Hi,
I'm a first time poster but wanted to share a recent experience I think a lot of gifted parents go through. I have a 7th grade son in a Gifted and Talented Education program in a public school in Southern California. The quality of teaching and curriculum in GATE is superior to the rest of public school but I still was frustrated by the lack of depth of instruction, especially in Math and Science subjects. I think my son's math teacher is good, just stretched too thin with 5 different classes of 35 kids with varying levels of abilities and motivation. I wanted an instructor to teach the in depth why and how instead of just covering the basics and assigning problems from the book.
I hired a tutor from Craig's List (had some reservations but he ended up being a nice kid from a local college) and looked into a number of local tutoring and learning centers. None of these options really wowed me and the scheduling and travel was really inconvenient. Then a friend at work recommended this new online tutoring site, moonlyt.com. They have a bunch of tutors from MIT, Harvard, Princeton, etc and the prices were very reasonable (the young man from Harvard we hired is $20/hour). I sat in the background during my son's first 5 sessions and was blown away by the patience, knowledge and abilities of our tutor. The best part is that my son gets to interact with a real life Harvard student which I think has inspired him and convinced him that he eventually wants to go to Harvard as well (don't we all....) It is also really convenient because all the tutoring is done over a skype type video chat on the site. The one negative was that I found the site a little confusing at first and navigation took some getting used to.
Anyways, I hope this helps other parents that are in my shoes. So far, we could not be more pleased with Moonlyt. I would highly recommend it to others.
- David
