- [Sal] We're live.
Stand by.
Hi everyone, welcome to the Daily Homeroom live stream.
Sorry we're running a little bit late.
As you can see, I am in a different location.
I think I finally got the WiFi fixed in the house.
So we're gonna try this,
you might hear some screaming kids every now and then,
but that just'll add a little bit
of flavor to the experience.
Exciting show today, but before we get into the thick of it,
I will explain for those of you all who might
just be showing up for the first time what this thing is.
Khan Academy, we're not for profit,
and our mission is to provide a free,
world-class education for anyone, anywhere,
and when we saw, it seems like a lifetime ago,
but now five, six, seven weeks ago,
that we had these mass school closures,
not just in the US but around the world,
we saw given our mission,
given that we've been creating content and tools
to support parents, teachers, students
for the last 10 years,
that's it's really our duty to step up even more
during this crisis,
and so above and beyond all the learning materials
that'll hopefully keep folks learning,
we've been trying to do parent webinars, teacher webinars,
this live stream, just as a way to stay in touch.
As we go through the very exciting conversation today,
I encourage you put questions
for either myself or our guest,
who's a super teacher, on either Facebook or YouTube.
We have team members who are looking at those.
I do like to remind folks Khan Academy,
as I said, is a not-for-profit.
We exist because of philanthropic donations.
If you're in a position to do so,
please think about donating to Khan Academy.
I do want to give special thanks
to the several corporate partners who've stepped up
in the last few weeks to allow us to do this work.
We've been running at a deficit even before the crisis,
and you can imagine our costs have gone up.
We're seeing three times the server load
that we typically see,
and we're trying to accelerate a lot of programs,
so special thanks to Bank of America,
Google.org, AT&T, Fastly, Novartis,
and we need more help,
so anyone out there who wants to help us out more,
either as an individual donor or as a corporation,
please reach out.
So with that,
would love to get into the core of the program,
I'd love to introduce Conor Corey,
who's an incredible teacher
from the Centennial School District in Pennsylvania.
Conor, great to have you here.
- Thanks, Sal, I'm excited to be here.
- And first of all,
this is the launch of Teacher Appreciation Week,
so let me just tell you,
I think we all appreciated teachers before this,
or hopefully we should be,
and you're a super teacher
who we've been appreciating for many years,
and I think for many of us parents who now
have to handle our own kids in our house,
the level of teacher appreciation has gone up (laughs).
- (laughs) I agree--
- Thank you so much.
- I've been getting many positive emails from parents
that appreciate the help as they're confused
and stressed out as many of us are during this time.
- Yeah, so maybe a good place to start,
you're what's known as a Khan Academy Teacher Ambassador.
Tell us a little bit about what you teach,
tell us about your kids,
tell us about how you've been using Khan Academy
and what this means to be an ambassador.
- So this is my 17th year teaching,
and I spent the majority of my career teaching
with the Centennial Public School District,
and that's where I really discovered Khan Academy.
We were pretty under-funded and many of our students,
they didn't have a learning disability,
but they were maybe a year or a few years behind,
and Khan Academy always gave me the ability
to remediate content without having to fill out paperwork
or go find a different book,
but it was always free academic content,
and from there I continued making it
a larger and larger part of the curriculum,
and when the Ambassador Program came out a few years ago,
I applied to that and it's been fantastic.
There's, right now we have a thousand,
over a thousand people that donate their time
to help other teachers,
to show them just different ways to access
a variety of education.
When I first started, it was just math,
but it has become so much more and just,
I know parents that are using it in high school, college,
it's really been a huge help
for not only the education system, but for the world,
so I mean I've always fully supported this program,
maybe not financially but with my time (laughs).
- The way that you're supporting it
is as essential as anything,
and we really consider you a close part
of this Khan Academy team.
I think one of the things that is really,
you know you stood out as an ambassador for Khan Academy.
Obviously we've put those resources out there,
and we have efficacy studies that if students
are able to put in the time
they're able to accelerate their learning,
but the key question that we've been trying to answer this,
many people have been asking this
in this live stream and other places is,
"Well, how do we motivate kids to do it?"
Especially they're at home now,
it's not the same as being in a classroom,
what were your techniques before COVID
and then what tips do you have for parents and teachers
and even students themselves
to stay motivated during this crisis?
- Motivation's always been fun for me while I was teaching,
I always looked at it as,
our students are so drastically different
and come from different backgrounds.
I could buy an Xbox and put that as a prize
but then there's a kid in the class that has two Xboxes,
that doesn't motivate him,
so I always found that embarrassing yourself
as an adult for a child
or a reward they can't purchase
is something that will motivate all of them,
so over the years during LearnStorm
we've had kids throw water balloons at us,
we did something called the Wheel of Doom,
where we had 26 teachers sign up and the winning class,
each kid spun this wheel and whatever it landed on,
ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise,
we had a whole assembly,
they were able to squirt that in the teacher's face.
All for kind of laughs.
We had even one teacher and our vice principal
let us wax their leg with wax strips as a reward.
- Wow.
- We were running out of ideas as you could tell (laughs).
- You are a dedicated teacher.
- In school it's always,
I have the sense of humor of a middle school kid, so--
- Or maybe waxing your legs would not be quite as painful
as mine, I am, anyway (laughs).
- I don't know, it's pretty bad (laughs).
- Just extrapolate from my beard,
and you know what my legs look like, sorry TMI.
No that's fascinating, keep going.
- It's just all about finding out how we're just trying
to do the same things and trying to keep it,
that interaction with the students.
Yesterday they finished,
we timed how many,
many of the parents were nervous
they weren't prepared for 7th grade math.
I teach 6th grade math.
So they're very nervous with everything that's happened,
so I spent a week and only assigned them growth mindset
activities that we did earlier in the year
during LearnStorm.
I wanted to reinforce that, especially at this time,
and then last week I gave them some
7th grade assignments without much teaching.
I was like, "You have the background knowledge,
"I want you to try these things a few times,
"remember you're going to get them wrong,
"remember to practice what we did last week
"with growth mindset."
If you have--
(garbled audio drowns out speaker)
I would do the Blender Challenge,
and I would blend up seven things in my fridge
and drink it on camera for them,
and we had parents sign up also,
'cause I told them to sign their parents up,
but today I've watched eight different videos
of parents laughing with their kids,
blend up disgusting things in the fridge, all for math,
just to kind of get them laughing again
instead of just sitting around.
We've been trying to do stupid stuff like that
and I had a student now giving me requests.
I have two rules.
It has to be free and legal,
those are my only two rules and I'll do it (laughs).
- That's very, I love that,
because we always talk about motivation,
we usually think it has to be some deep,
psychological mind trick that you play with kids,
or maybe we do defer to the not-as-healthy of rewards,
like here's some sugar, here's some not-so-good screen time,
but what you're saying, this is really fun,
it's these memorable, quirky,
you just have to have a little bit of a willingness
to subject yourself to the whim of a child.
You accomplish this,
I as you parent or as your teacher am willing
to do what you want, something fun, quirky,
as long as it's legal and no one gets hurt, so to speak.
- Yeah, that a pretty tough (garbled speech).
- And related to that, this first question from Facebook,
Scott Yang asks, "Hi, Conor.
"How does it feel to teach from home?"
So you described what you were doing pre-COVID.
I am curious,
I think a lot of teachers and parents are curious,
so how are you keeping that same,
or can you keep that same level of energy
or connectedness with your students right now,
how are you trying to do that?
- I'm trying to,
I don't believe it's possible to do the same way,
because I can't see my student's face live as I'm,
I'm kind of recording my lessons and sending them
and answering questions when they record something back,
but I know when I'm in class
when Jacob's nodding and I'm talking,
he has no idea what I'm talking about,
and I just have to step in there.
But I can see when one student doesn't sit
with the friends they usually sit with
that maybe they're having a bad day
and something's going on,
and as teachers we're aware of those things,
and we really try to focus
on that social piece just as much.
It's very difficult this way, nowadays.
I'm fortunate enough to still have my employment,
but many of our parents have lost that,
and there's kids,
I have four children of my own throughout the house,
I can't believe they haven't interrupted us yet,
but they are usually,
we're trying to get everything organized
while I'm teaching as well and sharing the devices,
so it is difficult and it's high stress
and I think as parents, we need to give ourselves a break
from making sure every little thing is done,
and not to cause more stress than learning during this time.
But I'm trying to do my best.
I don't have all the answers, I can tell you that.
- How are you handling, personally,
I mean being able to keep your students engaged,
your full-time job,
trying to teach virtually however you can,
at the same time four kids at home,
how are you able to navigate that personally?
- Personally, I think I'm doing okay.
We have a great family, I have a loving wife,
she's very supportive,
and I try and keep my mindset and find the positives
in things that are going on,
and the positives of getting this much time
with my children and my family
and to really focus on that rather than the many negatives
that you can see on the news and the negative things
that are going on here in Pennsylvania,
as we have severely high cases of COVID,
and you hear stories of grandparents and parents
and hospitals that are overrun
and people are unfortunately passing away.
I think it's a good learning opportunity
for my children to work on ourselves
and make sure that we're just trying
to stay upbeat and to give yourself time.
I mean it's okay to meditate and give yourself 20 minutes
to think before your day starts.
It's very helpful,
and I think that helps people get through the stress.
- And what kind of a tempo are you having
with your students now,
like are you recommending,
so these are 6th graders,
are you recommending them do a certain amount
of Khan Academy or get certain goals,
it sounds like you're also recording
some of your own lessons,
are you also trying to do some Zoom or Google Meet,
what are the different ways,
how does that work right now for you with your students?
(garbled audio drowns out speaker)
- So the lesson will be on Khan Academy
where I use whatever topic,
we were doing circumference last week,
so I will teach it on this little board back here,
I know it looks like I'm in a fancy classroom,
but I'm actually in my basement.
Maybe you shouldn't be looking at this (laughs).
But I'll teach that and then
they can record videos back to me,
and I can answer their questions one-to-one
and I can see how they're doing
on Khan Academy assignments that I send to them,
and through Khan Academy,
'cause I'm able to track that data.
I'm able to also set challenges for them,
either the amount of assignments done
or I have them set personal goals for themselves to work on
and that's where I'll use the time piece
more than the actual assignments
since they're on various levels.
- Yeah, and what advice would you have,
I thought you had some really good personal advice
on just how all of us could navigate the situation.
What advice do you have for other teachers
that are feeling a little bit overwhelmed,
like how do you navigate this,
how do you keep your kids learning,
can you even try to do
what you would typically do in a normal environment?
- I think if you focus on one platform
they already feel comfortable with,
something they are familiar with.
Every teacher is getting things from their district,
"Try this, try this,"
just as every parent is getting a million new apps
that they're able to use or a million different ways
to find curriculum that aligns,
but it's so overwhelming for not only the teacher
who hasn't had to use maybe the digital textbook
or hasn't had to use some of these digital things,
but also the parent.
(garbled speech)
- Conor, your connection's chopping up a bit,
which is unfortunate,
maybe we'll be able to bring you on a little bit,
I think it just got a little bit worse,
but what we'll do is, I'll wind down here,
I'll tell everyone, "Please feel free to ask questions
"for either myself or Conor,"
and I'll go into a little bit of a Ask Me Anything mode,
but Conor if your internet is not choppy,
any parting thoughts for folks on how to teach or learn,
maybe what message would you have for students
in this environment who are trying to learn
and at the same time deal with everything else?
- I think trying to learn in this environment,
you really have to focus on growth mindset,
and for our older students
to look through Khan Academy's career section,
I think that is a fantastic way to see a linear path
of what you possibly want to do after high school
and those steps for them,
and for them to see the steps they need to take is valuable,
to know that, what they have to do now to achieve that,
and kind of the self-learning that's going on
all over the globe currently.
- Yeah, now Conor, thank you so much,
and I hope we can continue this conversation
when the internet gods (laughs) give us better conditions.
I've been there myself many times,
so thank you so much, Conor.
- Thank you.
- So as y'all can see,
this is a very authentic show we do here.
We're all dealing with the complexities
of being socially distanced.
If anyone has questions,
I'm happy to answer them in classic Ask Me Anything style.
One thing that Conor mentioned a couple of times
that I'm sure a lot of y'all are focused on
but it's definitely something I think about
is a growth mindset.
How does he give growth mindsets to his students,
or how does he even have one himself,
and that's just this notion that you either
believe you're good at certain things
and not good at certain things, that's a fixed mindset,
or you think you have a growth mindset.
The only way you know what you're good at
is by pushing yourself and failing
and reflecting on those failures and trying again,
really pushing yourself out of your comfort zone.
And disproportionately in any field,
the people who do well aren't necessarily the people
who had a strong starting point.
They're the people who have a growth mindset,
who are always pushing themselves out of their comfort zone,
and the more you realize that,
the more you realize that your brain is like a muscle,
the more you use it, the stronger it gets,
that it's actually when you fail
and you reflect on that failure
that you form the most neural connections.
You actually are getting smarter in that way when you fail,
then you can really start to exercise that growth mindset,
so it's a super important idea
that we talk a lot about in this live stream.
So we're getting some questions,
it looks like these are for me from Facebook.
Qazi Aakash Ahmad asks, "Greeting, Mr. Khan,
"how does Khan Academy help you make up your life?
"I mean you have to spend your part of life for others,
"I hope it gets answered."
You're getting answered (laughs),
so that hope is coming true.
You know, it's I think generous when people say,
"Oh Sal, you're putting time in your life for Khan Academy,"
but for me I consider myself
the luckiest person on the planet.
I don't think there's a more rewarding thing that I can do.
I get to work with an incredible team,
I get to work with incredible teachers
like the one that you just saw, and administrators,
to try to help millions or tens or hundreds of millions
of students over time learn,
so I think it's a very fortunate thing,
I pinch myself that I get to work on this,
especially considering 10 years ago, 11 years ago,
I was just one guy in a walk-in closet.
The fact that Khan Academy now has so many other people
being able to help and so many people
who are hopefully benefiting from it makes it a huge deal.
In terms of balancing, I think that's just a trick in life.
You heard the teacher just now talk a little bit about that,
but it's,
when you care passionately about a mission, that's valuable,
but it can easily become all-encompassing,
so one thing that I work on in my life is
how do I balance these two things,
how do I make sure that I always have time for my family,
time for my kids,
where my brain isn't talking,
thinking about the next thing at Khan Academy,
the next thing to do,
where I can really be present in the moment.
That's I think the best way of having a balance.
So, from YouTube, Sebastian Ruiz asks,
"How do you cope with all the things going on?"
So you know, a lot of people these days
whenever you get on a phone call with anyone, they're like,
"Oh, well how are you doing in the crisis?"
My answer has been, I think this is hard on everyone,
but relatively speaking I'm very, very lucky.
I have my job, obviously my wife is super supportive,
my mother-in-law lives with us, and so together,
and my children's teachers are doing heroic jobs,
amazing jobs at keeping our kids
learning and staying engaged.
So that combination of support is really, really valuable
as we're trying to work from home,
and sometimes your five-year-old might be having a tantrum.
Most of the time we can kind of have each other's backs,
and take care of each other.
I think that plus, you know,
I've talked about it this live stream before,
I do a lot of meditation,
I've been doing it for about a year-and-a-half now,
and the meditation really can help you
not get caught up in some of the stresses
that this crisis might be putting on folks.
The other thing I say is try to focus
on what is in your zone of control,
what you actually can help do.
Sometimes you can get very overwhelmed
by what's going on in the broader world,
so it is useful of course to know what's going on,
watch the news, but don't do too much of that (laughs),
'cause if you do too much of that,
you can start to feel very powerless and very helpless.
So say, "What's in my zone of control?
"What can I do, to quote 'Frozen 2,'
"what's the next right thing to do?"
And just try to do that, but you know,
as was just said, there is a silver lining.
I'm able to spend a lot more time
with my kids, with my wife.
Between meetings I can make the bed
or do some dishes or go for a walk,
so there is a bit of a silver lining there,
I think there's some family time,
some down time that is happening that otherwise,
it's always a go go go type of situation.
So from YouTube, Afton Kid 12 says,
"Hey Sal, what is the best way to learn
"Honors Algebra One as a 6th grader in school?"
Well what I would do is, well there's a couple things,
if you're a 6th grader, I would go to Khan Academy,
and if you've already mastered 6th grade
or if you find it easy,
go to the 7th grade course on Khan Academy.
And if you think you can accelerate through that,
you can use the course challenges,
which you can take as many times as you want
to accelerate through things.
You can take unit tests and then as you accelerate
through that do 8th grade.
8th grade actually has a lot of overlap with Algebra One,
but then go through 8th grade,
and then you can go into the Algebra One on Khan Academy.
Now if you feel like you're prepared,
you could go straight to Algebra One,
try to engage in those first units,
and if it's making sense keep going.
But what I would say is, try to find what you need,
use the course challenges and unit tests
to accelerate as necessary,
and then the most important thing is make a habit out of it,
and this is advice for everyone regardless of whether
you're tackling 3rd grade math, Algebra One,
or Calculus, or Biology, whatever.
As long as you're able to put consistently
20, 30, 40 minutes in a day, over time,
and let's say you're able to do that
at least four or five days a week,
over time you're going to see
that pays huge, huge, huge dividends.
Other more tactical advice I would have is,
focus on the practice, get that mastery,
but the videos are obviously there to help you,
but the best way to watch videos
is not to watch them passively, it's to watch them actively.
So think about it, if a problem shows up in a video,
pause the video.
Many times in the videos I make
I tell you to pause the video.
Do that, try to work it out on your own.
If once, say I'm making the video,
and you see it's worked through, try to pause it,
see if you can do it yourself on your own.
And these are just good practices,
these are things I used to do in school
where if the teacher ran through a proof or did an example,
I would either try to do it
before the teacher did it on the board,
that was very active,
or once they did it I would then not look at their work
and try to see if I could replicate their thought process.
So if you have that active learning with the videos,
you've worked on the exercises,
you've put that 30, 40 minutes a day,
you don't stop learning,
you keep learning through the summer,
I have no doubt,
especially given that you're asking this question
and you seem quite eager to keep learning,
which is awesome, don't lose that eagerness,
I think you're gonna do just fine.
And you can also look at some learning plans
we have for Algebra One.
You can look up learning plans, Khan Academy,
you'll see the one for Algebra One.
It can pace you between now
and the start of next school year
to see how you can pace through that,
but I'm confident that if you're motivated
and you put that 20, 30 minutes a day in
you're going to do just fine, Afton Kid 12.
Qazi Ahmad from Facebook is asking,
"Is there any chance for online education
"to replace institutional?"
This is a fascinating question.
I've been getting a lot of this in the press lately.
I think for K12 or PreK12, no.
I think, you know, we just saw an amazing teacher.
The types of experiences you can get in a classroom,
you're not going to be able to replicate that with online,
because education isn't just about learning
how to factor a polynomial
or learning the steps of photosynthesis.
There's a whole aspect of socialization,
of learning to work with others, learning to communicate,
and most students need some extra motivation, some coaching,
ways to get unblocked when they get blocked.
There's a lot to learning that goes
beyond just understanding the concepts.
There's a lot that's going on at a metacognitive level,
and so I've said this many times,
this is Teacher Appreciation Week,
so I think it's a good time to re-say it,
if I had to pick between an amazing teacher
or amazing technology for my own kids,
I would pick an amazing teacher every time.
In fact that's why I started a school.
I started Khan Academy,
but I so strongly believe in the physical experience
that we started a school that
has many amazing teachers in it,
so I would pick an amazing teacher every time.
Now the good thing is we don't have to make that trade-off.
The ideal is amazing technology
in support of amazing teachers,
and so that's everything we try to do at Khan Academy,
that's why we are so close
to all these amazing teacher ambassadors
who give us feedback how we can be better.
And then support to allow those teachers
to differentiate to the needs of those 30 students,
to understand that every student
has different levels of preparedness,
learns at different rates,
and to allow students to get that,
which would have been very hard as a teacher by themselves.
So I don't think it's a replacement.
Now when you get into,
there are circumstances in the world
where kids in some war-torn place or refugee camp
where they don't have access to school,
well those cases, yes,
online can be a very good thing to keep people learning.
There's situations right now because of COVID
where certain school systems haven't been able
to support their students as much as others.
Well there online learning obviously
is a very powerful way to keep students learning.
And then as you get into almost adulthood
or being a young adult or an adult,
that's where I think online learning can be very powerful.
There's very powerful things about going to college.
I have very fond memories,
once again a lot of the socialization and all that,
but for some young adults or even not-so-young-adults,
they might say, "Hey, I have a job,
"I have to support my family, I need more flexibility,"
and that's where online learning can be super useful.
So simple answer is,
I hope that they can always work together,
kind of a blended experience, the best of both worlds.
That learning does not have to be bound by time and space,
but some of the richest experiences
can happen in the physical environment,
but even there part of the richness comes
from the ability to leverage tools,
online tools like Khan Academy.
So Irada Irmo from YouTube is asking,
"Can you talk about taking responsibility
"such as becoming a doctor but you don't have
"the confidence or consistent study habits?"
Well, Irada, I will just say it's all about forming a habit.
It's all about, you know,
one of my good friends from school's name is Charles Duhigg,
he wrote a very popular book, "The Power of Habit."
But you know there is science
that habits tend to form over,
let's call it five, six, seven weeks,
and so what I would do is, I would pick a goal.
Don't try to solve the whole goal overnight,
that could be paralyzing,
don't try to binge-study or cram, but say,
"Hey, everyday I'm gonna spend 20, 30, 40, 50
minutes a day towards that goal."
And if you do that for six or seven weeks,
you're gonna build that habit
and then you're going to see the gains,
and that's going to help your confidence.
I talked about growth mindset before.
Growth mindset is all about you don't say
I'm good at this or not good at this,
I'm capable or not capable, you're like,
"I just have to keep chipping away at it,
"I have to keep stepping out of my comfort zone,
"if I get something wrong, if I fail, I shouldn't give up."
That isn't somehow me saying, "Oh, I'm no good at this."
That's when I should say,
"Oh, awesome, I just learned about my learning edge,
"let me reflect on why I failed there
"or why I got that wrong, and let me keep trying."
And you will be shocked, if you just keep persevering,
eventually you will get through those barriers,
and you'll like, "Whoa, what was the big deal there?"
and I gotta tell you,
the biggest skill in life,
yes it's nice to have hard skills,
to know how to factor a polynomial
or science or writing well,
but the most important thing in life
is that resiliency and having that growth mindset.
If you have that,
and you're always just, you keep in motion,
powering forward, then frankly you'll be unstoppable.
And I'll say another thing, you know it's very tempting,
especially while you're in school,
where you're always measured by test scores
and this and that,
and there's so much importance on them
that it's very easy to assume,
"Oh, I keep getting a 95.
"That person two desks down always gets a 98.
"They're always going to be better than me
"because they always score better on tests."
And what you see as soon as you enter into the real world,
it doesn't work out that way.
The people who do well are the people
with the growth mindsets who don't give up,
who believe in themselves, have that resilience.
If I go back into my own schooling and see,
yes doing well in school matters and it correlates,
but it's not like you should just stack rank yourself
against other people and say that's the ranking
that's going to be forever.
It has a lot more to do with mindset
than it has to do with any fixed mindset notion
of quote innate ability
which frankly I don't really subscribe to.
So anyway, hopefully that helps,
and I realize that I'm all out of time,
so I just want to give a special thanks to Conor Corey.
Amazing teacher, amazing teacher ambassador,
I think he had some great advice.
Unfortunately, the sound was clipping out a little bit,
but hopefully we'll be able to get him on
in the not-too-far-off future.
But I just want to wish everyone out there,
especially the amazing teachers of the world,
Happy Teacher Appreciation Week.
You do amazing work all the time,
and I think this week you're continuing to do amazing work,
or this time, COVID time,
I think many of us parents have even higher appreciation,
so thank you for doing what you do.
There's no single higher leverage point
for helping humanity, in my opinion,
than your ability to empower all of our collective children.
So with that, thank you so much,
and I look forward to seeing all of y'all
at the live stream tomorrow.