9,999 XPs in 12 months. An honest review of @_MathAcademy_ . A 12yr old's journey from Pre-Algebra to Integrated Math II Honors (and more). We first came across Math Academy from one of @jliemandt's many podcasts when he talked about the tools that Alpha School uses. Living in Thailand, Alpha School is obviously out of reach for us, but we were very curious about some of the ai-driven platforms within the Alpha stack. Aside from the many internal tools, there were some external ones that caught our attention. @Austin_Way had a fantastic summary of 'The Alpha App Stack' (link in next post). Very quickly, we found our way to @justinskycak's X feed and his Magnus Opus, 'The Math Academy Way'. Rabbit hole, here we come. We signed up for MA, did the diagnostic, Sandy (MA co-founder) reached out to make sure we were satisfied and reassure that she was there if we had any questions. (good touch!) 12 months and 9,999XPs later, he's still "locked in" and loves it. In the beginning, I sat down with him through most of his sessions. We aimed for 20 minute stretches (or until he was done). Never pushed in and tried to coach him through any questions. Intention was to have fun yet find the right discipline/motivation. Our primary goal in the beginning was simply: can we provide him the right tools and environment to work his way towards mastery of a subject (and is he even interested?). It was tempting to step in and help, especially during the quiz, but we resisted. As @justinskycak often mentions, stepping in will fool the system and the actual knowledge gaps will continue to compound which make it harder down the road. Once we started getting more serious, we came up with a 'Math Academy Bank'. We wanted a small incentive scheme to encourage discipline. After brainstorming with Sandy and @NielsHoven a bit (thank you!), we came up with a structure (details in following post) and it seems to work, especially in the beginning. Now I have an Accounts Payable and he has yet to claim his reward! External motivation -> Internal? Perhaps. Overall, ai-driven mastery learning feels like a game. It also feels like a brain workout. It also feels like you have access to world-class tutoring at any time of the day for however long you want. It also feels like a tutor with unlimited patience that doesn't judge you but instead coaches you using best practices (active recall, spaced repetition, etc). The Knowledge Graph and the leaderboard also feel like a game. You're always 'leveling up'. Getting things wrong and having the quiz don't seem intimidating. MA has found a way to reframe getting things wrong as simply, 'lacking the right prerequisites'. A nice frame that applies to many things beyond just MA. Sometimes, though, MA wasn't able to provide further clarification and I didn't know the answer. So we set up one dedicated Grok conversation with guardrails (post below) to address two things: 1) 'Ongoing Math Q&A' and 2) Real life applications. This was our best in-house makeshift alternative to Rocky from Recess as a third-party add-on @ben_m_somers @Eliana_Goldin. @justinskycak says it's an 'Alien-level skill hack' when pairing math/coding/ai alongside domain specific interest. Let's see where this journey takes him, but so far, we absolutely love MA and are thankful to the entire team. My son has tasted what it's like to have a secret self-study and grind it like a video game. Perhaps this taste of agency in Math (and not limited to the level of his traditional classroom setting) may spark something else. Time will tell! Summary: We LOVE Math Academy. ps we didn't realize MA would make a child do a 'quick review' at 4am after watching a World Cup match, just to "lock in some XPs". I guess MA does that to you.