there’s another category of kid.

who is just very stubborn, just doesn’t want to do it. And it’s like kid who doesn’t want to eat their broccoli, right? How do you dress this up? Well, how do you, how do you incentivize them to eat their broccoli without, ⁓ without making it? So you have to constantly be monitoring them like 24 seven or like, how do you, how do you, how do you get them off to the races? Get them on this, this

this talent development track, learning their math without it being a huge headache to you. It seems like incentives is really the answer there for a lot of kids in that category. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason (01:58) Yeah. What’s the saying, show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcome. Right. It’s like, it’s economics

is sort of the study of incentives, you know, and, and we have certain natural drives as humans, which is, you know, kind of our own internal, innate incentive structure of pleasure, avoiding effort, you know, avoiding pain, that kind of stuff. but, ⁓ yeah, you know,

This one of the problems is is there’s a little bit of a fantasy that parents and some teachers play into. It’s like, just want to fall in love with the subject. You know, it’s like, OK, now sometimes you do have kids who fall in love with the subject. They fall in love with literature. They fall in love with history, fall in love with math or, you know, but very few kids fall in love with middle school. You know, elementary, you know stuff.

or even high school, just occasionally get a kid who falls. There’s spectrum, there’s falling in love, there’s like, I’m interested in this subject, I wanna do it later, I like to think about it, but actually don’t wanna do it, then you have the, I like to get great, you know, like the whole spectrum.

Justin (03:07) Yeah.

I fell in love with math in high school, but in middle school, I was not, I was not doing extra practice outside of class. was not like, exactly.

Jason (03:14) Hell no. Hell no. You quit me? So in case you using algebra

problems or geometry problems and get you, I was like, no. I mean, it was just something to be endured. Like how do I just get this done? You know, there are kids who do fall in love with math at a young age and some kids who like, like might enjoy counting games when they’re like six or seven and they’re in the car.

Justin (03:22) Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jason (03:42) 10 times and they’re like, I got something. That’s little stuff and you may have a little video game that has a little thing and they like for a little while. But little kids or younger kids are enthusiastic about most things, especially if their parents are excited about it too and engaging with them. But that’s sort of its own limited thing. But you’re talking about middle school and up. It’s just not, it’s not a reliable thing and…

Justin (03:44) Mm-hmm.

Jason (04:09) You know, it’s sort of a fantasy. oh, you know, sometimes I teach like, oh, want to open up their world to someone. I want everyone to fall in love with Shakespeare. It’s like, OK, every once in a while, you will find a kid who falls in love with Hamlet and King Lear and Macbeth and wants to talk about it. That’s rare. You know? Wonderful.

Justin (04:25) It’s great when you can make that happen, but that’s not a dependable

strategy. That’s most of the time, that’s not going to work. If you are being held to account for kids learning the material, that’s not the strategy to lean on. It’s not saying like, don’t try to make that happen, dude. Because like, yeah, like, yeah.

Jason (04:40) No. Don’t try and make as interesting as possible. Injects an enthusiasm, but…

Justin (04:48) Like try to make that happen

for the kids who are receptive to it, but most just understand that most kids are not going to be like that. So you have to actually focus on the mechanics of incentivizing people to do work. And a lot of kids who, who, are going to like, maybe they, they go into software and later realize, Hey, math is actually pretty cool. They, they, they might realize this later downstream. And, and in order to get there, they’re going to have to go through a little bit of, I don’t love it at the moment.

in order to get to a place where they do have a greater connection to it.

Jason (05:19) Yeah, it’s just

a distraction and it’s a fantasy and those kind of things, you know, as sort of an operational policy can be counterproductive. it’s almost laughable when you think, oh, I want all my kids to fall in love with the Constitutional Convention and reading the federalist papers. I mean, they might pretend they’re interested. Some of your sort of like your…

teachers pets and the type of like, this is so cool. The federalist papers is so interesting. It is kind of interesting, you know, the right, all this stuff is can be, can be interesting, but you know, it’s only gonna be particular kids are gonna fall on particular subjects. You’re not going to get the same kids. It’s gonna be just in love with everything. I just love balancing chemistry, chemical equations. I love reading Macbeth and I just love talking about the federalist papers. I could give me a break. I you love everything. You love nothing.

Justin (06:14) Yeah,

your model of reality is that you’re gonna get every kid to feel like that about every subject, then you’re just doomed for failure. This is not gonna work.

Jason (06:16) Right.

And if you’re

like the one parent who does like, congratulations, you know, cloud parents like that one kid who just is a voracious learner and interested in everything and just be, I would be, wouldn’t pat yourself in the back and say it’s all you, right? You just have one of those kids, you know, sometimes you get a kid who just like, I have this nephew, Carter’s his name. He’s, he’s now out of college, but he’s, he, he and, ⁓

Justin (06:31) You’re lucked out. Yeah.

Jason (06:55) His cousin Josh came and visited a couple of years, a couple summers ago. He’s like, wow, that’s so awesome. He’s just like, excited about so much stuff. He’s just one of those people. Like, oh man, like we’ve taken him around LA for, they were visiting LA for like a week. They did the two cousins, they’re the ones that were going to grad school and one was just, so like early 20s, early.

And they, they drove across the country together and they came and stayed with us for four or five days. And we took them to the planet, you know, whatever the planetarium, and we took them to Hollywood and took them to get Ethiopian food. And we watched the movie. We just, whatever. And they were just, this was awesome. Everything was so awesome. And I was like, man, Carter is like, you know, I want some of Carter.

Like it’s great having Carter around. just makes everybody’s mood and enthusiasm. Cause you’re like, that is pretty good. You know, guess Carter’s right. This is pretty awesome. Right. Where he’s given it is like, he’s just so great to have around. What a great kid. You know, cause you have the opposite side is there’s cynical about everything. Nothing’s as exciting. I think we’re so, if you get a Carter, thank your lucky stars. You got an easy win.

Justin (07:47) Yeah, enthusiasm is infectious, yeah.

Jason (08:07) Yeah, they’re gonna enjoy life. They’re gonna make everybody around them happy. know, and in, but okay, so, and I will say this, and I just wanna just take it aside. I liked, I would try and gamify everything that I did when I would teach and coach. So I remember when I would coach my son Colby when he was five, six, seven years old in soccer, and I would coach his team, I would…

I a couple of goals. One was, and I might have talked to some previous show is like, want to take advantage of every minute because we only practice like when they’re like under six or under eight, it’s like once a week or maybe twice a week when they’re under eight, like for an hour. So what are you gonna get done? It’s hard to get anything done. So it’s like, we need to make the most of this. I would.

Everybody has a, I want a thousand quality touches on the ball. want a ball at everyone’s foot the entire practice. We’re going to not stand in lines and have one kid do a thing a time ever. We’re going to be doing stuff. I’m going to explain, okay, we’re to do this. I’m going explain as quickly as I can to get it across to these five to seven year olds. And then we’re going to do this thing. And then I’m going to quickly turn it into a game to make it fun. And I would come up with a cool name like zombie attack or.

you know, or T-Rex or, you know, whatever. And they would, I want to play Zombie Attack, right? You give it a cool name and it worked, know, Chris and kids. and, and, ⁓ and it was a great way to get the most out of them. So it’s make things as fun as, as engaging as you can.

Justin (09:31) And you weren’t diluting the skills at all. Like this is like, you just kind of slapped a name onto this, right? It’s zombie attack. You’re, what was that game? You’re like, you’re throwing in the ball, trying to hit people or something. Yeah.

Jason (09:40) It was a throw in. Like so, so in soccer,

when the ball goes out of bounds, the sidelines, you have to throw the throw ball. Okay. So you have to put both feet on the ground. There’s the entire throw and you have to hold it with two hands and you can’t spin it and you got to throw it over your head like that. Right. You got to release it. And it is hard to teach that to younger kids. Your kids are kind of doing all kinds of weird stuff. Right. And you’re, when you’re watching like under six and say you frequently are seeing these kids and they’re just, they’re not throwing it in correctly. And it’s kind of a mess.

And cause a lot of times the coaches are thinking, they’re just not spending a lot of time thinking about throwing. It’s just trying to get them to kick the ball and trap the ball and just the really basics. Right. And so I was like, right. Well, I got to teach them to throw it in. And so I said, okay, so here, mean, first I started like two key, you know, kind of my hands. So you have a line and you’re 10 feet apart. Just throw it back and forth to each other. Right. Okay. But throw it and I have everybody aligned six people on this side, six people on this side, throw it back and forth. I’m like, okay.

Great, everybody’s getting, I would walk and crack, I go, keep your foot on the ground, don’t spin it, come on, just throw it, don’t just throw it to him, don’t throw it over his head, so he can chase it. And you’re kind of doing that, and you do that for six, seven minutes or whatever it is. And I was like, okay, now we’re gonna play zombie attack. I’m like, what zombie attack? And I’m like, Larry just made it up on the spot. So I’m gonna stand in middle, you guys are both gonna back up, another 10 feet, put the cones down, and I’m gonna walk up and down a zombie, and if he hit me.

below the chin and above the waist, then you get a point. Right? Cause I’m like, and I swear they had so much fun throwing the ball, trying to hit the zombie and really focus on accuracy. And I said, if you don’t throw correct form, it doesn’t count. Right? And you have to hit it in the front and I’ll be turning around so that I can see your front right. So I’m like,

you know, and they just giggling and laughing and then they just in every day, zombie attacks on me. I’m like, I’m like, guys, can’t attack every day. We got to do this. ⁓

Justin (11:41) We gotta kick the ball

too. Like we can’t win on the basis of throw-ins alone. Yeah.

Jason (11:45) I’d come up with cool names for everything, right?

Now I’ve raised, I’ve set the bar for zombie attack. And so then I create something called T-Rex where I’d be like, all right, you know, I would teach them like a move, like, okay, we’re going to do the step over and push the ball with your foot, step over and go, step over and go. And this is like, and they’re under eight. So it’s really young to be teaching it to them, but I’m like, I’m going to, I think they can maybe do this a little bit. Or maybe we just like a cut back, I’m going have them cut back the ball, just cut away from me. And

I had him do it and I said, all right, do it. Everybody’s in there. I everybody dribbling around, I’m like, cut. And then everybody had to cut. And then I dribble around, dribble, dribble, okay, dribble, dribble, dribble, cut back. Okay, dribble, dribble, cut with the other foot, cut. And like, okay, now we’re gonna play T-Rex. Like, what’s T-Rex, right? And I mean, they were sold. They were sold before he started. So T-Rex, and so I set up like a big square. And I’m like, I said, I’m the dinosaur.

And if I come to you and if I get close to you and you cut back away from me, I will turn our way and go towards one of the other players. But if you don’t, I’m gonna kick your ball and you gotta go get it. And like, they’re like, ⁓ You know, because it puts some pressure on the situation. Because they’re like, I gotta, what do I do, right? I get this giant T-Rex guy, they’re imagining this. And doing a skill under pressure with

Justin (12:59) Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Jason (13:08) there’s a distraction is harder than just doing it repetitively. So I want to get them to do under pressure. And so raw, they would cut and if they didn’t, I would just kind of kick it and you know, 50 feet away and they’d have to run and get it. You know, and I, you know, you know, they just giggle and run off and get it and they come back. But they are really good at it. And so I would invent games like that I would I would sort of explain the skill do the skill.

to have an ace level and then if I could turn it into a game of some kind, then I would. And I would do that a lot. And I did the same thing when I would teach math academy. But that was funny. I remember when Colby’s team was under six and throw-ins and my kids were throwing and like two or three of them were like, throw these great throw-ins, like throw it to good distance, at good pace, the ball. And the kid’s parents were like, what? Everybody’s looking at me, what the hell? I’m like, zombie attack. Like, what the hell?

I have one more thing to say about incentives Okay, so Colby, this is when he’s under eight. And I had been teaching him these more advanced moves, like step over and go and cut backs and the Matthews. There’s this called corver drills, which they would name these kind of moves based on ⁓ these really famous players who were known for doing those moves. so you would, ⁓ anyways, I taught them some of them basic, but you definitely wouldn’t teach these kids a little older, but I said, I’m just gonna see.

And they could do it. Colby and some of the more athletic kids could really do them well. And I said, Colby, why don’t you ever do your step over, they would do the ball, you’d throw your right foot over the ball as if you were gonna go over the ball, move the ball with your outside foot and you’d step over it and then you’d use the other button, push the other way. Now when you see that even at a high school level, you’re like, damn, that looks cool, right? Like that’s a move as opposed to just kids just running around kicking the ball.

And I said, we’re the car on the drive to his game. And I go, don’t you ever use the step over and go? He’s like, I don’t know. I said, I’ll you what, I’ll pay you a dollar for every step over and go. You’re in the game. He’s like, done. I don’t have five bucks. I swear to God, he gets in the game.

Justin (15:21) ⁓ How much did he owe him at the end of the game?

Jason (15:29) And he does a step into traffic. And he does the first move and it was flawless. And everybody goes for the fake and he goes right and just blows around. And I’m going to set the sideline and all the parents you see everyone’s heads go turn a look at me like what was that? I was like that is called an incentive. So, know, when you make things games, you know, if it was a did you paint your seven year old?

a dollar from, yeah, whatever. It’s not like I pay him for everything. It was a dollar, dude, it was nothing. And it made all the difference. That’s best five dollars of my life I’ve ever spent. It was so fun. It was just seeing the look on all the parents’ faces. Everybody’s like, that is just, if he, cause he had to remember, I want a dollar. So I’m gonna do this. Cause Colby, hilariously, he was always motivated by money.

Justin (16:01) It’s a dollar. ⁓

you

Jason (16:27) Which is funny

because he doesn’t seem to care about money right now so much. He’s just, whatever. like, you know, know when like you’re potty training kids, they have like sticker charts and stuff. He didn’t care about any of that. No, he wanted, he wanted cash. He was potty trained. was like, you paid him money. I was like.

Justin (16:46) He’s like one

of those restaurants that’s like, no credit cards, cash, cash only. I take it. Yeah.

Jason (16:49) Yeah, she’s like, cash. Two or

three or whatever it is, is like cash. because Sandy was an econ major. Right? So she thinks in terms of that. And so I remember, that’s what we’re talking about, incentives. So I remember when, so he was, he was like almost a year young. His birthday was the end of September and like you had to, September 1st was the cutoff date. And so,

He was typically the youngest kid in his class in the grade or one of the youngest. And so his maturity, I think, lagged for the first five or six years. It was like six months behind. He’s a little immature, little, not ready to settle down, not ready to follow directions, not ready to pay attention. Plus, he’s a boy, and plus he’s kind of a rambunctious. So it’s like, so I remember in second grade, we get a conversation or something from his teacher. he’s like, because we would,

We’d like a block and a half from school, so we’d walk, hit the kids at school, drop them off, luckily the public school was just co-blocks and pick them up. he walks up and he says, know, Kobe is really having a hard time and he’s really being disruptive or he’s not following directions. I don’t remember what it was. And he’s like, it’s just, you know, I wanna let you know that I’m really, we’re like, oh, right, you don’t wanna hear that from a teacher, And so then he goes, so what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna send home like a daily report

Behavior card where it’s like seven categories or something follow directions Listen quietly didn’t disturb it whatever they were right and I’m gonna he’s like I’m gonna rank them a one through a five and if You know and so in that way you can we’re like, okay fine and so the first few days it’s like threes and twos and a four and then one, you know, you know, we’re like, it’s just things Okay, she’s like, okay if it’s all fours and fives, I’ll give you a dollar

And I remember some people are like, you really gonna pay? Because we, I’m tell some friends, I’m like, you’re not paying for that? And I was like, well, it’s more like setting the habit, right? Like let’s get them doing the thing. And so Sandy just did this. It wasn’t my idea, it was hers. Again, slash econ major. So she’s like, okay, it’s about cent of. So she’s like, and kid likes cash. So within the week,

He’s racking up a dollar almost every day. And then within a couple of weeks, it’s like almost all, and I think if she said, if it’s all fives, I’ll give you five bucks or something. And I mean, he was making bank in like a few weeks. And then it like a month or five weeks ago, go by and then we didn’t get the card for you. I’m like, what’s going on with the card? I, you know, cause like I said, we would walk, drop him off. And so with the teachers, they’re walking the kids. So he kind of came up to us and I’m like, well, are you gonna cry? And he’s like, no, it’s good. It’s fine.

No need anymore. I’m like… And Kobe never said anything about it. That was end of it. But that incentive system made all the difference in getting him in the right motions of what you’re supposed to be doing. This is what I need you to be doing. I need you to be intentionally thinking about what to do this thing. Just like I had him do the soccer move. Think about doing this thing in middle of a game. We do not think about…

the $5 when you’re thinking about talking to your friend when you’re supposed to be completing something.

Justin (20:25) You know, it’s funny how minimal these incentives and gamifications have to be to work. you don’t…

If want to get kids interested in this zombies game, all you had to do was slap the title zombies on it, right? Make a few zombie sounds or whatever. Like that’s it. And you don’t have to dress up like a zombie. You don’t, when you were like playing T-Rex with them, you don’t have to dress up in a T-Rex suit. Like kids have imaginations, right? You can, you can say something and they will, they will run with it. And it’s just the idea of framing the thing that you’re doing. So it’s like, when it, when it comes to math, like you don’t have to be like,

Jason (20:54) It doesn’t take much.

Justin (21:05) When we talk about gamifying, we don’t mean like you have to like make everything into like an actual video game where everything is on the screen. Like you have a joystick and stuff doing math. it’s, you just need a little dose that makes it kind of like interesting in that sense. Or just find some receptor on them. Right.

Jason (21:26) You kind of put it in the right frame. You’re

framing it as a game. Or it’s a game. This is supposed to be fun. like, oh, so it doesn’t work. It’s a game. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s a game. They’re like, oh, OK, game, right? And as long as it’s gamey enough, then it’s a game. It may not be the best game, but it’s a game. I a couple of things I want to talk to you about this. Another example. I don’t know if I’ve talked about it as a previous show or not, but.

Justin (21:38) Mm-hmm.

Jason (21:53) when, because I’ve told the story obviously more than a few times, when Colby and the original cohort of math academy students, what called the sort of proto math academy, right, so it was Colby and Riley and George and David and Caroline and Nicole. And actually there was a couple, I think it was Alana, was another, know, Alana. And they’re in seventh grade and

You know, I would do the thing where I would say, OK, we’re going to how do you calculate a derivative or as a chain rule? And guys, this is how it works. And this is this. OK, I’m going do a couple problems. now. All right. So if I have the sine of x squared and I take the derivative of that, what I do and Colby, OK, it’s 2x times the elder kind of, you know, do it. And then I’d be like, OK. And then I’d have each of the kids, OK, now on your own, I want I’m going to write a Pifri, do the chain rule on these three. And.

You know, seventh graders and Colby again, he was like six months behind. So he’s like a little more of a screwball. I’m like, focus, like, come on, Colby, what are you doing? Come on, just do these three, right? So there’s a little bit of that, which is exasperating, right? And it wasn’t terrible, but just a little bit of just, just come on, man, just do the thing. And so that was always a little bit when you’re teaching middle school, mean, sixth, fifth, sixth, seventh graders are kind of, kind of like puppies.

They’re falling over each other. They’re great. They’re really fun, but it’s also exasperating if you’re trying to get them all into the car or get them all to do whatever. It’s just, you know. And so I was, and I was teaching calculus. They were teaching in seventh grade. And I was, I was always downloading stuff like, you know, tricky, you know, like,

practice integrals and stuff and I would go and I would search and there’s some spreadsheet or some problem set from some university. I’m like, oh, Seton Hall’s math, 127 integral treatment. Oh, cool, that looks cool, I’ll use that. And while I was doing that stuff, I happened to see there was something called the MIT integration bee.

Justin (24:04) Yeah, yeah, that’s pretty popular.

Jason (24:08) I had never heard of it. And so what it was, it was like a spelling bee, but for solving tricky integrals. And so what they would do at MIT is, if you wanted to compete in the integration bee, you would try out, take this practice, timed practice test of like 20 integrals. And so the top performers would make it to the actual competition. And I don’t know, it was like 12 or 16 people or whatever it was. And it was like in an auditorium.

And she had a bunch of people watching. You had some guys who had like the letters and the shirts off as if they were at a football game, like crazy stuff. And you had like announcers like, no, this guy’s really, you they’re kind of, it’s it’s really funny. Right. And I was like, that’s cool. And I go, I wonder, said, maybe I could do that in class. And so one day I go, okay, guy, and I think I was teaching integration by parts and I was okay, guys, if we can get through this integration by parts thing real quick, then we’ll do an integration being like, what’s that?

Justin (25:05) each other in the video.

Jason (25:06) I didn’t even tell them, I just said the name.

Justin (25:08) Yeah.

Jason (25:10) What

that integration be, right? And so, you know, I get through explaining when we do some practice and integration by parts, 20, 30 minutes in, okay, good. I’m like, okay, everybody at the whiteboards, we have whiteboards and two walls. And so, and since we only had seven or eight kids, so everybody can have a spot on the wall with a marker. And I’d be like, okay, here’s how this works. I’m going to write down an integral.

or I’m gonna read it out, you write it down, the anybody who gets it right will get a point. and the person, if more than one person gets it right, the person gets it right first gets the point.

And so it was about speed as well as getting it. And immediately they loved it. Right. I’m like, all right, in a great two X cosine, da da da da da da da da da da Right? And then the next day it was just like the zombie attack when I was there with the 5 year olds. They’re like integration, we want integration. I’m like guys, we can’t do an integration every day. Or can we? And I was like, huh.

And so then we just transfer the approach to, would introduce a concept, do a couple on the board, and then everybody on the board. And everything was through a competition.

And it was funny because the girls, Caroline and Nicole were on the side and they’re like both really good artists. And they’re also both really good at math. And so they would often win or they would be around the top and they’d be doing others. And then they start drawing the kitty cats and stuff. They’re all working on their kitty cats. ⁓

Justin (26:52) Just flexing on the opposition. ⁓ I see you’re still

solving your integral. I have time to draw a little kitty cat. Yeah.

Jason (27:02) Meanwhile, the three or

four boys were all like, you know, they’re like, and the girls wanted to be on their same. They didn’t want to be next to the boys. The boys, it’s like kittens and puppies. The kittens are like, these guys are, they smell, you know, or whatever. They’re just obnoxious. ⁓ you know, it’s so funny cause they love being up at the board because they didn’t have to sit down. They’re all like move around.

Justin (27:06) Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jason (27:28) you know, doing the thing. And of course, they enjoy competing. And you know, it’s so funny if someone gets something wrong, like, oh, man, dude, you got to like, it’s a line. Right. you’re like, trying to explain, but they would do they would explain it to each other. And I’m like, David, can you explain what George said wrong? He’s like, no, you remember, you got to the derivative, you know, interval one over x gets the line of absolute value, you know, they’re like, oh, or, you know, and so they’d be okay. So they would, would most of time, they just explain the answer to each other.

I was like, I have to get there. Okay, guys, remember, occasionally, if everybody got wrong, like, okay, guys, like, you know, but, and I would just sit back my feet up with a whole list of problems we do with everything, differential equations, related rates, limit. I mean, it does not anything problem. would just sit, yeah, we could mix bag. And then I remember I brought in, we had a lot of people would come visit cause people would want to see this cause they like, couldn’t believe it. I tell them and they’re like, you’re doing what?

I said, yeah, seventh graders are doing calculus. They’re like, I’m serious. And I remember this friend of mine, Gary, was a mathematician at Caltech. He was a retired professor emeritus. he was actually the guy who did the math behind the TV series Numbers, if anyone remembers that show that was on where they used math. It was great. Yeah.

Justin (28:48) Yeah, I watched a few episodes of that, yeah.

Jason (28:53) Well, he did it first few years and they got somebody else and they kind of started making up math and he was like, I’m not, this is dumb. But the first few years, I think it was legit. And anyway, I made him through a friend of a friend and we became, we would had some lunches together and I invited him to come by and he’s watching it and they’re just, and afterwards he’s just like, that was incredible. He’s like, you know, I would have thought that maybe one kid in the entire San Gabriel Valley.

could do calculus, you know, in seventh grade. He’s like, you got whatever, seven, eight kids who are at McKinley Middle School. He’s like, that is amazing. said, but what’s really amazing is how fast they are. I cannot believe how fast they are. They would solve a different equation. They’d be like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And you’d be like, they would skip like three steps and be like, ch-ch-ch, because it’s about speed. And I said, well, Gary, when you train for speed, you get fast.

That’s just how it is. So the incentive structure for them was about winning the game, making it fun, setting up the incentives, and they got really, really good and really, really fast. ⁓ But talking of incentives, and I want to talk because this is where you can explain, which is great. So you had this one girl in your eighth grade calculus class at Washington.

Justin (29:56) Yeah.

Jason (30:21) And I remember you telling me that she was just not getting much XP done during class. And falling behind because she didn’t have to do it at home was not how he’s happening because she wanted to work with her mom. And her mom didn’t always have time to sit down with her and whatever. So why you talk through that.

Justin (30:42) That’s right.

Yeah. Yeah. So the situation was right. would just, she didn’t really want to lock in and do the math. I mean, she liked math, but she also was kind of getting to a point where like the math was getting kind of hard, right? mean, math is algebra is one thing. when the things are kind of coming easy to you, you’re like, ⁓ no problem. Look at me. I’m like,

just blowing through these problems. Calculus, she was kind of getting to the point where it’s like, okay, if you want to keep going with math, have to, I mean, the weight gets heavy at some point. I don’t know what to tell you. We’re not just going to lift five pounders the whole way. that’s how you’re going to, that’s not what I do as a strength training coach. I put more weight on the bar, you lift the weight and this is how it goes. And so, ⁓

It got so it was getting a little tricky to the point where, where she was just kind of doing the thing that a lot of students do where they, they don’t really want to focus their full attention on the problem. So they’ll like do part of the, so that they’ll like start on the problem and be like, okay, I’ve started on the problem. This deserves the reward of me, like listening to some music or chatting with my friend.

or just doing something other than the problem. And then they’ll, I don’t know. mean, this starts out okay, right? Like they do one problem, then talk to their friend for like a minute, then do the next problem. But eventually it gets to a point. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

Jason (32:18) It degrading. starts more more, less with math and more and more talking. And you didn’t run

a lockdown, but you let the kids have a little bit of fun as long as they were mostly making progress. You weren’t like, be quiet, do your work. You were like, look, you can’t.

Justin (32:30) Yeah, yeah. Cause well, was

the, I to go back to incentives, that was kind of the deal. It’s like, okay, here’s, here’s what we’re going to do. You guys, like, I know you don’t get a whole lot of time. Like you don’t get recess during school. This is middle school. They don’t have the recess anymore. So, and I know you really want to be chatting with your friends. only get like five minutes out in the hallways or whatever between classes. Like I’ll tell you what, if you guys can get, ⁓ most of your XP done.

in class, like if you want to, then you can chat with your friends. That’s okay to me. As long as like we can, I mean, you kind of just imagine like at a gym, people are lifting weights, right? But they’re also, maybe they got their workout buddy and they chatted it in between sets or something. ⁓ Like, okay, that’s fine. That’s the deal. That’s your reward for getting a good amount of XP done during class. ⁓ But yeah, you would have to, I would have to stay on top of them because sometimes they would,

They would try and push it a little too far, like get away. Yeah. Cause they want to see how far they can get away with. Yeah. Yeah. So you got to stay on them. so, so the thing was with, with this, with this girl, this, this incentive, my incentive structure, it was enough for, for, for the rest of the kids in the class, but

Jason (33:32) Yeah, well, as the kids do, they’re just pushing a little bit more every day. they’re like, hey, hey, Yeah, where’s the bar?

Justin (33:54) this one student was kind of falling off a little bit. And I even like talked to her about like, hey, listen, you gotta, I know you wanna talk to your friends and stuff. And I know you’ve been doing that. You did that last year and that worked out fine. But I noticed that you’re not getting much XT done this past week. I really need you to like focus more on your problems to get work done during class before you can talk to your friends. And.

I mean, so then she was not a distraction to her friend anymore, but she would still be like almost like zoning out between problems or something. It’s like, she was just not getting work done, drifting off into space and out thinking, yeah. And so I emailed with her mom too, and we were kind of talking a bit about this and just, cause her mom had also noticed that like she does the same thing at home, right? So like she has a bunch of, ⁓

Jason (34:30) She’s just spacing out. She’s just kind of.

Justin (34:50) She has some homework to do at home because she was spending a lot of class time kind of spacing out whenever I was not with her. Like I would, I would go and sit down with her and like, okay, let’s, let’s power through this problem. And then we get to the problem. And I’d say like, okay, I want you to do the same thing for the next one. But as soon as I leave, it’s, it’s like, she would just kind of drift off, not because she can’t do the problem, but just because she’s having trouble focusing. and so.

And so her mom would notice the same thing at home. It’s like, well, when I sit with her, like she gets so much of her work done. But her mom has a job and she can’t be like sitting with her every evening to do math. so I think we, yeah.

Jason (35:36) Plus, she’s in eighth grade. She’s 14. She’s not nine. It’s like, you

know, come on.

Justin (35:41) Yeah, exactly. So I ⁓

Jason (35:42) you’re old

enough that you should be able to sit down and do a little bit of homework every night without having me have to sit with you the whole time.

Justin (35:50) Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. So we were emailing back and forth a bit. And I think I had mentioned something about like, trying to set some kind of incentive. ⁓ And so the mom latched onto that and came up with the idea of, well, she knew her kid was really into reading books, like some fantasy novels.

stuff. And so that was like this kid’s equivalent of cold hard cash for Colby. And so, yeah. So the mom made a deal with her daughter, like, hey, you know what? You get enough work done during class each day, you actually, whatever you take home for homework, you actually do that quickly. Don’t dilly dally. And I don’t have to sit with you. you just

Jason (36:21) That’s what she wanted. She wanted to read.

Justin (36:44) Let’s get things back to the way they used to be. And if you do that every week or every other week, I can’t remember if it was weekly or bi-weekly, but we’ll go out to the bookstore and you can pick any book you want and you can have it. That’s your reward. And it was like magic. was… ⁓ So I actually, I did not know…

⁓ initially that she, that, that, that, that the mom had done this. And so I, it was just like one day it’s like, just felt like I had a completely new student. Cause she was like locked in doing her math. She was actually, I know. Cause it got to the point where was like, I was like, okay. Like, I hope maybe today’s the day where, where, where I have to be a little bit more, more stern with her or like escalate this to the next level.

Jason (37:22) Yeah, what is happening?

Justin (37:37) But then she walks in, she sits down and she’s like, all right, nobody talked to me. Like, was like, yeah, exactly, exactly. like, ⁓ yeah, like, ⁓ I think later on during the class, like, like one of her friends had like kind of finished in enough XP, or is like, you could kind of reasonably like go chat with your buddy if they’ve done an XP. And I was like,

Jason (37:44) Everybody shut up.

Everybody’s like, what?

Justin (38:04) Yeah, okay, I’ll allow it. You’ve done you’ve both done more than your half of your XP today. Like you can you can chat if you want. And and this girl was just like, sorry, I can’t talk right now. know it was hilarious.

Jason (38:17) got stuff to do, I got a job,

people, you know?

Justin (38:21) Yeah, yeah.

And then so I think later on, I overheard the girl mentioning something about like, I get a book this weekend if I if I do my math. And like, so I emailed the mom saying like, Wow, like she, she got so much done in class today. It was phenomenal. I didn’t have to sit with her keep her focus at all. It was like, she’s just completely back on the rails if she can just keep doing this every day.

And then the mom was like, yeah, let me tell you more about the incentive that we set up. Here’s the deal that I made with her. ⁓ yeah, so the key thing to these incentives, they don’t have to be super complicated. All that matters is that you find, they don’t have to be super expensive either. You just need to find something that hits your kids receptors on what they want to do.

Jason (38:52) That’s a great, that’s a great Sen of.

Justin (39:14) If they were not doing math, what would they rather be doing in their free time? Or yeah, just what do they get really excited about? And then center the incentive around that.

Jason (39:23) Yeah, like it might be might be pizza

on Friday night or ice cream on the weekend or it might be, can we watch a Netflix series? You know, we’re not going to watch Netflix. And if you don’t get your homework or whatever, we’ll we’ll watch, you know, whatever it is, right? You you know, they can be any number of activity based. can be like a treat. It can be time doing thing or video game. You can actually have our video time game time, you know. But why am I doing this? And you just.

Like we said earlier, you can’t depend on the love of learning by itself for all kids all the time. And sometimes it’s just kids, like for Colby, he’s getting his behavior in check when he was in second grade, was just about, it a temporary thing to get them going. And then they kind of mature into continuing to do that without as much of an incentive, you know?

Justin (40:15) Yeah, the thing that sometimes people worry about is like, well, if you incentivize the kid, aren’t you don’t you have to ramp up the incentives over time? Or aren’t you like stealing their intrinsic motivation away? And it’s like, really, like, you just need to get the habit going and get them on the rails. And it’s not

Jason (40:35) Yeah, well, it’s like you,

it’s like, ⁓

Yeah, the whole thing, my favorite saying is nothing succeeds like success. And once they get that feeling like I can do this, it’s not that hard, then it’s easy to just keep doing it. It’s not even a big deal. It’s not even a thing. So it’s establishing the habit and it’s establishing that success pattern. You know, it’s like, does a pattern of success look like? This is all you gotta do. And then they go, oh, it’s not so hard, you know. So, you’re the…

Justin (40:48) Mm-hmm.

Jason (41:09) the like we said before it’s like it depends you know like

In middle school, kids can be really motivated at times, really excited to do things, and they can be just not motivated at all. You know, and it can vary. there was a lot of motivated fifth, fourth, fifth graders and sixth graders. There’s a lot of like really enthusiasm to just do almost anything. Seventh grade, eighth grade, it starts to wane. You get to high school, they’re really…

And one of problems that was really frustrating about high school is just how the system is set up. And I don’t know if there’s a real solution, but it’s like, okay, high school, they have a lot of pressure on them. In the US, it’s about like, you got to get really good grades.

And you got to take advanced courses or AP courses and you got to get A’s because you got to this great GPA. Because if you don’t have that, there’s no way you’re going to get into a decent college unless it’s a really good, really good college. the parents are, as as they get a ninth grade, when that record, the parents are like, on them. Especially for the kids who are a little more on the high performing side. I don’t mean like, it’s just like the top 1 % or, it’s,

that top 30%, 40 % of kids who are like, you know, I expect you to be going to a really good school and I expect, and then the kids have, and then you gotta be taking, it’s not just like took a couple AP classes their senior year and now they’re gonna be taking like two or three AP classes by their sophomore year and it’s like all AP classes. And then you gotta be in all of these extracurriculars and you can’t just be in them. can’t just be, I was in the Spanish club. It’s like, no, you gotta be the class president. You gotta be the, you know, all this stuff. Cause there’s no way you’re getting into.

know, Harvard or something. Everybody thinks their kid’s gonna go, you know, get a PhD in physics from Harvard or something. everybody’s, all parents are like operating into that, version of that fantasy when their kids are in middle school. And then high school sets in and they’re okay, well maybe not that, but they’re still like laser focused on the kids doing well.

Like your future depends on this. And there are some parents who totally opt out and like, we’re just kind of taking the soft approach and we don’t really care. And we’re not going to take AP classes or whatever, but that’s rare. And so, and this isn’t even like a public high school, right? And.

The thing is though, that creates a lot of stress on the kids and a lot of pressure. And then it becomes just, I just got to get through this stuff. I don’t have time to love anything anymore. I mean, I can’t love AP European history because I got to do, I was just, I got to write this paper. I got to write these essays. It’s not necessarily super fun. Then I got to read, you know, another act of Macbeth and I write this analysis and I got to…

balance all this chemistry equation, and then I got A then, then I, you’re perfect.

Justin (44:04) get overwhelmed with the amount of work and

then you just switch into like just get things done. What’s the minimum amount of work to get something done and then move on to the next thing?

Jason (44:16) That’s how it is. That is just how it is. And the kids have no time. You know, because they just, yeah, because they’re in class, they’re in school for seven or seven, eight hours a day. Which is pretty inefficient, right? And then we gotta go to…

Justin (44:27) plus homework. Yeah, I know this is all so inefficient. It doesn’t need to take

up this much time, but it does.

Jason (44:34) And then they got to go,

if they’re in sports, they got practice for two, two and a half, hours, right? And they get home and you get to shower and eat dinner. Or if you’re in the drama club or you’re in band or you’re whatever the heck you’re, you’re gotta be in something and probably a couple of things, right? Cause if you’re going to go to Amherst or Berkeley or whatever school your parents thinks you need to go to or good, or even just the good state school, it’s like, you got to do all this. You got to be

doing these things is the kids have no time. And so the love of the game kind of goes out the window. And it’s almost like when they talk about these professional athletes who just would play sports and love it. And then the love of the game kind of goes away because it’s all about the money and the career, right? And then it’s like hard for them to love it as much because they’re in physical pain all the time and go shooting a contract. And you know what mean? And it’s like, do you love it? well, I mean, yeah, I sort of, you know.

And I think that’s the way it happens with high school. You could say, well, we shouldn’t be that way. Well, of course, that’s the way it is. OK, well, maybe send your kid to some private school that just says, we’re opting out of all that stuff, and we have this sort of different approach. Well, they might not be sending their kids to these schools that you think they should be going to. Or we’re going to home school, and we don’t care about any of that. And I don’t care what kind of college they think. You can do that.

you’re going to have to not care about what school they go to, which again, there’s an argument that that may not matter, but that’s not where most people mentally live right now. That’s not what people are thinking or have been thinking for the last 30, 40 years. So, so when you’re in that situation, you just have limited amount of time to do stuff. And it’s just like, I want them to love everything. And it’s like, the kid doesn’t have the, it does not have the

The stress, their stress is too high for them to be able to fall in love with some of this stuff. they, like, I got this much time to do this. I go right now, how much I got to read? That’s kind of cool, I guess. I mean, that’s, you’re not going to get, I don’t mind it. That’s like, for most kids, that’s about as good as you’re going to get in high school. Because there’s too much stress. Because any time there’s stress on you, or pressure on you, just, it’s hard to enjoy stuff. I think people like, like, love coding.

Right? But if all of a sudden you have a contract and this has to be deployed tonight, it’s not fun really. The fun is out of it, is it’s just too much stress. Stress, know, a little bit of stress, a little bit can be okay, it can be fine, know, but if it’s like this ongoing constant grind, stress, the chronic stress, it just takes the fun out of everything. once you get to high school, it really gets to that.

I don’t really have a, mean, a prescription for the solution is a whole nother discussion, but I’m just saying that’s the framework in which we operate. That is reality. That’s base reality, and that’s what you’re deal with. And I remember talking to some parents back when, what was I thinking about? Yeah, was talking about, before Mathcadden was in the high school, and I was like,

Justin (47:31) That’s reality as it stands.

Jason (47:52) talking about, we could do a whole science thing and this and they’re like, listen, Jason, these kids have all these AP classes, they have all this stuff and they don’t have the time for all that. And I was like, huh, I really hadn’t thought about it. It was like someone who these kids had gone through high school or were in high school, they don’t have the time for all this stuff, I’m telling you. They got all these credits they gotta get, they got all these AP classes and it’s just, And.

You know, and that started happening to me in the math academy program in the high school. started to see kids who were good at it and liked it. was just the pressure because the math classes were there. It was typically the hardest class. They were like, what class, what AP classes can I take to get an A? Like they would, like we had some kids who would switch out of your RISCO, your class, and just take AP computer science for the second semester because it was a joke, comparative work-wise. So they could just get an A.

They weren’t going to learn anything, but they would get an easy A. And these are a couple of kids who wouldn’t have IT and stuff. They’re just like, I’m playing the game, And unfortunately, that’s just how. So you can carve out a little space to do something that’s for the love of the game, for special and do extra work. And you were that one math academy cast. Luckily, we had a group of kids who were doing math academy as well as Urisco, which was a lot for them.

Yeah, anyway. to go back to incentives though, I think let’s just kind of finish that. Like for younger kids who are not…

wanting to do math academy every day or you as frequently you usually you probably should be doing it four to five days a week it’s like you know if that’s their class you know for anyone who is unaware it’s like you know if you’re doing math academy once or twice a week it’s like i’m going to the gym once or twice a week it’s like and perhaps a little bit but it’s not you really need to

you need to do it as close to every day as you can. I don’t mean like you have to do it seven days a week, but you know, five, six days a week. I mean, you think a really good math class, you’re doing five days a week of math and plus you’re doing homework on Sunday night, you’re doing six days a week. Untipical, real math class. And that’s really, you know, and if a student doesn’t want to do that, you need to create incentive structures that they feel okay about. It’s okay, well, these kids are doing these AP classes because they get good A’s because the incentive is they’re going to get into college, want to get to, so everything’s set up so they do what they’re supposed to do because if they don’t, then they’re not going get what they want.

And so when you’re talking about younger kids who are fourth, fifth, sixth grade or whatever, and you’re like, how do I get them to do it? It’s like, find what they’re excited about and set a nice carrot for them. I mean, on the opposite side, it’s one of my favorite lines, movie lines. It was from the first Mission Impossible movie. And they’re chasing after Ethan Hunt, Tom Cruise’s

character and they’re trying to find him. They’re trying to find the team or something. And this is the actual Mission Impossible, Impossible Mission Force, IMF, so his boss and they’re they’re like, and they’re like, and the boss goes, he’s like, you know, they’re kind of searching around this, you know, part where they were and he’s like, he’s like, we’re never gonna find him like this. And they’re like, well, what do you propose we do?

Because they’re like ghosts. They’re trained to disappear, be anyone, be anywhere. It’s like they will never find us. So he’s like, well, what are your pros we do? He’s like, you make them come to us. He’s like, well, how do we do that? He’s like, you find something that’s personally important to them and you squeeze. I thought that was such a hardcore thing. What they do in the movie is they arrest Ethan Hunt’s parents.

Justin (51:39) Yeah.

Jason (51:47) and put them on TV as if they were terrorists and stuff, right? So, I’m not saying you do that to kids. It’s the opposite. You’re doing the carrot as opposed to the stick, but you find something that’s personally important to them that they want, and you use that as an incentive to get them to doing it. Because here’s the thing, even things that kids like, because they’re kids, they’re all places like, well, kid, like, I wanna play band, and it’s like, okay, and then by a month in, they don’t wanna practice anymore.

or I want to be on soccer, but they don’t want to go to soccer practice because they want to play video games with their friends. Like, no, you’re on the soccer team. You got to soccer practice, right? It’s like even things that are fun that they said they wanted to do, they start their motivation starts to flag because they’re kids. You know, they want they’re sort of driven by that sort of it. Like, what do want to do right now? What I want to do right now is mess around with my sisters outside. don’t want to go to soccer practice, you know, or

I don’t want to practice the trumpet, which I know I begged for because I’m doing this playing video game or something. you know, as parents, unfortunately, you don’t always get to just be like Mr. Nice Guy or whatever. You have to say, like, now you’re doing this. This is what’s… And part of it is I think, yeah, I mean, look, there’s a lot of parental philosophies so everybody can choose their own path. But I think for…

Justin (53:03) Yeah, it’s probably a good job.

Jason (53:13) what you quickly learn as a parent is like, you have to, this is what’s happening. Like there’s no around it, right? This is what’s happening. Now you can try and make it as ⁓ painless as possible by setting up incentives. So it’s like, you have to do as little of that. Like they have to understand, have to do, I pretty much have to do this anyway. But now I got this out of incentive, then I just sort of, you kind of got this sense of a care, of a stick.

in the background. I never think to which is there. I mean, I’m going to have to do it, but I have this little carrot I’m excited about. So let’s focus more on the carrot. But just so you know, you’re doing it anyway. But like I said, we’ve had kids who are just so fired up about math that they were just doing it all the time, even at fifth or sixth grade. But they’re really the exception. And then if they do it, it’s sort of on and off. I’m interested in it, and I’m not interested. I want to do it.

I mean, you’ve worked with kids like this.

Justin (54:11) Yeah,

that’s right. All right. Even the kids who really enjoy it sometimes, and sometimes they enjoy certain types of math, certain types of problems. They don’t want to do other types of problems, but they have to. they, so the thing is, yeah, I’ve worked with some kids who are like, they like, maybe they get in like algebra. ⁓

riddle land, like these like word problems, these kind of like, it doesn’t require calculus or any more advanced math. And like, okay, that’s, that’s cool. To an extent, like you can, you can, you can learn quite a bit from those. can kind of sometimes like those boil down to systems of linear equations. Sometimes there’s other stuff and like it’s, if a kid’s interested in that kind of stuff, then like, okay, yeah, go, go do it. But that doesn’t mean you can spend

the next three years just working out of this algebra puzzles book. Like there’s, there’s levels of math that you have to climb ⁓ in order to just get further along in the talent domain in order to unlock new things for you to do. And it’s, it’s a funny thing is like, I actually worked with a kid who, who, who didn’t want to learn calculus because he

Jason (55:30) but he was exceptionally

gifted.

Justin (55:32) yeah, this is like 99. Actually, this is the most gifted kid that I’ve ever worked with. ⁓ Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, right. So he, he was he was actually resistant to learning ⁓ calculus, I think it was, yeah, around seventh or eighth grade. And, ⁓ right, because he just, I mean, he liked doing, like mathematical

Jason (55:38) And you work with a lot of really gifted kids and he was the…

Justin (56:01) investigations into algebra stuff, arithmetic stuff together. What kind of happened is he had kind of learned a lot of arithmetic on his own and I had taught him a lot of algebra. We went through like some skill building and then he, I guess, he found some puzzles online that he wanted to work on. He’s like, okay, that sounds kind of fun. Why don’t we do that for a bit? And I was like, okay, I’ll give you some more puzzles. We’ll work through some

some problems together, some questions that you had, whatever. ⁓ And I mean, that was, that was good. I mean, it was definitely, ⁓ it was a good use of time at the time, eventually you get to a point where it’s just like, what, well, what else are we doing? We’re just doing the same thing day in, day out. You’re not really progressing a whole lot and you’re in your mathematical development. I mean, you’re

way ahead compared to grade level, but like at some point you gotta make the leap and ⁓

Jason (57:03) Oh, because

compared to the kids in math Academy, who are dealing with who were in the top 5 % or more, I he was brighter than all of them, but you’re like, these kids are ahead of you. You don’t even look like you’re good at math compared to them because you’re not using your time.

Justin (57:13) Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Yeah.

Jason (57:21) very effectively, efficiently. It’s kind like you’re playing a video game. So it’s like, the way I think about it is like this, every video game has levels, right? You got to do certain things to get to the next level, right? And a kid gets to level three and then just wants to mess around and like crush these bubbles or something. You’re like, okay, well, I know it’s kind of fun, but…

You’re kind of going anywhere in the game and the parents like look you’re level three There’s like 20 levels and I know you’re gonna have a lot more fun When you get to these other levels and if you don’t get to those levels and you realize all his other kids You think of yourself as being really good at this game are way ahead of you They’ve been demoralized like I not even you know, so it’s like the parent is like I’m not saying you can’t have fun, but you gotta like unlock the levels unlock

Justin (58:04) That’s right.

Jason (58:05) Like we’re there is things that need to happen. That’s apparent. Like his parents, we know what’s going to happen and you have to like give your kids some space to kind of play and explore. But then sometimes they say, OK, you need to do this. Right. This is, you know, and you may not understand why, but I’m just trust me and just this is what needs to happen.

Justin (58:24) Yeah.

You know, so funny thing. So the way that this kid ended up learning calculus, it, yeah, it did not come down to the kid making the decision of like, okay, I understand. need to learn more math in order to unlock new things. kids are not thinking like that. Adults think like that. Kids don’t think like that. Cause kids don’t have the longer perspective. They don’t know what the long game is. They haven’t seen the long game play out. They don’t get it.

Jason (58:52) I don’t even think, I even

realize it’s a game.

Justin (58:54) Yeah, even many of the gifted ones, they don’t have the perspective. You can’t expect them to understand an argument that as logical as it may be, it depends on context and experience that they don’t have. And so what ended up ⁓ pushing this kid over into like, okay, fine, I’ll learn calculus was that he was ⁓ going to a high school.

that had some kind of program where kids in the high school would also take courses at some community college or something like that. There was some kind of thing set up where it was easy to do that in the school. so he wanted to go take college level math courses, like in ninth grade, like just show up like day one. I want to be in these college courses. And so I was talking to him and his parents like, yeah, he can totally do that. He’s…

super bright problem is though, if he doesn’t know calculus, then not only is he going to struggle in these courses, because he’s going to have to like spin up on calculus. Like, okay, I don’t even if you are the brightest student that I’ve ever met, if if what you’re learning on day one of your college class depends on a year’s worth of material that you haven’t learned, like you’re kind of screwed. Like your life and life is going to suck for you, even if you do manage to like

Jason (1:00:16) It’s gonna work.

Justin (1:00:21) Okay, I’ll speed up, I’ll catch up really quick in the first couple of weeks. just learn it beforehand, man. Don’t put yourself through that.

Jason (1:00:33) Right, because you

were kind of negotiating with a parent. You were trying to explain this to the parents. The parents fully understood this is the framework we’re in. And he wants Y to happen. He needs to do X and he needs to do before this.

Justin (1:00:37) Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, but even more so the, the thing that really sealed the deal was like, when I said like, you know, they’re not even going to let them into these courses if you doesn’t have on the five, five on the AP Cal Vc exam, like you’re just like you’re dealing with schools are resistant to these, these new things like, hey, I like, I’m sure they hear from parents all the time, like, hey, my kids really good at math is coming in ninth grade, can you do this college course? And maybe they’ve done that a

a few times with other parents, they learn pretty quickly. Like, hey, if the kid has not passed AP Calculus, like they’re not ready for this thing. And by the way, AP Calc is a high school course. So you’re telling me the kid has not gotten beyond high school math and they want to take a college course. no, I don’t care who you are. I don’t care what your IQ is. don’t get what, just unless you have that accomplishment under your belt, that is not going to work for you. So yeah.

Jason (1:01:45) Yes, so one

thing I want one thing I want to say is we say and this is a whole thing with the school system. So we’ve had a lot of parents who are like. You know they use math, can their student gets a year or two ahead and they’re trying to negotiate with the school. A lot of public schools. If you get a D or an F in a school, they will still promote you to next course. You had D or an F in algebra one. You’re going to geometry next year. They do that at passing. I couldn’t believe when I first heard that when I was talking to it high school math teacher and the.

past in a school district. And he’s like, yeah, we get that. We just found the research shows if you hold them back, it doesn’t help things. it’s just like, what’s the point? If they don’t know algebra one, why are you saying in algebra two? It’s just bureaucratic convenience, right? Move them along. Kid can’t read in first grade, move them to second grade. So can’t read the third grade. They just do it. And then it creates some real disaster scenarios, but.

Bureaucracies really maximize bureaucratic convenience. Bureaucracies are gonna bureaucratize. And they’re just gonna do things so that things work out on their schedule, plan, or whatever. And now if you come in and you say, my fifth grader should be doing algebra or whatever.

They’re going to be, uh, Because you know what they won’t say is that’s a massive headache for us and we don’t want to do it. So we’re going to come up with whatever reason we can to prevent that from happening because we don’t want to do with the headache. Because now we have a special thing and she’s got your daughter has to go to middle school. It’s just we don’t do that. One kid or two kids. And now we have the special.

tutor that works with them three days a week in a special class and I gotta talk to the teacher. They don’t want to do it. They don’t do work. They do not want to do extra work. Nobody really wants to do extra work, but I tell you, the schools really don’t want to do it. And the teachers themselves have like, they’re feeling overwhelmed. And then they got like my union, I don’t have to do this. And the principal’s like, I can’t make them do because the union and the bureaucratic and that it’s a nightmare. So even if you could come to them and you say,

Well, can my daughter test into algebra? And sometimes that depends on the state laws that they have to be forced to put them in. But if your daughter scored like a 97%, they’re like, oh, they didn’t miss 3%. Don’t mind the fact that we promote people with an F to the next grade. They don’t know 3%. I’ve heard that. It’s like 93%, 95%, and they would not allow them.

Justin (1:04:25) If

give them any excuse to not allow, yeah, anything.

Jason (1:04:28) any day life, you get a four. A four is a great score

and an amazing score for an eighth grader. And you’re like, nope, he really should, he should really spend a year and he probably didn’t totally master it and rushed through it. So we’re going to, know, like, dude, like he outscored like 90 % of your seniors who took it. What are you talking about? They’re like, well, right. Cause it’s convenient for them. I’ll do it every.

There’s like 99 times out of 100 they’ll do that. You every once in a while you run into one teacher, one principal school who’s like really open to it, but that’s super rare. It’s really frustrating.

Justin (1:05:06) Yeah, you gotta make it so there’s no arguing against you.

Jason (1:05:10) There’s no argument. There’s no, you can’t give

him any of the slightest bit of daylight. So here, in this case, you’re like, he’s got to get a five.

Justin (1:05:15) Exactly.

Yeah, he’s got to learn calculus, got to get a five on the AP exam. so, yeah, so that’s what we did. Yeah, yeah, the BC exam. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so, right, so that’s what we did. And he…

Jason (1:05:22) on the BC and on the BC, the more advanced one.

Justin (1:05:33) I mean, the big thing was getting his parents on board with it because, know, ultimately, the parents are ones who lay down the law in the household. if the parents on board, like, guess what? Kid’s going to be on board. It’s one way or another.

Jason (1:05:48) Well, because they’re like, we’re going to spend

money on Justin, he’s expensive tutor. it’s not like you’ve got to be doing things that are relative, somewhat productive. want you to have fun and we want you to, you know, express yourself and, and, and, and, be creative. But, but, but we need to be.

Justin (1:05:51) Yeah.

Jason (1:06:08) working in a productive direction. I’m signing up to soccer, you gotta go to soccer practice or you gotta learn how to play defense as well. You don’t get to just do one thing, like come on, this is a whole thing.

Justin (1:06:20) Yes,

yeah, we’re paying for mathematical talent development. We’re not paying for just entertainment, mathematical entertainment. That’s not it. Yeah, so ⁓ yeah, so ⁓ the kid was a good sport about it. ⁓ It was not like, I mean, once…

Jason (1:06:32) Right.

Justin (1:06:42) Well, I think previously he kind of knew that his parents weren’t like forcing him to so like anytime I would suggest that we do it, he wouldn’t be so on board with it. so it’s like, okay, all right, I’m not gonna push too hard until like, I’ve got your parents on board too. But once the parents were on board and kind of like, he was just like, yeah, there’s no way I’m gonna, there’s no, there’s no way we don’t win in that scenario. Like the kids, like it just.

Jason (1:07:10) It’s like,

let’s say that Star Trek, Kamarachi Maru, there’s a no, it’s a no win scenario.

Justin (1:07:11) is frightened of losing battle.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. So it’s another one of those cases where it’s like, well, dangle the carrot. Like, guess what? You do this. You can take like university courses next year. But yeah, in the background, there’s like the whole like, well, your parents are gonna make you do it. I’m gonna make you do it one way or another. yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, ⁓ but no, it was good. He was good support. No, I mean, we didn’t spend the whole sessions on

Jason (1:07:28) And you’re doing it anyway. We can pretend we know you’re doing. We both know how this ends.

Justin (1:07:44) on calculus, was kind of one of those like, it’s broccoli, man, like, I’m not, I’m not gonna make your whole meal broccoli. yeah.

Jason (1:07:50) It was like one for you, one for me. It was like one for you, one for me, right? It’s like, okay, we’ll just pack

this and we’ll do a little bit of your, you know, whatever.

Justin (1:07:58) Yeah, so we were not like, like going full force into it. It was just we introduced this food into the, into the rotation. And, and we spread it out over a longer period of time than it needed to be. But this was just to make it like palatable to him. And so yeah, so initially, the thing that he didn’t really like about calculus was it felt less intuitive for him compared to algebra compared to it was like,

No wonder. mean, like, ⁓ the things that you’ve been doing for a while, that you’ve been practicing for a while. Algebra was not super completely intuitive to him when we first started learning it. And he kind of forgot what the feeling is of having to learn a new thing.

Jason (1:08:45) But they’re

also like when you get mathematicians, they’re algebraists and there’s an analyst. So people who just don’t like analysis. Like he might be one those kids who just more of an algebraist, right? Or Colby was like an analyst, right? Like he was the real, like you said, has this real number line embedded in his head, or in his brain, right? Like he just.

Justin (1:08:50) Yeah.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

That is totally true. However, the interesting part is that with this kid, once he learned all the calculus stuff, calculus became one of the things that he really enjoyed. actually started doing, just like we were doing with algebra, I’d give him an interesting question, ask him a question to think about, to explore. We started doing that with calculus and he was gonna have a great time.

Jason (1:09:27) you

Justin (1:09:37) And I was like, you want to go back to solve algebra problems? He’s like, no, let’s do calculus once. And so the thing, and now today, I still ⁓ work with him every other week. And so he’s actually working with either current or former university ⁓ mathematician who’s got some research problem. And so this kid is kind of working on that problem too. And the research problem, like, guess what? It’s actually kind of an

Jason (1:09:42) Yeah.

Justin (1:10:07) analysis flavored problem. It has to do with almost like a sort of a variation of like the whole like orbital motion Kepler’s laws kind of kind of thing, but just like in a more generalized mathematical form, not not necessarily tethered to any sort of physical interpretation. But it was it was another one of those things where it’s like it’s a very analysis flavored problem.

Jason (1:10:09) Mm.

physical reality.

Justin (1:10:34) And the things that we’re working with are like kind of physical quantities, like angular momentum. And there’s like a of derivatives being tossed around and like, and he’s having, he has been on this problem actually, I think since spring, actually. He hit a kind of inflection point in his mathematical journey where he’s gotten through a lot of undergrad math. And so he’s actually sinking his teeth into research and then.

Earlier in the year, were few research problems that he stuck with one for like maybe like three weeks, another for like a month, another for maybe like two months. And then this one, he’s been just like, he doesn’t grind on it for like, yeah, yeah, exactly. And so he doesn’t grind on it for like hours every day, but it’s something, it’s a consistent, like this is what he’s doing whenever he, he’s, he’s pushing forward on his medical talent development.

Jason (1:11:16) He’s like a dog with a bone. He’s a dog with a bone on this one.

Justin (1:11:32) And it’s in this area that he was resisting back in seventh or eighth grade. And he’s having the time of his life right now. He’s really enjoying it. And if we had not pushed him through this segment of the journey that he was kind of resistant to, he would not be doing what he’s doing right now.

Jason (1:11:54) That’s why it’s so important for adults who can look ahead and say, I can’t, I know you want to mess around this thing, but I know where you’re going and I know what it takes to get there. And I know the tools you need or the skills or whatever. And if you just do these things. And we had a lot talk about that in the previous podcast about listening adults who know who’ve been there, who know what it takes and can help guide, guide the student to that point. And then there’ll be, cause

vastly happier, vastly more successful, really realize their potential. And so what grade is this kid in?

Justin (1:12:28) I think he’s in ⁓ 11th grade right now. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, he’s… Everything’s kind of coming together for him mathematically. Yeah. Yeah, he’s great position. Yeah.

Jason (1:12:32) That’s incredible, right? That’s great. Doing research in 11th grade.

awesome.

So we saw what the positive outcome was because he did what he… His parents forced him, but set up the structure for him to do what he was supposed to do and ensure that he did it. And it was this massive unlock. A massive unlock. Now imagine that he didn’t. Messed algebra and then he had to take calculus in high school.

Justin (1:12:58) Mm-hmm. That’s right.

⁓ yeah.

Jason (1:13:13) And let’s imagine that, you know, the school, like a lot of schools would make him take AP calculus his freshman year. If they even allow him to take an AP class. He might have forced him to take pre-calculus. A lot of times they won’t let you do an evening class. They will not allow you to take an AP your freshman year.

Justin (1:13:27) That’s true. Yeah, because he didn’t,

he didn’t officially take like pre-calculus or, or even geometry or stuff in school. don’t, in middle school, don’t think, I mean, was just him and me working together. So as far as like classes, like what’s your transcript? Like this, this would not have been coming through.

Jason (1:13:48) Yeah, so even at a lot of relatively flexible, reasonable schools, he would have at very least had to take pre-calculus as freshman year, and then AP calculus, AB as sophomore year, and then maybe take BC as junior year. And what would likely have happened in that scenario like that is he would have gotten, become disillusioned with math. Annoyed, bored, frustrated, and he just like would, might have just dropped it and did something else.

And then maybe only came back to it later and be like, you know, I used to be really good at math, but, I kind of got into other stuff. you know, I realized I never, I’ve, you know, met a lot of people who kind of get thrown off track because the path was so bumpy and so, it had so many problems that it just, was enough to derail them as a young person.

Sometimes they self correct and come back, but then other times they don’t and they kind of regret it. And it’s like, well, it’s kind of late, too late now. And ⁓ that’s happened to me in a couple of things. And I know other people and you’re like, wow, what would happen had that not been the case? ⁓ like for me, one of them was soccer where I was, you know, one of the best kids in my county or area.

And then I got shin splints. I moved, went to school, I got shin splints and I couldn’t even run on my… at all. I could only go flat footed and I couldn’t even play for like a year and then I just gave soccer up and played again. And I kinda came in my senior year and played it kinda as a lark just even after preseason I just joined and played and I’m still able to make it a varsity.

And then I didn’t play in college because I have a story about how I tried out for the varsity basketball team, didn’t get a jump shot. It was the last one cut in preseason. So then I’m like not playing a sport. And then I went out and I set up an intramural team and we won the whole thing. And a friend of mine.

Justin (1:15:40) Yeah.

Jason (1:15:51) He was on the varsity team. said, Jason, you’re a good player. You could play in the varsity team. I’m like, really? said, yeah, you should try out. And so then I spent all summer training, and I made the varsity soccer team my sophomore year. And I was a pretty good player. I was the first or second guy off the bench and things like that. So I got a lot of playing time. But it’s like, what had happened if I had not quit in seventh grade, and I played all through high school, and I played elite club soccer and trained year round? ⁓

I mean, it likes to work out fine. You know, I played college soccer and then I started men’s semi-pro team and it was a ton of fun. But I mean, you know, it would have come in an entirely, entirely different level. because I ran into, you know, I moved and then my parents were divorced and my mom was a little distracted and it wasn’t like, and I really think you should keep a soccer. My mom was more of a hippie. She’s like, Oh, whatever you want to do. You know, and I was like, I don’t know if that was the best.

Now, I love my mom and she was great. My mom’s passed away many years ago. She’s wonderful woman and, you know, couldn’t ask for a more loving mom, but she was more of the hippie, like, you know, whatever, you know? And instead of saying, you know, Jason, you’re really good at this sport and you love playing it. I know you’ve had a frustrating…

know, period time with this shin splints thing, let’s get this taken care of. I think I really think you should, you know, maybe take a little break for a couple months, but I think we should stay with it because I think it’s something you regret. But it’s never a conversation like that, at least as far as I remember. It might have been like, hey, the car, like, are you sure you want to? OK. You know, I’m a 13 year old kid. I’m an idiot. Like, what do I know? Right. No more. OK. You know, sometimes parents get like, I don’t think that’s a good idea.

I think you really need to think hard about this or maybe just take a break and let’s come address this. So that’s why, again, it’s a lot of philosophy. A lot of parents are like, hey, just let do whatever they want. And yeah, it’s fine. And that’s one way to do it. And another way to do it is say, I want to help my kids realize their potential in areas that they really care about.

and that they have a real natural aptitude for it. Because we all have aptitudes for things and some things we don’t and some things we do and it’s always kind of a shame to miss out on capitalizing something you do have a real aptitude for because if you put in even some effort, you get like this great experience out of it. And it sucks when you don’t have any aptitude to try and do something and it’s just really tough to get a win out of it because it’s just not good at it.

Justin (1:18:35) Yeah,

you know, so this student’s ⁓ parents are actually, they’re pretty much the opposite of hard-ass parents. Like they’re very much ⁓ just like, the kid do what they want. like they’re, yeah, so they were actually like, they don’t wanna push the kid too far either. But it’s like, there’s this balance to be had of like, okay, they’re not telling the kid like, hey, like,

Jason (1:18:56) Dictate. They don’t want to push or dictate. Whatever.

Justin (1:19:05) guess what, now you’re nine years old, you have to start mathematical training, like even if you have absolutely no interest in that and you’d rather be writing all day or like, if there’s some other thing that the kid’s interested, like let them find the things that they’re interested Don’t necessarily like push them like hardcore into things that they have no interest or no gift. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Jason (1:19:29) that always backfires that always backfires

and the kids just give it up with piano or something your parents made him do it and then as soon as they’re old enough you’re like I am done I’m ever touching piano the rest of my life you know

Justin (1:19:39) Yeah.

But if your kid has, gravitates towards something that they really like doing and like, it’s good to encourage that. okay, like, like, provided this, this, this thing is a, a net positive in their life. Like, like if they gravitate towards like an academic subject or like something like a productive use of the time, like, okay, like let’s, let’s encourage that and

And especially if they’re like, if they show a gift for it, that they can spin up on this material, like very, very quickly. And they’re just, they have like some kind of like big advantage ⁓ in it, where this could really be a massive thing in the rest of their life. Then you don’t want to, and they’re sticking with this for a while. Like it’s not just a one day they’re interested in this. Like they’re spending, they’re

spending lots of time on it. Yeah.

Jason (1:20:38) There’s demonstrated enthusiasm and

enjoyment and success in this thing.

Justin (1:20:44) It’s

like you can’t let them quit at the slightest sign of difficulty. Kids sometimes will do that or like they love this thing until it gets a little hard and then they’re like, ah, I just want to stay in easy land. And you don’t have to be a crazy hard ass about it, you got to, part of supporting the kid means helping them get through those phases of the journey.

that may not be the most enjoyable because it’s, but it’s a journey that’s aligned with them. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason (1:21:20) The rewards are there. They can’t see them. The rewards are there and

they can’t see them. But there are also, there’s failure modes that they can’t see too. Like they don’t understand there’s this failure mode right ahead. You could, parents could see it. You guys either look, you know, and they didn’t probably not have to lay it out for them, but it’s like, you could have, you guys said, look, here’s what’s going to happen if you don’t ace the AP exam. And it could be a total disaster scenario where

Justin (1:21:41) Mm-hmm.

Jason (1:21:48) this thing that he was just ridiculously gifted at and just loves could just become something that he becomes incredibly disillusioned with and just throw it away. you know, the way it it’s like we’re all, the great thing about life is we’re all different and we all have our things that come easy for us. We get some things for free and then we get stuff we have to work for. And then we have stuff that even when we work for it, we still just aren’t very good at it, you know? And part of life is figuring out what those things are.

And sometimes you have to at get to a bass level on the things that you suck at so that you’re not totally incompetent, you know, and someone doesn’t matter. It’s like, hey, you’re stuck at singing. Well, guess what? I don’t ever have to sing. That’s not a problem. Right. Some people just amazing. It’s like it’s a didn’t. But we only typically only get a limited number of things that you’re just really just get for free. It’s like, wow. You know, like it’s like a like a musical ear or singing voice or.

You know, you’re extremely fast athlete or you’re just a man, you know, there’s some things you get and it’s just like, wow, that’s a one in a thousand, but a one in a hundred. It’s something that you can leverage that can really be a stat standout in and really have some great experiences with. So it’s like, you know,

Sometimes it doesn’t really matter as much what these positive experiences are, but it’s tough when kids are not really particularly stand out in anything. They’re not really good at anything and they’re trying to figure out who they are. And it’s kind of tough because I don’t have anything to build an identity on that I can be really proud of. It doesn’t always have to be a competitive thing, but it’s just something. Like, what are you? And I think for parents to help kids find that thing,

It could be acting, could be music, whatever it is. ⁓ And finding those things, and then they kind of can lean into something and become skilled and reach and be able to level up the process of leveling up in something and developing a sense of pride and a sense of accomplishment and success.

is it’s not just a word, whoa, it’ll help you later in life. It’s like, that’s what life, that’s incredible life experiences that you just, you can either have them or not. And you, some people just don’t have a whole lot of those experiences. Like, do you ever, you’re like, I was never really good at anything. It’s like, it kind of sucks, you know, cause it’s great to have been the captain of the team and the MVP or won the thing. And I may not have been that very best, but you were good. Like, yeah, I wasn’t great, but I was in band. was second chair. I was good. Like, cool.

That’s an experience. It a lot of effort to get to second chair in the viola or something in the high school. That was something. That took a lot of work. It took a lot of effort. Now you weren’t like the best violist in the freaking state or something. But that’s fine. But there’s a difference between someone who’s, know, between that and nothing, right? And very few people get to the, ⁓ that was an Olympian. You know, are you to win an Olympian? Okay.

Very, very, very, very few people become the best in the world or even the best in the state at anything. But just having those sense of of unlock and leveling up at anything. I think as an adult, you’re just you’re looking like what is you not to be overly obsessed with it, but keeping an eye out. And that’s why his parents are always introducing him to things. go to summer camp in this and after school thing with this and this club. And they eventually kind of will find something. And then when they get a lock, oh, a lock or something.

Justin (1:25:28) Mm-hmm.

Jason (1:25:29) And it’s positive. Okay, they’re like, wait, let’s, you wanna do another summer thing? Do wanna do a class? Do you wanna, you you kinda, and then they’re like, they’re having the great and it’s great. And then they’re like, I don’t know, I wanna hang out with, okay, maybe you shouldn’t give that song. That’s, think, the thing. ⁓ I mean, that’s the balance, I think, for parenting is, but again, that’s the world according to Jason. Some people have a different opinion and do a different.

Justin (1:25:54) Yeah, well, you

know, I should just say, you know, we’ve talked about my own like kind of journey into math education, starting with like, real like self study, but also tutoring at my local Mathnasium. You know who told me that I should go apply for a job at the Mathnasium? And I was like, nah, I’d rather just like, can just study math at home and my mom.

She was like, no, you should really do this. It seems like it’d be good for you. Like she would, she didn’t force me to, but it was one of those, like, she pestered me enough times about it in a good way that I was like, okay, fine, I guess I’ll do it. And holy shit, am I glad that she did that. ⁓ Because that was a lock.

And if she hadn’t said that and kind of like pushed me through, ⁓ I don’t know ⁓ if I would even be in math education. I may have just been doing something else, almost certainly not nearly as fun and as rewarding as I’m doing right now.

Jason (1:27:11) That’s right. That’s a great way. think what most important things that parents can do is encourage their kids to do stuff, to try things, especially things that think, I think you would like this. I think you might be good at this. You sometimes you just, it’s kind of scattershot when they’re really young. Like I sign up for art class and I sign them up for gymnastics and sign them up for baseball. And they just do everything when they’re like, you know, up through 11 or so. And then the kids, you kind of, okay, well, my kid is really not.

this or really doesn’t like it. have to stick pulling teeth to get them to go to soccer practice or something. You’re like, okay, this is dumb, waste of time. But then you find the things and then you write. It’s encouraging to do and the kids don’t always want to do stuff and and they have

They don’t know what it is, they think it’s going to be hard, or boring, or embarrassing, or who knows what negative thing. the parents are like, no. It’s like kids are staying on the side of the pool and you just got to push them in the water. Just Get in. Just quit. You know, and they’re like, it’s cold. And then they’re like, oh, this is fun. Have fun. Yeah, I know. Swimming in the pool is fun. But staying on the side being a, you know. you know, it’s funny, like our middle one, my daughter Izzy,

Justin (1:28:04) you

Jason (1:28:24) So she’s in majoring in creative writing in college, right? she’s always talking about film. And Tara always says lines, and we always do lines in the movies, like all the time. And she’s like incredible at it. Like she’ll just say, dad, let’s do this scene. And I’ll be like, okay. And I’m pretty good at that, but not like she is. Like she’s like almost verbatim, like the dialogue.

And she’s like, ⁓ I’ll start. And then I’ll do the line. I’ll get one word wrong. She’s like, Dad, that’s not the line. It doesn’t make any sense. And I’m like, OK, well, it’s been three years since I’ve seen this, right? And so she had that sort of thing. And when she was applying to ⁓ creative writing programs, there’s not a whole lot of creative writing programs in college. You major in English, and maybe some have a specialization in creative writing, but they don’t really.

It’s not very common. So Sandy was like, her mom was like, I think you need to go to a school that also has a film program because I think you would want to take some film classes. And she’s like, I don’t want to do that. She’s like, I don’t want to.

I don’t care about that. She’s like, I just want to write. So it’s like, really think. so, you know, it was just the funniest thing. She just wouldn’t think she just was.

Justin (1:29:48) Classic

Izzy.

Jason (1:29:50) Yeah,

Insanity would call her a no girl. She’d say no to everything. Everything. And so then she gets to school, and so Izzy’s an introvert. So she’s the opposite of me. She just doesn’t want to, like, so she’s Insanity’s like, well, I really think we would talk to her every weekend and every Sunday night. was like, okay, you know, I really think should go to the film club. What clubs? Did you go to the club fair? What clubs? Maybe you should like this club. And she’s like, I don’t know.

And she’s like, go to the film club. she’s like, she spends the whole fall quarter not going to the film club once. She’s like, why I’m still just trying to time for my classes. And I don’t know. And she’s just like, kind of a little anxiety about just taking on too much. It’s like, OK, fine. And so then finally, in winter quarter, she goes to film club. And she’s insane. like, well, how much? She’s like, ah, it’s really, you know. And I think she’s really started to like it. And then she does her first day. They would shoot two short films every like.

quarter term right and she was spent like 12 hours on set she was like the camera operator or something and she’s like yeah she was over 12 hours she’s like I didn’t know where the time went

Justin (1:31:01) Good sign.

Jason (1:31:02) I said, yeah,

that’s like flow. You’re in a flow experience. You don’t know where the time goes. That’s flow experience. You’re so into what you’re doing. And then she’s just totally into film club, right? And Sandy’s like, yeah, right. She’s looking at me like, And it seemed it was kind of…

pushing like a lot of moms, so she’ll push but not push super hard, but she’s continuing like probably your mom was. She’s not trying to, as much as she can without getting too much negative feedback, push back.

Justin (1:31:37) She’s

planting the idea over and over again until you’re just like, okay, fine. I’ve heard about this like five times. I’ll just like, yeah. Yeah. You’re like, I know you’re not going to make me, but like in order to just stop, just stop, just stop pestering me about it. Like exactly. Yeah, that’s exactly it. Yeah.

Jason (1:31:48) This is never going to end.

It’s like drip torture or something, you know? Moms do drip torture. Yeah,

so I’m only vaguely aware of this because I’m on the call and I think she would say it sometimes and because, you know, it’s kind of things that I think moms tend to be good at. So she does it. And then spring quarter, spring break, she’s like, Dad, I want to write a

a screenplay, a submit. They take a competition, like at the start of every quarter, you can submit a short and they will vote and maybe select and maybe shoot your short. And so we, she’s like, what, I have some ideas. What do you think? And so she comes to my office and we’re sitting here and I’m well, what about this? And then we’re going ideas and we kind of develop some ideas and she writes it. And it doesn’t get selected, but it was actually quite good. Sandy was like, Sandy’s like, so disappointing to get selected.

You know, and was like a senior who was still like graduating. So it’s like, a lot of reasons why something might get selected. just, they’re just, they’re not feeling it. Maybe it’s too hard to shoot. Maybe other people who are, you know, more senior already, who knows? Maybe they just didn’t like it. But ⁓ Sandy was like, you know, we should maybe have her just work on that over the summer. You know, kind of like I had Colby work on his video game over the summer. And they get to be real, and I’m like, yeah, it’s probably, and.

And this is going to be a longer story, which I will maybe tell another time. ⁓ I said, well, a friend of a friend has a production company in Chicago. Maybe we have a work or maybe we shoot it over the summer. She’s like, you can do that. I’m like, I don’t see why not. I said, if we put some money up, I’m sure we could shoot a short. She’s like, OK. And so she’s like, well, why don’t we buy a

Izzy, see what she says. like, yeah, let’s see what she says. we, cause then it, cause it’s like doing something real, right? It’s like just writing a thing that you’re not ever going to do anything, but writing a screenplay you’re never going to shoot. feels sort of pointless, right? It’s kind of a, what are we even doing? But you’re actually going to shoot something. That’s a whole different thing. And so we get on the call and we’re like, so Izzy had this idea and we explain it to her.

And then there’s just this silence, then we hear, I would love that. And we never heard her saying it, I don’t think ever in our life. Because she’s a no girl. No girls say no, they don’t say, best they go fine. Okay fine, I’ll do the art class, or fine I’ll do the whatever that you want me to do.

Justin (1:34:40) Yeah.

Jason (1:34:52) if the trip torture will end. Right. And yeah, I mean, that’s a whole nother story. We’ll save that for a podcast that we shot at the summer, shot the short film, and I worked with her all summer on it as a whole thing. And it was awesome. Awesome. I mean, it was a huge unlock for her. It’s an incredible experience.

Justin (1:34:54) Yeah.

Jason (1:35:17) You know, I mean, we I mean, we would talk film and screenplay and dialogue and character arc and subtext. You know, our hour long dog walks every day and then our midnights, what I would call our midnight salon. So after Sandy would go to sleep and night she would she would be like, so dad, I’m thinking about the scene and then it would turn into like an hour and a half of. And every night, so I’m like, and she’s just.

flow experience, right? And this is a whole other thing we could talk about another time, it’s just, you know, and this has a whole arc to itself of filmmaking, which is direction she’s putting a bunch of applications, transfer applications to film schools.

Justin (1:36:08) Wow. Yeah, I’ve heard the story up until that point. That’s really exciting, actually. Wow. And you think about like where and what planted the seed was Sandy really just nudging her into… I mean, there’s a lot of things that nurtured this over the years, right? But it’s like it had to start somewhere and without Sandy and you in her life kind of nudging her towards these things. ⁓

Jason (1:36:09) Yeah.

Yeah.

It’s an Indy’s drip torture.

Justin (1:36:36) that are ultimately good for, you know, are gonna lead our into a happy area. It could have turned out much differently.

Jason (1:36:45) It’s funny, it’s like, I don’t even know how perceptive I was about the film. I think we did talk about it. Sandy would periodically say maybe Izzy should go to film school instead of normal college. Because Izzy didn’t want to go to college. She’s like, why do you want to college? It’s because my parents are making me. That’s why she went to college. Even though she’s on the honor roll. So she’s like, I don’t want to go.

Justin (1:37:03) Yeah.

Do think Sandy just, or Izzy talks about this stuff more with Sandy? Like they’ve had more, like, or I’m just thinking about like with Colby, you and him would talk more about software engineering, software development, right? Cause you’re, no? that’s true. That’s true. Yeah. No, that’s true. I did. I did. Yeah. was, was, it was kind of amazing how, well, I thought it was, I originally, I’m…

Jason (1:37:21) No, it’s easy and I would do lines from movies all day like we do reference to movies every day. You lived here, you saw what we You were too younger.

Justin (1:37:33) the record I’m very very bad at this so I thought it was amazing how you could almost get the lines like well you could you could get it like I don’t know like 80 like you you get the you get the the spirit of it but she’ll correct you on the on the technical details of of everything and yeah I guess it it uh that was kind of funny to watch yeah

Jason (1:37:41) Approximation.

Yeah.

It’s like a musical ear. I could sort

of like, you know that song and you could kind of maybe like a guitar, if you’re of guitarist, where someone actually could write down all the notes perfectly on a thing. You’re like, holy crap. You could just write, you could write the entire thing on the scales without ever, that’s amazing. Yeah, she has that kind of ability, whatever it is, but she’s a bit of an autist in that way. But so, yeah, the thing is that,

Justin (1:38:01) Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Jason (1:38:24) Sandy was just very keyed in on what, I who is he was? I don’t know. I think there’s like a mom level of just super awareness of their kids. like your mom just is new. Like your dad.

Justin (1:38:39) Yeah. Yeah, maybe something

about like picking up on clues a little better. Hints. mean guys are notoriously bad at picking up hints, right? Yeah.

Jason (1:38:48) I know people, how’d you miss that? I know people hate general relations like this, but I don’t know, it feels like it.

But she’s, at least for Sandy, she definitely saw it. And that’s why she kept kinda pushing on the film club. I probably never say anything more about it. I’m like, you know, you have fun at school? Do you make any friends? How’s class? know.

whatever, did you go to film club? But yeah, it’s the adults thinking way ahead, thinking, okay, I know who you are, even if you’re not quite aware who you are. And I know who you could be, who you would enjoy being. And I know that this could be really good for you in terms of expanding your life experience that isn’t just this limit, this is small.

the small limited experiences. Okay, know, Justin, you’re good at math. You do math. Like no, Justin, you also get with people. You’re good with kids. I think you would enjoy, I think you can explain. And she’s probably seeing these other things. She’s like, I know this about my son. This would expand him, help him mature, help him, you know, when you were like in high school or whatever. And she was right about all those things.

Justin (1:40:04) Yeah, yeah. I don’t see the big picture at the time at all. It’s like, don’t even if I, I don’t know, maybe she said something like that to me. Regardless whether she did or did not, it wouldn’t have made a difference because I would just in one ear out the other, like whatever. Like, are you talking math to me? No, you’re talking kids. I don’t, I don’t do that. But.

Jason (1:40:20) blow it off.

But also,

Mathnesium, not only the unlocked meditation, that’s where you met your wife.

Justin (1:40:32) That’s true. Yeah, we were both instructors at that Mathnasium. Yeah, it’s kind of insane.

Jason (1:40:37) There we go. Story’s for another time, but

that’s where you met your wife. It’s like expanding your world, your life experience, going out and doing things, has unlocks, all these unanticipated unlocks in life. And yeah, so. Well, we should probably wrap it up. I know we’ve been going for a long time, but. ⁓

Justin (1:40:59) Yeah,

yeah, well, all right, we’ve got plenty branches to continue on next time. So I’ll write those down.

Jason (1:41:04) Yeah.

All right, so we’ll call that episode five.

That’s a wrap. We’re out.

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