Welcome ACX Readers!

Why this writing might be interesting for you

I expect most of you found this post from my review of the Alpha School in the ACX “not-a-book-review” contest.

Up until now I have had to remain anonymous, but now that I am free to reveal my identity I am going to write at least two specific follow-ups to the Alpha School review:

1. Response to the comments (there are currently 712 comments. This may take more than one post)

2. Follow-up on the last six months (Changes at the Alpha/GT school, Spring and Fall MAP testing, “what do I think now?")

I can also answer other questions people have. Feel free to drop them in the comments below (If you asked a question in the original post I should get to it in my “response to comments” post, but if you want to be sure, or want to “jump the queue”, post it here).

For some of you the follow-up posts may be reason enough to subscribe to this newsletter in the short term, but allow me to make a pitch on why you may (or may not) want to read the other stuff I will be posting here over the next twelve months.

My Obsession(s)

I was pleasantly surprised when my Alpha review went on went viral on education-twitter¹. It actually led to Joe Liemandt, Alpha’s co-founder, coming out of his two-decade long media blackout². I chalk up most of the interest in my review to general fascination with the Alpha model rather than anything special about my own writing. Susan Sontag wrote that a great writer must be four people:

1. The Obsede [The obsessed]

2. The Moron

3. The Stylist

4. The Critic

Sontag claims that in order to be a good writer you need to be both obsessed to collect the material and a moron to share it — the table stakes. If you can become excellent at style and self criticism you can become a “great writer” (the reverse does not work). I think I can safely say that, according to her criteria, my willingness to share my obsessions makes me a good writer. I work hard on the the latter two, but I am under no illusions that I will ever be “great”.

But if you happen to be interested in whatever my recent obsession happens to be, you may want to stick around.

I have gone through a number of obsessions in my life. I spent 2019-2022 focused on trying to get generative AI to write comedy³. I spend most of 2023 exploring optimizations in health and wellness.⁴

My current year-long obsession has been optimizing learning. I don’t seem to be in conscious control of my obsessions, but this one shows no signs of slowing down

As we were making plans to move to Austin to attend the Alpha School, we made a last minute pivot and chose to attend their brand new sister school focused on the Gifted and Talented (GT School). As part of my “research” I spoke to the guide who built the GT program who told me the school was going to focus on national “competitive academics”. At the time I thought national academic competitions were limited to debate, math olympiad, science fairs and chess. But I should have known better. We live in a world of plenty.

It turns out there are hundreds of academic competition national championships in every niche imaginable.

I asked my then 9-year old daughter what academic competition she might be interested in. She responded with, “Is there one for history?”

I had no idea. But I checked and there definitely was.

So in late September 2024 while we were living in Montenegro before moving to Austin I started coaching my daughter in the History Bee.

I had no idea what I was doing.

At one point I went to a stationary store, cut up some cardboard (the store did not have cue cards)⁵ and spent hours hand writing flashcards (terrible flashcards). My plan was to use the “Leitner Method” of five “boxes” of cards. The whole thing was a mess. But she learned something, and managed to compete — and win — her first regionals when we got back to Austin⁶.

I documented our journey — and my obsession — in this newsletter. Over the course of the year I learned a LOT about how to learn.

I knew that there were kids who lived and breathed history. And while Everest enjoyed it, she was not obsessive. And she had a lot of other interests. She was not going to spend hours every day studying. If she was going to have any chance to do well in this competition she would need to study smarter. I saw that as my job.

I read academic literature. I leveraged AI. I interviewed former quiz-competition champions. I interviewed education experts (including Brandon Hendrickson, 2023’s ACX Book Review winner).

Over the course of the year I discovered and operationalized a series of tools that allowed her to learn faster and more efficiently with each iteration. Some of those tools were being used by the Alpha/GT school (although I mostly discovered them independently and used them differently than the school):

• Retrieval practice

• Spaced repetition

• Mastery

• Direct Instruction

• Scaffolding

I also discovered many techniques that the school has not incorporated (at least not yet):

• Stereotypes, archetypes and caricatures

• Memory Palaces

• Targeted curation

• “Pavlovs”

Along the way I shared a lot of what I learned here. My most popular post by far was how to use memory palaces to learn all the presidents (Not only did Everest beat every other kid at the national championships on every president question, her 3-year old brother also learned all the presidents all using this technique — which is definitely the best “party trick” I have pulled off with my kids so far). I followed my presidents post with a walk through of how we used the same technique to learn Chinese History. I also wrote a two part series on on my experience teaching a classroom of kids how to use memory palaces and spaced repetition (part 1, part 2). My personal favorite post was my debrief of what happened at Nationals — “Learning how to lose”.

After Nationals Everest shared her own story about “learning how to learn” in a very well received Tedx talk. Then we made a trip to Paris for the world championship where she broke the record for the most medals won by a girl in the history of the competition. That achievement got her on a number of podcasts and television shows — including The Jennifer Hudson Show.

The point is, is that the techniques work. They have been proven effective “in the arena”.

This year Everest is planning to compete again in the History Bee, but is also going to throw her hat into the ring to try and medal in the Humanities Bee, the American Citizenship Bee and the Geography Bee. Her school is also competing in Quizbowl this year, where they will all try and use these techniques to make a run at Middle School National Championship (as a team of elementary students). There first competition is this upcoming weekend.

Once I finish following up on the Alpha review, posts here will be a mix of updates on our progress on competitive academics and what I am learning about operationalizing learning techniques.

If that sounds interesting to you, stick around.

Keep Learning,

Edward (and Everest)

1. I have heard that being the “Twitter Story of the Day” is a terrible experience. But I can tell you that it is not so bad when you are anonymous

2. When I wrote the review I did not realize that Joe’s involvement in Alpha was not public. When MacKenzie (the other co-founder) told me what I had done, I tracked down Joe and apologized for ‘outing him’. That was never my intention.

3. Many people said it was impossible. To this day most comedians reject it out of hand. But it is a very powerful tool if you know how to prompt it, and it is getting better all the time. That obsession allowed me to be at the forefront when ChatGPT launched. I picked up some consulting income, but the biggest benefits were the early investments I made.

4. My forced rank verdict for improving health and longevity: GPL-1s, VO2 Max improvement, electro-muscular stimulation (EMS), rapamycin, hormone replacement. Easily the highest “personal ROI” of any of my obsessions. I lost 50-pounds while putting on muscle and radically improving all of my vitality metrics.

5. We were living in Kotor, Montenegro at the time. There was no Amazon and the local stores had limited selection. I worked with what I had.

6. While true, this overstates the achievement. There were only three elementary aged kids competing — one 4th (my daughter), one 5th, and one sixth. Since you compete by grade all three kids came in first. But she did manage to beat the 6th grader in the final.