- Hey, everyone!
Welcome to our webinar.
My name is Lauren Quan, and I'm on the Khan Academy team.
Today, I am joined by my coworker, Dan Tieu,
and our special guest, Conor Corey.
Conor is an expert teacher, a parent,
and a Khan Academy ambassador,
which means he's a Khan Academy power user.
He's gonna be sharing his tips and advice
on student motivation.
But before we get started,
I wanted to thank our sponsors,
Bank of America, AT&T, Google.org, Novartis, and Fastly
for their support of this webinar
and our other remote learning resources.
And a few other notes for you to know.
This webinar will be recorded and sent to you via email
a few hours after the session ends,
and if you have questions at any point during the webinar,
feel free to enter them in the question box.
And we have staff available to answer your questions.
We're also gonna save time at the end
for live Q and A with Conor.
And lastly, you might be wondering
about the age range for this webinar.
So Conor will be sharing tips that can be useful
for parents of kids of all ages.
So with that, let's get started.
I'm thrilled to have Conor here to share his advice.
Conor, can you share a little bit about yourself
and your background?
- Hi, Lauren.
Thanks for having me, everybody.
Yes, I've now been a math educator mostly teaching
middle school math and fifth grade math for--
This is my 17th year, and by far this is the toughest year
for myself and my students.
Right now, I also have four children of my own
and it is chaos for myself to teach
and try to keep up with--
Three of them are in school, one is in preschool,
but to keep up with all of their assignments
and to keep up to make sure they're handing things in
and to fully change the role
from not only my students' teacher to my own children,
it's been very difficult.
And I look forward to the opportunity.
Hopefully, I can help and just maybe some of the things
that I'm doing around here,
but I may not have all the answers.
I can kinda just tell you from my own experience
with teaching and being a parent at the same time,
that hopefully you can see both sides of the spectrum.
- Fantastic.
And yeah, Conor as you mentioned, a lot of parents
are finding themselves stepping into the role of teachers
for the first time, and we're hearing so many questions
from parents about ways to motivate their kids.
So what advice would you give to parents who are wondering,
"How do I motivate my kids to be interested in learning?"
- It's a great question and it's a difficult question.
There's not really one answer
that's going to motivate children across the board.
Especially for even myself, I'm gonna tell you
that all of my kids are eating ring pops upstairs
just to avoid me for a half hour of coming down here
so I can do this,
and many parents are in that same situation.
But to motivate students and your own children,
I've always kinda tied it to some sort of incentive.
And it's never really a financial incentive.
It's always just your time or something
that they really are interested in,
and it does not have to be academic related.
It could be something as simple as,
you finish all your schoolwork today,
then you get to pick tonight's movie.
Or my daughter is, I do construction
in the summertime usually
and my daughter's very interested in power tools,
when she sees me building.
So I'm teaching her how to use those
when she finishes her stuff.
I know my wife, who has probably never played a video game
in her life, but my son and I will play Madden.
He's in third grade and we will play all the time
because I'm a giant child.
But my wife has started to play against him,
and he doesn't care if I play anymore.
He wants to play her because it's so different for him
to see her in that type of environment,
taking interest in what he's interested in,
and that has been motivating for him.
So I think if you just try to find something
your child is interested in,
that you usually would not participate in
or you kinda let them participate with their friends.
You know, they're not really around their friends anymore,
so they need somebody that wants
to just reinforce their interests,
and I think that's a big motivator,
and you can kinda tie that to their academics.
- Mhmm, I love those creative ideas
that you've shared there.
Another question that we're hearing a lot is,
how do I keep my kids focused and engaged in learning?
- Focus and engaged, it's kind of one of the hardest parts.
Parents have just been given an unrealistic expectation
to automatically become their teacher.
To automatically have mastered grade level content
in not one subject, but four or five or six subjects.
I know for myself as a teacher,
I am a master of middle school math,
but if you give me an eighth grade biology test,
I am not gonna do well. (laughs)
So, when you're just pushing all the sudden
all of this on parents, they're very stressed out.
And their children fully understand
that they don't get the concepts or the content as much.
My suggestion for this is to try
to learn something with them.
For instance with Khan Academy, I always tell parents,
I did kind of like an experiment a few years ago,
where I asked parents to master their child's
fifth or fourth, their child's content on Khan Academy,
so their child's grade level.
And what I found from that was amazing.
Most parents have bought out of math after third grade.
It becomes, "Oh my god,
"I don't know how they're teaching you this.
"I don't know this new style of math."
But the linear approach that Khan Academy
gives to learn anything
was fantastic for them to see that,
okay this is how they're teaching math.
It's just something, if you try fourth grade math
and your child may be in seventh or eighth grade,
and they're doing seventh or eighth grade,
you can kinda do it alongside them
for 15 minutes a day, 10 minutes a day.
That has been a huge help with understanding
where to find relevant content
when your child has any misunderstanding
because it doesn't have to be in math.
It could be in science, chemistry, in history, in SAT prep,
all of that is available.
But if you're looking for a video to help your child,
you may go through Google
and you'll have 30 different websites
and you start to find one you don't know
how relevant or accurate it is,
and you're spending so much time trying to find one thing.
If you work through something like Khan Academy
on a fourth grade level,
you'd be surprised how the whole spectrum of education
will open up and the understanding will open up
of how to find content to help your child.
And they're gonna be engaged
because they're doing it with you,
and they're gonna laugh at you when you get things wrong
because you will. (laughs)
You'd be surprised how difficult third
or fourth grade math can be. (laughs)
- Yeah, for sure.
- But if they can learn with them is probably the best way.
- Yeah, and speaking of.
I'm sure it's been awhile for parents
for third or fourth grade math.
And so if kids, for example, if they get frustrated,
do you have any tips for keeping kids engaged
if they get frustrated or if they get things wrong?
- Yeah, and right now, most children are frustrated.
They're used to having an expert in that content area
who knows how to teach that content area 10 different ways,
and knows how to reach every child
and the different learning styles of every child,
and now they have just their parent
who may not even understand some of the content.
And the frustration level for parents
and students is at an all-time high in education.
Going back to kind of paralleling,
if you learn something with your child and practice,
and try to teach them the theory of growth mindset,
that show them that you're frustrated learning something
like fourth grade math,
and that they're gonna laugh when you get things wrong,
and that you try it again the next day,
and you try it again the next day.
That theory of growth mindset that we all can learn anything
is something that if we teach our children at a young age
and at a difficult time right now,
will be so important moving forward
because we actually don't know
when this is all going to end,
and to understanding this platform and kind of practice
learning with them.
They will see you doing that,
and that's gonna cause less frustration for them
when you can kind of both laugh at each other
that you're working through it.
- Yeah, definitely growth mindset.
Definitely something that both parents and students
will be a valuable skill to build.
Another question that we hear as well from parents is,
how do I keep my kids engaged if they don't like school?
- It's tough right now
because I don't know that anybody likes school
right now. (laughs)
As a teacher, I do not.
I'm teaching from my basement.
I think I set up a nice little area for myself,
but I miss my students.
I miss seeing their faces in live time.
Students are now being sent assignments across the board
from five or six teachers,
and parents are now getting 30 to 40 websites and logins,
where three of my children
that are in the public school system right now
each have like 10 different logins.
And then you've some people that are sending them,
"Oh, here's a new one, try this.
"Here's a new one, try this."
And it's so overwhelming that you have to sometimes
just really take a step back and make sure that your child
is enjoying learning and not overwhelmed just like you.
And that may take cutting certain assignments out.
It may take taking a look through and saying,
"We're not gonna do this because--"
It took my daughter the other day,
five minutes to do a digital assignment that she had,
but it was taking her 25 minutes to submit it,
and then I'm trying to do it
and she's trying to submit it.
And she's telling me, "No, we have to put it
"on Google Classroom and then we have
"to go to this and that."
And that is not learning.
She wasn't gaining anything valuable about that,
so for me as a parent, I just kinda said, "We're done."
Okay, you did the worksheet.
You did it with me, I get it.
We're moving on, and if your teacher wants
to send me an email or I could send her one and say,
"I did it.
"She explained it to me."
But they're having them answer questions, some of them,
on the little tiny mousepad
where they have to write on that mousepad,
and that is so difficult.
I can't do it, but they're answering one little question
that takes 10 to 15 minutes for them
just to write the sentence out.
I'm like, "Well, she told me.
"She understands it.
"They're good, it's finished."
As the parent you have that right
and I think you should use it
because the stress level is so high.
- For sure.
Yeah, and I should point out, I forgot to mention earlier
that Conor helpfully summarized many of his tips
in a handout that you all can get
in your go-to webinar panel under the handouts.
So if you wanna go ahead and grab that,
I would definitely recommend it.
So Conor, we're hearing also from parents,
and you touched on this earlier,
but what tips would you give for parents
who are trying to teach kids a subject
that they're not comfortable or familiar
with the material themselves?
- Accept that you don't know the material.
Let your children understand
that you don't know the material.
And kind of together learn it
or together find ways to do it.
But what is happening that I see in my own house
and I've talked to many friends who call me
because I'm the only teacher that they know,
is the learning doesn't seem to be happening
as much as the handing the learning in
and doing these things.
And parents with so many logins,
they're not sure where to go.
They're not sure how to find it,
and I think Khan Academy will help with that,
if you start to work yourself and learn that platform
because I feel next year as we come back to school
that every district in the country
will be using this platform,
and it's gonna give you a head start.
So it's not so much about now and having to understand
the content that you're teaching,
but how you can help your child find the answers,
and how you can navigate through and have a spot for them,
almost like a one-stop of education,
where you know you're going to get relevant information.
Then maybe you can watch the video with them
and kinda do things with them.
We're at a time where we have to start looking
that if something like this were to happen again,
I should prepare myself for when it happens again,
and not worry about getting to June and ending.
But more of preparing myself to learn,
how to help my child when or if something like this
were to happen again.
So, I think that majorly master one platform
is a really positive thing you could do for your child.
- Great.
Well I wanted to have plenty of time to answer Q and A
from the audience, so I'll turn it over to Dan
to service some questions that we've been hearing
from audience members.
- Yes, thanks Lauren and thank you, Conor for joining us.
I'm super excited to have you here.
We have tons of excitement and enthusiasm
around this specific topic.
I ask the audience to do two things
before we get into the live Q and A session.
First, as Lauren mentioned, go to the handout section
and grab the tips and cheat sheet that Conor put together.
They're really good tips and you can download it
and also just review links to other resources
that we've included in there as well.
And then the second prompt is to please add your questions.
We already have a ton of questions coming in
in the message board, so keep those coming in
and we'll get to as many as we can.
Just ask that you be patient with us.
So Conor, we have quite a few questions,
one from Kimberly, another one from Pamela,
it's really around--
I guess some of the kids, ages sixth grade,
they're not listening to their parents
or they're saying they're doing one thing.
They're looking at the assignment.
They're caught up in the class,
and when their parent actually checks in,
you know, that's not the case.
So, do you have any advice for that,
for parents who are kind of struggling
with not being overbearing,
but also just being able to keep track of how their kids
are progressing with their school, schoolwork.
- I think it's important to understand
that although they're your children, you know them,
they are in middle school and high school,
and they're gonna think
like a middle school or a high school kid.
I know that my own children, my own students,
they'll spend an hour trying to beat the system
rather than 10 minutes doing the assignment.
I mean--
I tell a story one time where I was requiring 20 minutes
on Khan Academy a night, and I had a student
that was doing an hour for almost a week and a half,
and I wanted to reward him for his additional work,
but there was no progress being made.
I could not figure it out.
I actually sent something to Khan Academy
saying something's wrong because nothing's moving.
And then finally, he owned up and said,
"I've been putting nickels on one of the actual keys
"for the answer."
So it shows his activity,
but nothing's actually getting done.
And he would just leave nickels,
a pile of nickels on the thing.
I gave him credit because I thought it was genius.
(laughs) But the assignments
would take you 20 minutes, but for him to do all that.
I think it's important for parents to realize
they're gonna try to beat the system.
For myself, we have a schedule,
and the schedule works for us.
The first thing we do--
Our schedule is in the morning,
but for some parents it's not.
Everyone thinks that school should be eight to three
because that's what it was.
But it does not have to be that.
It could be at any time throughout the day
that works for you, that works for your family.
For us, I make my children write a checklist each morning
when they kind of check their email,
when they check their Google Classroom that--
I don't leave it on their computer on their own.
They have to hand me a checklist at breakfast
of "I have this, I have this, I have this and I have this."
And we've scheduled throughout the day,
I was discussing with you prior to this,
that we have different rooms for each subject in the house.
So it is, in the kitchen they do their language arts,
and if they're all in the kitchen,
I know they're working on language arts.
They come to the basement where I'm at right now
for to work on their math,
and then they go into the living room to work
on their social studies or science.
But it's a quick way for me to see if they're getting
through their curriculum for the day.
And also, if I have the checklist, I can kinda say,
"Did you do this?
"Did you do this?"
But I don't have to go onto each one of my children's thing
and write it myself and figure out all these things.
I have them hand it to me and it's a quick checklist for me
and them as well to keep them progressing
through what they're supposed to be doing.
- So Conor, we have a question from Diane Rodriguez
and as the teacher, I think you're, and a parent
you're exceptionally positioned to answer this question.
Diane asked, "I've been using Khan Academy
"with my second grader and it's been very helpful."
But her point is that math is being taught very differently
than when she had learned it
and so her concern is that when they go back to school
that she may have been coaching her child in a different way
than the way the schools are teaching it now.
Do you have a perspective?
Should she be concerned about that
or how should she approach that?
- This is a question that has come actually
from years I was a math coach,
for a few years in elementary schools
and this is why parents buyout
because they know how to teach traditional math
in addition and multiplication, but then that's not aligning
with what they're fully teaching.
My suggestion is always to teach--
I actually am an advocate for traditional multiplication
and long division and I fully grasp the analytics
of breaking everything apart and I think it has a true value
in understanding, however, I think they have to master
certain skills, like their multiplication facts
and their division facts, that they have to know them
just like they know the alphabet
and what sounds letters make
or when you start to get in to the older grades
with variables and exponents, you really start to get lost
because you don't have the foundation.
So for me, if you're teaching your child something mathy
the way you learned it, I find that to be very positive
because that's building a foundation.
And then when they go back to school,
and maybe they change it up,
they grasp the foundation of that.
So, to change the way or learn another way
to do the same thing, they already know how to do it.
So I would definitely suggest, yes, work with your child.
Teach them the way that they know.
And on Khan Academy's second grade, third grade,
it kinda does both.
They show in the multiplication and the division
and the addition and subtraction,
they show the methods of breaking it apart,
and they also show the traditional carrying
from the ones to the tens column,
from the tens to the hundreds column.
But I would think if you're teaching them something.
There's always value in that.
So to continue to do that, and not to try to worry
about what the school system has done or is doing
because right now, a lot of teachers are required
to throw assignments at kids and they're not--
When I'm teaching I can see
that Suzie when she chews her pen,
I know she doesn't understand anything I'm saying,
but I can't see that right now.
Or when Jacob nods, I know he has no clue what's going on.
So I have to stop and kinda go through that with them,
and that's what teachers do while they're teaching that.
So I would think that whenever they come back,
they're going to be fine, especially if you think about,
maybe not in second grade, but right around now
schools don't want to admit it,
but we're in standardized test season.
They may not want to talk about the majority of stuff
we're doing is just review.
We're not teaching really new content,
as much as we're reviewing and spiraling the content
we've already taught throughout the year.
That takes four to five weeks of review
and then two weeks of testing, and then we're really getting
to the end of the year.
So I think it's important to understand
that whatever you're doing with your child,
reviewing, it's helpful and it's gonna hold value for them
as they come back.
- Yeah Conor, I wouldn't even be able to teach the new ways
of math anyway, even if I wanted to.
So, cool. (laughs)
Conor, I have a question from Alexis Glika
who's asking, "Our child's only willing to do
"what the teachers assign
"and teachers aren't assigning much right now,
"especially in science."
So no science content.
"Any ideas in terms of how to continue learning
"when teachers aren't stepping up?
"And she won't hear it from us," meaning the parents.
- So this really comes down to yourself as a parent.
I think that teachers, we don't know exactly
what to do right now either.
And we're dealing with parents
from every end of the spectrum, just like parents
are dealing with teachers from every end of the spectrum.
I know teachers that are requiring
like two hours of work a day, and I know teachers
that are requiring five minutes,
and it's how they're viewing what is going on.
That if their class was two hours,
they should have two hours of work.
And other teachers realize that the unemployment rate
is at an all-time high.
Parents are trying to stay in the house.
They're trying to make sure they can put food on the table,
and something as a Google Slide assignment
may not have that value.
I would suggest if you're looking at high school parents
and they wanna learn science
or they want additional work to increase what's happening
that you use something like Khan Academy
and try and provide it to them yourself.
You don't have to know the content.
This is what I mean why it's so powerful.
It's free and you can say, "I require you to do 20 minutes
"on biology," and that's something that you require of them.
You can actually see, did they do the 20 minutes?
Did they watch the video?
Did they do the practice exercise?
And those scores will come up directly to your email,
and they could have nothing to do with the school district.
But I think we do have to plan
long-term for what's happening.
Everyone is looking towards June,
but I think the most effective thing you can do right now
is start to get your children in a routine for this summer.
Most of us take off in the summer
with education with our children.
There's going to be a summer slide every year,
but this year, it's so critical not to end in June.
To make sure that, it doesn't have to be a full day.
It could be, "Okay, every day you do 20 minutes of math,
"20 minutes of literacy."
And I want that routine to happen
throughout the summer also.
So maybe, I don't know what standard it is in what grade,
but I know you're consistently learning
and you're consistently working and I think that's gonna be
one of the most positive things that you can do.
But we all have the ability to teach our children.
We've taught them everything they know.
Maybe not academic, but you taught them how to ride a bike.
You taught them how to tie their shoes.
You taught them manners, how they act in public,
and they're watching you right now
to see what they should do in this situation.
Setting a new routine and realizing
we probably are not going back
to the way things were anytime soon.
- Yeah Conor, I would just piggyback off that.
I think part of it's just setting expectations
with yourself as an adult.
I think a lot of parents are expecting that,
as you mentioned earlier,
that this is a normal eight hours of school time frame
that kids would be doing at home,
and I think that's honestly just unrealistic
for most parents.
I mean one, you just don't have the time
between the work that you would have to do,
also just all the other myriad things
and teachers are in the same position as well.
So I think for--
We're getting some questions around like,
if we're not getting enough assignments,
how should we fill in the gap?
And I would say, part of it is you know your own ability
to fill in the gap as a parent
and if you do have the time to make extra assignments,
feel free to do that.
Use Khan Academy as Conor suggested, if you do,
but also with the understanding
that it's not a normal school day that your child
is gonna be going through.
And honestly, that's okay.
I don't think the expectation is
that you're gonna learn physics
and then be able to teach your kid physics in one week,
for example.
Just be kind to yourself and just have a different set
of expectations for now.
- And I agree.
I think it's important to also realize
if you need additional things for a child to do,
it does not have to be academic related.
Teach them how to build something.
Teach them how--
Let them maybe paint the room.
Teach them how to paint.
My daughter has changed, is changing electrical sockets
with me because she sees me doing it
and I'm always like, "All right,
"now make sure the electric's off," and this,
but she's interested.
So that's something, and that's a skill.
If I know when she goes off to college,
she's gonna be able, if she needs to,
I don't hope that she will.
But, teach them how to do their laundry.
Teach them life skills that you've done for them so far
and try to start to take some of that off of you
and teach it to them because everything is not
about the eight to three school day.
And in that school day, there is lunch.
There is recess.
There is transition times.
There is a movie in the one class.
There's different things.
It's not eight straight hours of somebody giving worksheets,
I hope not anyway.
- Yeah.
In Khan Academy, we provided daily schedules
for families to use and we're advising the same thing,
where we're advising to mix it up.
So have offscreen activities and that actually also helps
with the motivation factor, right.
They're not sitting at home in front of their computer
for eight hours watching a course.
They're actually getting up
and mixing up different activities,
and I love the suggestion of being a maker,
you know, create something.
You're still building a different skill.
It doesn't have to be academics eight hours a day
'cause honestly that's probably not gonna work at this time.
- It's not gonna work for me.
Four of them, no way.
(laughing)
- Great, I think we have time for one more question.
So here's a question from Monica in Virginia,
"As a parent of a second grader, is it counterproductive
"to allow flexibility in scheduling instruction,
"following the schedule likened to what the child
"was conditioned to when school was in session?"
I guess the question is really, is it counterproductive
to have a flexibility or is it better
to stick to a more rigid schedule?
- I do not believe you should stick
to the standard school schedule that they're used to
because school is not what they're used to right now.
It's not like you're going into the school building
and changing what happens,
but you have to make something that's working
for you and your family.
For instance, my wife was able to work from home
and she's still employed and still working from home,
but I always went to school.
That was the schedule.
I left at 6:30 in the morning
and she kinda did breakfast and did all that,
and then the kids went on the bus,
then she would start work.
Well, I'm trying to give her time while I take all the kids.
So, I'm doing breakfast and it's kinda funny.
It's that they're like, "Oh,
"what do you want for breakfast?"
They going, "Oh, I'll have eggs, I'll have this."
I'm like, "I meant did you want toast or cereal?"
I'm not mom. (laughs)
But I know that we'll do stuff,
but if it's all the sudden nice,
if the sun comes out for 20 minutes,
we're cutting everything off
and we're gonna try to go in the yard.
It's been raining here in Philadelphia
it seems like every day.
Yesterday, they had the Blue Angels
actually fly over Philadelphia,
so that was like an hour and a half in the middle of the day
where we sat in the yard and looked up
and did different things.
Maybe they did their literacy at six o'clock
at night after dinner, or maybe they did it here.
As long as they understand what they have to do
throughout the day, they're gonna start
to manage their time, even at a young age.
But to put yourself through that stress.
That stress is gonna go right to your child,
and when you're stressed and your child's stressed
because you're trying to conform to a system
that's not working for you,
there will not be learning that takes place.
And it's why online learning is so popular in college
and for parents because they can't conform to that.
So, that's why they can't go back to school.
That's why online learning has become so popular for adults
and graduates, and the same thing's going on right now.
- So unfortunately, we're already at time
and we have like 1,000 more questions to get through.
Perhaps we'll do another follow-up session in the future,
but Conor I wanted to thank you so much for joining us
and sharing your expertise with our family.
And Lauren, thank you for moderating the first half
of this conversation.
I also want to thank you, the busy parents out there.
I know you already have a million things to do
as part of your day, but thank you for joining us
in this afternoon for this live session.
I just want to reiterate, if you missed any part of this
or if you wanna go back and review some of the comments
and the Q and A portion,
we will be posting recording of this webinar live
and Conor's tips are free and downloadable as well.
And both of these will be emailed to those
who have already registered after this as well,
along with links to resources at khanacademy.org.
So we have a suite of other parent resources
that are available on our website.
There's a blue ribbon at the top dedicated
really to school closures and remote learning,
so feel free to visit that.
And then before we sign off,
we ask you to do us one more favor
and take a poll that pops up
at the very end of this webinar.
Help us answer two questions.
First, how can we make future iterations of this session
even better for you all?
And then secondly, what kind of other sessions
would you like to see us develop in the future?
We're here to support you.
This session was really created because this was probably
the number one requested webinar by you all,
so we hope to be able to do more of
that for you in the future.
In closing, on behalf of Conor
and on behalf of Lauren and myself,
we appreciate that you're doing a lot as parents,
and we're dealing with all this, all of us, together
with this uncharted territory all at the same time.
And we want to remind you as parents
just to be kind to yourself.
Conor mentioned it.
We know you're struggling with just balancing work
and multiple kids and trying to be a teacher now
and all those things.
And just be patient with yourself and that's okay
if you mess up here and there.
That's what growth mindset is about.
It's just making some of these mistakes, learning from them,
and then progressing that way as well.
So from all of us at Khan Academy,
thanks again and good night.
- Thank you.
Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.