– Hey, everyone! Welcome to our webinar.
My name is Lauren Quan, andI'm on the Khan Academy team.
Today, I am joined bymy 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 KhanAcademy 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 recordedand sent to you via email a few hours after the session ends, and if you have questions atany point during the webinar, feel free to enter themin the question box.
And we have staff availableto 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 sharingtips that can be useful for parents of kids of all ages.
So with that, let's get started.
I'm thrilled to have Conorhere to share his advice.
Conor, can you share alittle bit about yourself and your background? – Hi, Lauren.
Thanks for having me, everybody.
Yes, I've now been a matheducator mostly teaching middle school math andfifth grade math for– This is my 17th year, and byfar this is the toughest year for myself and my students.
Right now, I also havefour children of my own and it is chaos for myself to teach and try to keep up with– Three of them are inschool, one is in preschool, but to keep up with allof their assignments and to keep up to make surethey'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 andjust maybe some of the things that I'm doing around here, but I may not have all the answers.
I can kinda just tell youfrom my own experience with teaching and being aparent at the same time, that hopefully you can seeboth sides of the spectrum.
– Fantastic.
And yeah, Conor as youmentioned, a lot of parents are finding themselves steppinginto the role of teachers for the first time, and we'rehearing so many questions from parents about waysto motivate their kids.
So what advice would you giveto parents who are wondering, “How do I motivate my kids tobe interested in learning?” – It's a great question andit's a difficult question.
There's not really one answer that's going to motivatechildren across the board.
Especially for evenmyself, I'm gonna tell you that all of my kids areeating ring pops upstairs just to avoid me for a halfhour of coming down here so I can do this, and many parents arein that same situation.
But to motivate studentsand your own children, I've always kinda tied itto some sort of incentive.
And it's never reallya financial incentive.
It's always just your time or something that they really are interested in, and it does not haveto 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 veryinterested 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 probablynever played a video game in her life, but my sonand I will play Madden.
He's in third grade andwe will play all the time because I'm a giant child.
But my wife has startedto play against him, and he doesn't care if I play anymore.
He wants to play her becauseit's so different for him to see her in that type of environment, taking interest in whathe's interested in, and that has been motivating for him.
So I think if you justtry to find something your child is interested in, that you usually would not participate in or you kinda let themparticipate with their friends.
You know, they're not reallyaround 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 tiethat to their academics.
– Mhmm, I love those creative ideas that you've shared there.
Another question thatwe're hearing a lot is, how do I keep my kids focusedand engaged in learning? – Focus and engaged, it's kindof one of the hardest parts.
Parents have just been givenan unrealistic expectation to automatically become their teacher.
To automatically havemastered grade level content in not one subject, but fouror five or six subjects.
I know for myself as a teacher, I am a master of middle school math, but if you give me aneighth grade biology test, I am not gonna do well.
(laughs) So, when you're justpushing all the sudden all of this on parents, they're very stressed out.
And their children fully understand that they don't get theconcepts or the content as much.
My suggestion for this is to try to learn something with them.
For instance with KhanAcademy, I always tell parents, I did kind of like anexperiment a few years ago, where I asked parentsto master their child's fifth or fourth, their child'scontent on Khan Academy, so their child's grade level.
And what I found from that was amazing.
Most parents have bought outof math after third grade.
It becomes, “Oh my god, “I don't know how they'reteaching 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, ifyou try fourth grade math and your child may be inseventh 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 hugehelp 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 fora 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 muchtime trying to find one thing.
If you work throughsomething like Khan Academy on a fourth grade level, you'd be surprised how thewhole spectrum of education will open up and theunderstanding 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 atyou 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 withthem 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 tipsfor keeping kids engaged if they get frustrated orif they get things wrong? – Yeah, and right now, mostchildren are frustrated.
They're used to having anexpert in that content area who knows how to teach thatcontent area 10 different ways, and knows how to reach every child and the different learningstyles of every child, and now they have just their parent who may not even understandsome of the content.
And the frustration level for parents and students is at anall-time high in education.
Going back to kind of paralleling, if you learn something withyour child and practice, and try to teach them thetheory of growth mindset, that show them that you'refrustrated learning something like fourth grade math, and that they're gonna laughwhen 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 mindsetthat we all can learn anything is something that if we teachour 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 thisplatform and kind of practice learning with them.
They will see you doing that, and that's gonna causeless frustration for them when you can kind ofboth laugh at each other that you're working through it.
– Yeah, definitely growth mindset.
Definitely something thatboth parents and students will be a valuable skill to build.
Another question that wehear as well from parents is, how do I keep my kids engagedif they don't like school? – It's tough right now because I don't knowthat anybody likes school right now.
(laughs) As a teacher, I do not.
I'm teaching from my basement.
I think I set up a nicelittle area for myself, but I miss my students.
I miss seeing their faces in live time.
Students are now being sentassignments across the board from five or six teachers, and parents are now getting30 to 40 websites and logins, where three of my children that are in the publicschool system right now each have like 10 different logins.
And then you've some peoplethat are sending them, “Oh, here's a new one, try this.
“Here's a new one, try this.
” And it's so overwhelmingthat you have to sometimes just really take a step backand make sure that your child is enjoying learning and notoverwhelmed just like you.
And that may take cuttingcertain assignments out.
It may take taking alook through and saying, “We're not gonna do this because–” It took my daughter the other day, five minutes to do a digitalassignment that she had, but it was taking her25 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 anythingvaluable about that, so for me as a parent, I justkinda 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 Icould send her one and say, “I did it.
“She explained it to me.
” But they're having them answerquestions, 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'reanswering 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 helpfullysummarized many of his tips in a handout that you all can get in your go-to webinarpanel 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 happeningthat I see in my own house and I've talked to manyfriends who call me because I'm the onlyteacher that they know, is the learning doesn'tseem 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 Academywill help with that, if you start to work yourselfand learn that platform because I feel next yearas 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 aboutnow and having to understand the content that you're teaching, but how you can help yourchild find the answers, and how you can navigate throughand have a spot for them, almost like a one-stop of education, where you know you're goingto get relevant information.
Then maybe you can watchthe video with them and kinda do things with them.
We're at a time wherewe have to start looking that if something likethis were to happen again, I should prepare myselffor when it happens again, and not worry aboutgetting to June and ending.
But more of preparing myself to learn, how to help my child whenor if something like this were to happen again.
So, I think that majorlymaster one platform is a really positive thingyou could do for your child.
– Great.
Well I wanted to have plentyof time to answer Q and A from the audience, soI'll turn it over to Dan to service some questionsthat we've been hearing from audience members.
– Yes, thanks Lauren and thankyou, 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 thelive Q and A session.
First, as Lauren mentioned, go to the handout section and grab the tips and cheatsheet that Conor put together.
They're really good tipsand you can download it and also just reviewlinks to other resources that we've included in there as well.
And then the second prompt isto please add your questions.
We already have a tonof 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 thekids, 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 tokeep track of how their kids are progressing withtheir school, schoolwork.
– I think it's important to understand that although they're yourchildren, 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 ownchildren, my own students, they'll spend an hourtrying to beat the system rather than 10 minutesdoing the assignment.
I mean– I tell a story one time whereI was requiring 20 minutes on Khan Academy a night, and I had a student that was doing an hour foralmost a week and a half, and I wanted to reward himfor 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 wrongbecause nothing's moving.
And then finally, he owned up and said, “I've been putting nickelson 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 becauseI thought it was genius.
(laughs)But the assignments would take you 20 minutes, but for him to do all that.
I think it's importantfor 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 schoolshould 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, thatworks for your family.
For us, I make my childrenwrite a checklist each morning when they kind of check their email, when they check theirGoogle Classroom that– I don't leave it on theircomputer on their own.
They have to hand me achecklist 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 roomsfor each subject in the house.
So it is, in the kitchenthey do their language arts, and if they're all in the kitchen, I know they're working on language arts.
They come to the basementwhere I'm at right now for to work on their math, and then they go intothe living room to work on their social studies or science.
But it's a quick way for meto see if they're getting through their curriculum for the day.
And also, if I have thechecklist, I can kinda say, “Did you do this? “Did you do this?” But I don't have to go ontoeach one of my children's thing and write it myself andfigure out all these things.
I have them hand it to me andit'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 aquestion from Diane Rodriguez and as the teacher, Ithink you're, and a parent you're exceptionally positionedto answer this question.
Diane asked, “I've been using Khan Academy “with my second grader andit's been very helpful.
” But her point is that math isbeing taught very differently than when she had learned it and so her concern is thatwhen they go back to school that she may have been coachingher child in a different way than the way the schoolsare teaching it now.
Do you have a perspective? Should she be concerned about that or how should she approach that? – This is a questionthat 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 toteach 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 fortraditional multiplication and long division and Ifully grasp the analytics of breaking everything apartand I think it has a true value in understanding, however, I think they have to master certain skills, liketheir 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 getin 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 teachingyour child something mathy the way you learned it, Ifind 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, theyalready 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'ssecond grade, third grade, it kinda does both.
They show in themultiplication and the division and the addition and subtraction, they show the methodsof breaking it apart, and they also show thetraditional carrying from the ones to the tens column, from the tens to the hundreds column.
But I would think if you'reteaching them something.
There's always value in that.
So to continue to do that, and not to try to worry about what the schoolsystem has done or is doing because right now, a lotof teachers are required to throw assignments atkids and they're not– When I'm teaching I can see that Suzie when she chews her pen, I know she doesn't understandanything I'm saying, but I can't see that right now.
Or when Jacob nods, I know hehas no clue what's going on.
So I have to stop and kindago through that with them, and that's what teachers dowhile they're teaching that.
So I would think thatwhenever 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 talkabout the majority of stuff we're doing is just review.
We're not teaching really new content, as much as we're reviewingand 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'redoing with your child, reviewing, it's helpful andit's gonna hold value for them as they come back.
– Yeah Conor, I wouldn't evenbe 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, “Ourchild's only willing to do “what the teachers assign “and teachers aren'tassigning much right now, “especially in science.
” So no science content.
“Any ideas in terms ofhow to continue learning “when teachers aren't stepping up? “And she won't hear it fromus, ” meaning the parents.
– So this really comes downto 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 thespectrum, just like parents are dealing with teachers fromevery end of the spectrum.
I know teachers that are requiring like two hours of work aday, and I know teachers that are requiring five minutes, and it's how they'reviewing what is going on.
That if their class was two hours, they should have two hours of work.
And other teachers realizethat the unemployment rate is at an all-time high.
Parents are trying to stay in the house.
They're trying to make surethey can put food on the table, and something as a Google Slide assignment may not have that value.
I would suggest if you'relooking at high school parents and they wanna learn science or they want additional workto 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, “Irequire you to do 20 minutes “on biology, ” and that's somethingthat you require of them.
You can actually see, didthey do the 20 minutes? Did they watch the video? Did they do the practice exercise? And those scores will comeup directly to your email, and they could have nothing todo 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 effectivething you can do right now is start to get your childrenin a routine for this summer.
Most of us take off in the summer with education with our children.
There's going to be asummer slide every year, but this year, it's socritical not to end in June.
To make sure that, it doesn'thave to be a full day.
It could be, “Okay, every dayyou 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 whatstandard it is in what grade, but I know you're consistently learning and you're consistently workingand I think that's gonna be one of the most positivethings that you can do.
But we all have the abilityto teach our children.
We've taught them everything they know.
Maybe not academic, but youtaught 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 shoulddo 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 wouldjust piggyback off that.
I think part of it'sjust setting expectations with yourself as an adult.
I think a lot of parentsare expecting that, as you mentioned earlier, that this is a normal eighthours of school time frame that kids would be doing at home, and I think that'shonestly just unrealistic for most parents.
I mean one, you just don't have the time between the work thatyou would have to do, also just all the other myriad things and teachers are in thesame 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 itis you know your own ability to fill in the gap as a parent and if you do have the timeto make extra assignments, feel free to do that.
Use Khan Academy as Conorsuggested, if you do, but also with the understanding that it's not a normalschool 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 teachyour kid physics in one week, for example.
Just be kind to yourself andjust have a different set of expectations for now.
– And I agree.
I think it's important to also realize if you need additionalthings 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, ischanging electrical sockets with me because she sees me doing it and I'm always like, “All right, “now make sure theelectric'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 thatyou've done for them so far and try to start to takesome of that off of you and teach it to thembecause 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 hoursof somebody giving worksheets, I hope not anyway.
– Yeah.
In Khan Academy, weprovided daily schedules for families to use and we'readvising the same thing, where we're advising to mix it up.
So have offscreen activitiesand that actually also helps with the motivation factor, right.
They're not sitting at homein front of their computer for eight hours watching a course.
They're actually getting up and mixing up different activities, and I love the suggestionof being a maker, you know, create something.
You're still building a different skill.
It doesn't have to beacademics eight hours a day 'cause honestly that's probablynot gonna work at this time.
– It's not gonna work for me.
Four of them, no way.
(laughing) – Great, I think we havetime for one more question.
So here's a questionfrom Monica in Virginia, “As a parent of a secondgrader, is it counterproductive “to allow flexibility inscheduling instruction, “following the schedulelikened to what the child “was conditioned to whenschool was in session?” I guess the question isreally, 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 schoolschedule that they're used to because school is not whatthey're used to right now.
It's not like you're goinginto the school building and changing what happens, but you have to makesomething that's working for you and your family.
For instance, my wife wasable to work from home and she's still employedand 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 didbreakfast and did all that, and then the kids went on the bus, then she would start work.
Well, I'm trying to give hertime while I take all the kids.
So, I'm doing breakfastand it's kinda funny.
It's that they're like, “Oh, “what do you want for breakfast?” They going, “Oh, I'll haveeggs, I'll have this.
” I'm like, “I meant didyou 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 ahalf in the middle of the day where we sat in the yard and looked up and did different things.
Maybe they did theirliteracy at six o'clock at night after dinner, ormaybe they did it here.
As long as they understandwhat 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 gonnago right to your child, and when you're stressedand your child's stressed because you're tryingto conform to a system that's not working for you, there will not belearning that takes place.
And it's why online learningis so popular in college and for parents becausethey can't conform to that.
So, that's why theycan't go back to school.
That's why online learning hasbecome so popular for adults and graduates, and the samething's going on right now.
– So unfortunately, we're already at time and we have like 1, 000 morequestions to get through.
Perhaps we'll do anotherfollow-up session in the future, but Conor I wanted to thankyou so much for joining us and sharing yourexpertise with our family.
And Lauren, thank you formoderating the first half of this conversation.
I also want to thank you, the busy parents out there.
I know you already havea million things to do as part of your day, butthank you for joining us in this afternoon for this live session.
I just want to reiterate, ifyou missed any part of this or if you wanna go back andreview some of the comments and the Q and A portion, we will be posting recordingof this webinar live and Conor's tips are freeand downloadable as well.
And both of these will be emailed to those who have already registeredafter this as well, along with links toresources at khanacademy.
org.
So we have a suite ofother parent resources that are available on our website.
There's a blue ribbon at the top dedicated really to school closuresand 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 futureiterations of this session even better for you all? And then secondly, whatkind of other sessions would you like to see usdevelop in the future? We're here to support you.
This session was really createdbecause this was probably the number one requestedwebinar 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'redoing a lot as parents, and we're dealing with allthis, all of us, together with this uncharted territoryall 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 strugglingwith just balancing work and multiple kids andtrying to be a teacher now and all those things.
And just be patient withyourself and that's okay if you mess up here and there.
That's what growth mindset is about.
It's just making some of thesemistakes, 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.
.
