What it means to teach gifted learners well
I’m not gifted at all (well around here at least). When I was a kid my parents found a retired Russian maths professor to tutor me. In reality he was more like a mentor, he was the first ‘intellectual’ I had ever met.  He spent time building telescopes, translating Pushkin into English and producing educational maths videos (this was long before youtube or MOOCs). He introduced me to astronomy and computers among other things (we didn’t have one in the house until he told my folks they must buy a Macintosh Classic). He really had a big influence on me. I still remember with great fondness eating Russian dumplings at his kitchen table with his asthmatic dog Boris at our feet. He was one of the few adults in my life to whom I wasn’t related that I spent time with. I realise this is quite rare actually - families seem to have become more insular in the last 25 years, a lot of kids don’t have any relationships with other adults who aren’t family.<p>Anyway, I think that many, perhaps most kids need mentors&#x2F;coaches. Parents can only do so much, and teenagers don’t want to listen to their parents anyway. Gifted learners surely aren’t any different. The ‘content’ problem seems solved - there is just so much interesting stuff out there, and so many great resources. The guidance and encouragement and diversity of influences is what is missing. This seems very hard or impossible to scale up.