The Trial — for Adam

Read this once. You can come back to it any time from the morning brief.

The deal — in your dad's words

"It means I have zero involvement in your home schooling. Only:

no PC, no phone between 9:00 and 13:30, and

you pass an automated test online every day.

You find how to learn and how to make it work."

That's the entire deal. Read it twice.

What the trial is

For four days — Tuesday May 12 through Friday May 15 — you are running your own school. Not the idea of running your own school. The actual thing.

Plan on 3 to 4 hours of focused work per day, somewhere inside the 9:00 – 13:30 window. That's enough to learn the day's material and take the exam without rushing. Less than that and you are gambling. More than that and you are probably not focusing.

Every morning you'll open teacher.ninja/daily/<today's date> and find:

A short brief that tells you what today's exam will cover.
Worked examples for each kind of problem so you know what good thinking looks like.
New facts for today (a few elements, a few wars, a few evolution events).
Links to lesson pages with every detail you could want.

Then you decide — you, not us — how to prepare.

When you're ready, you take the exam. You pick Version A or Version B. Each version is single-attempt — once you submit one, you cannot retake that same version. After you finish one, you can choose to take the other version too on the same day if you want; it's optional and not required.

That's the whole trial. Four days, your exams, total ownership.

The rules

You are responsible for:

Reading the brief carefully every morning.
Studying whatever you need, in whatever order makes sense to you.
Choosing when to take the exam.
Writing notes on the questions that bother you (more on this below).

You may use:

The lesson pages linked from the brief.
The Fractions Lab at /fractions.
A pencil and paper. (Strongly recommended.)
Any printed book or note we already have at home.

You may not:

Ask a parent for hints.
Ask a sibling.
Ask any person, anywhere, online.
Look up a specific answer to a specific exam question on the internet.

You may read about the topic. You may not type the exam question into a search engine to get the answer.

The Note field

Every question on every exam has a Note box. Use it. Some good notes:

"I had no idea how to do this — the lesson didn't help me here."
"I think the answer should be 7 but I'm not sure."
"This was easy, I felt confident."
"This question is unfair because [reason]."
"I guessed."

The notes are how we know what to fix in the lessons. They are also how you tell us, after the exam, where the trial broke down. Notes do not hurt your score. Empty notes do not hurt your score either. Use them honestly.

What a good day looks like

A good day looks something like:

9:00 — read the brief slowly. Don't rush.
9:15 — read the lessons for the new topics. Try the worked examples on paper, with the answer covered.
10:30 — break, breakfast, walk around, whatever.
11:00 — quick re-read of anything you felt shaky on. Drill weak spots.
12:00 — pick a version and start the exam. No phone, no music with lyrics, just the screen.
~12:30 to 13:00 — submit. Read your results. Tell your parents what you thought after you submit, not before. The day's screen time is over at 13:30 — no exceptions.

You can do it any other way you want, as long as it fits in the 9:00 – 13:30 window and adds up to roughly 3-4 hours of real work. That's the point.

What a bad day looks like

Skipping the brief and clicking "Begin Exam" right away.
Getting frustrated and asking us for help anyway. (Don't.)
Not writing any notes when you're confused.
Pretending the exam went better or worse than it did.

If you have a bad day, say so in the notes. We'll read every one.

When something is broken (not hard — broken)

You'll see a red "Report a problem" button in the bottom-right corner on every daily page. Use it for things like:

A question is graded wrong (you put the right answer and it says wrong).
The page won't load, a button won't click, the layout looks weird.
A typo or wrong fact in a lesson.

Don't use it to ask for help on a question — write that in the note next to the question instead. The reports go straight to your dad's inbox; that's the only channel where he'll respond during the day, and only for things that are actually broken.

If a question is just hard, leave a note on the question. That's the honest channel.

What happens after the exam

The system records everything: how long you took, which questions you got right, which you got wrong, every note you wrote, and whether you opened a lesson while answering. As soon as you submit, all of that is sent to your parents in an automatic summary email — they read it after you finish, not before.

This is the only way the "zero involvement" deal works. They don't hover. The exam result speaks for itself.

If you wrote nothing in your notes and got everything wrong, that will show. If you struggled honestly and your notes show you tried, that will also show. The notes are how you talk back without breaking independence.

Final thing

There is no grade you have to hit. We're not going to be angry about a score. We are going to be disappointed if you don't take it seriously, and we will be impressed when you write thoughtful notes.

You're going to be fine. Begin.