Homeroom with Sal & Kristen DiCerbo PhD - Wednesday, September 23

Hi everyone! Sal here. Welcome to our homeroom live stream. We have an exciting show! We're going to have Kristen D'Serbo, Khan Academy's Chief Learning Officer, answering any questions you have about motivation and having more independence as a learner.

But before we get started, I will make my standard announcements. First, a reminder that Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization. We can only exist through philanthropic donations from folks like yourself if you're in a position to do so. So please think about going to khanacademy.org/donate and making a donation.

I also want to give a special shout out to several organizations that have supported Khan Academy through the years, but especially as we went into COVID. Our costs went up as we were trying to accelerate a whole series of programs. Our server costs have gone up, so special thanks to Bank of America, Google.org, AT&T, Fastly, Novartis, and to the many other organizations that have supported Khan Academy through the years. It's made a huge difference, although we still need more help.

So please think about making a donation. I'd also like to announce, and I've done this on previous live streams, that we have a whole room with "Sal the Podcast," as you can see in that graphic right over there. Those are kind of some of the more notable moments in this homeroom live stream, so I encourage you to go wherever you find your podcasts and subscribe to it. Hopefully, you get a kick out of it!

So with that, I'm excited to introduce Kristen D'Serbo, who we've had on before. Kristen, good to see you!

"Hey Sal, good to be here!"

So for those of y'all who don't know, Kristen is Khan Academy's Chief Learning Officer, which means that she keeps us well-informed and deep on everything regarding learning science and academics and the best way that folks can learn and help others learn.

So Kristen, what I want to understand is what tips do you have? You know, the question I get a lot is how do we keep people motivated right now? How do we keep people engaged? How do we—kids are a lot more independence is expected of them. So what tips do you have for students, parents, and teachers trying to navigate this?

"Yes, that is the question all of us here at Khan Academy are getting a lot of! So it's clearly something that people are struggling with quite a bit. As you said, I like to look to the research and see what it says. When you look across things, we can actually think pretty simply about what keeps people motivated: two things. First, we're motivated to do things when we think we're going to feel successful at them, which kind of makes sense. Like, who wants to do something if you think you're going to fail at it? That doesn't seem very fun.

And then second, if we value the activity—if it's something that's important to us. So really, we can boil down a lot of the tips and ideas to things that are either going to help us feel successful or increase our perception of the value of the activity we're doing and sometimes both of those things.

So that's kind of the simple way of the land. And to your question about a couple of tips, one really powerful thing we can do is to set goals because goal-setting and then monitoring ourselves hits on both of those two things about success and value. If I set a goal, or if you're a parent or a teacher and you work with a kid to set the goal—not just impose it on them, but let them help you think about what should your goal be—that gives you some buy-in. It increases the value because you're thinking, 'Yeah, this is something I care about. I'm going to set the goal to be something that's important to me.'

And then as you kind of watch yourself make progress toward that goal and actually reach it, it turns out you're experiencing success, and there's nothing that convinces you you might be successful in the future like actually having some success.

So these can be little goals. You know, it can be, 'I'm going to write five sentences,' and then, 'Hey, I wrote six! That's great!' You know, it can be, 'I'm going to do this many math problems.' Start out small. Don't be like, 'I'm going to learn all of algebra in this next two months.' That's too long, it's too much—you're going to not be able to sustain that. So keep it small, but be able to think about, you know, some of those achievable things that you can do."

I like that. So the two big takeaways would be you should have a reasonable chance of— or belief that you can be successful, or feeling successful, and it should be fun.

But let me ask you a question. You know sometimes, like I’m a hobbyist guitarist for example, and it's very tempting for me to— in the spirit of wanting to feel successful—kind of play the songs that I already know because I know I'll succeed at them. And it's fun because I can kind of get into them more. Is that what you’re saying? Like should I not challenge myself? Should I not try the songs that I’m still fumbling through these bizarre chords and whatever else?

"That's definitely not what we want to say! In fact, we want to think about how we can keep moving forward. One of the ways that we can frame that is actually to think about this idea of growth mindset, which has gotten a lot of play lately. Sometimes it feels like, 'Oh, growth mindset is just saying, “Hey, work hard and you can do it.”' But when it comes to learning, what we know is that when you're learning new things, you're actually changing how your brain works.

We actually have a course—I go to the courses section down there in the life skills—and it actually walks students through some of these ideas about how our brain actually changes. The neurons, little cells in our brain, when we're learning new things, make new connections. We explain that in some videos, and students can walk through it a little bit.

But this idea that your brain is actually like a muscle—it's like when you're working out, and if you keep lifting heavier weights, your muscles get bigger. In the same way, that if you keep learning new things, your brain actually gets denser. And it turns out dense brains are a good thing! You can learn new things and build them.

So if you keep playing your same songs over and over again, you're not building any of this new muscle and these new connections in your brain. But if you're trying new things, you're going to keep improving, and next time you'll be able to play even more complicated songs, and maybe some other songs that you're interested in learning. So if I were to kind of figure out the sweet spot there, you definitely shouldn't work on the stuff that is— you know you're definitely going to succeed on because that's not going to stretch you and grow those neural connections. And maybe don't work on the thing that is—you know for me the Eddie Van Halen level because that super hard guitar part, yeah, I avoid that.

But try the stuff that's stretching you a little bit. And you know, another thing I took away from you is when someone calls me dense—which has happened, I take that as a compliment from now on! Usually, I'm sure they're referring to my neural density when they say that I'm dense."

So we have a question! I encourage everyone to ask questions—any questions really about learning, about learning science, about education, Khan Academy, for Christian and myself if relevant. We have a few questions that are all coming in from Facebook.

Cindy Victor Cumpin asks, "My boy went to school for four years and it took away all of his motivation. It was boring every day. How can I help him get enthusiastic again, get back on track?" Your advice, Kristen?

"Well first, I'm sorry to hear that—that he's not still excited about learning and where those things are. So there's a couple of things that I would say. One is, you know him better than anyone else, and you can help him make the connections between what he's learning and the things he's interested in. So when we talked about that value, one way that we value things we're doing is because they seem relevant to us.

So if you know the things that he's learning, help him make those connections between why am I learning this and what it can do to relate to other things I'm interested in—questions he's asked about the world and how it works, things he wants to be when he grows up, any of those kinds of things.

To help him see some of the meaning in the things that he's being asked to do, that's one way that you can start bringing some of that piece back. And the other thing is I would say at home, really encourage those questions and think about, you know, when he's thinking about how the world works and wondering about this, or you know the other thing—and why was the when I pedaled my bike, why does that make the wheel move? Start even modeling asking those kinds of questions. Those are the things that then help you relate back to the things that the students are learning."

And I'll just add to that, you know I think there's two reasons why I've seen either myself or other folks disengage or feel something's boring. Oftentimes, you feel that it's boring because you're ready to move ahead but you're getting impatient. Or sometimes you feel it's boring that it's a little overwhelming—it's a little—it’s all going over your head, so to speak.

One option, and you know that I know a good website for this, or a good series of apps, especially in math and science, but we have some resources in other things. But if your son, I believe it was—you know—goes on Khan Academy, is able to put in even 20-30 minutes a day, start at their level. You know it sounds like your son’s been going to school for about four years, so maybe they're in fourth or fifth grade.

Start him even at the kindergarten level or start him on the 'Get Ready for Fourth Grade' or 'Get Ready for Fifth Grade' course on Khan Academy. That will allow them to fill in all their gaps, probably build a little bit of confidence. It'll be a little bit of playing those guitar songs that he already knows. But he might realize that a few of his chords need a little bit more practice, and he appreciates—and then when he gets to the grade level course, he can learn about that in his own time and pace.

Then he’ll probably not only get caught up with his class if he wasn't already caught up, but probably get ahead of his class. And you know what I found—and I'm even speaking from personal experience—once you see academic success in one area, you naturally start to get more curious, more engaged. Your perception of yourself starts to say, 'I’m a learner! I’m capable of learning!' And I don't have to wait for other people to tell me what to learn—I can do this on my own!

Then that can bleed over into other things; that can lead to being curious about science or humanities or politics or whatever else. And you know, a lot of what Kristen just mentioned of you know the real world—how does it all fit together? I think you have a better shot of that."

So let’s see—other questions here. From Greenwich, Connecticut, Kimberly is asking, "How do I know if my child is learning if he isn't tested?" And Kimberly has children in grades three, six, and nine, and eighth grade.

So how do you know if they're learning if they are not tested? Good question, Kristen. Your view?

"That is a good question! So first, talk to your child's teachers about what are the skills that they're supposed to be learning. So not what score they get on the test, but what are the things that they should know how to do? What are the ideas that they should start to be understanding?

Then there's a couple things you can do. So first, in that conversation with the teacher, get their thoughts about, 'Okay, where do you think my child is in getting to do those things?' But you can also just start observing the things at home. Think about asking them questions, having those conversations with them that give you some evidence about, 'Hey, how well do I think they understand where this is and what this looks like?'

The other thing that I would say is I've done a lot of thinking and writing about the idea of assessment without tests. The idea is that particularly now that we're in this digital world, we can get quite a bit of information as students are doing learning activities.

Again, another shameless plug for the Khan Academy website that helps students be able to see whether, you know, what kind of level they're at or have they mastered this skill or not without actually taking a test. They're getting it kind of through their practice activities; they are leveling up from kind of being familiar to proficient with the task.

So by gathering that data from digital activities, we actually can eliminate some of the need for testing. That's kind of a big, you know pressure on teachers' time and on students' time and leads to anxiety and all of those kinds of things. And instead, we can get information from them as they're learning to be able to understand."

"Yeah, I'll just underline that last point of you know, practice on Khan Academy isn't just practice—it's inherently a little micro-assessment. Every time a student engages, and so that is also a good way to read. And you know, we've seen correlations—very strong correlations between work on Khan Academy and other types of benchmark assessments."

That's completely agreed!

So from Facebook, there's a question. Jamie Dawson Osborne is asking, "What about when students don't understand and the teacher's hands are tied with how they can teach the lesson? How does either the student, the parent, or the teacher deal with that?"

Kristin, so I'm not sure what "hands are tied" implied. My interpretation of that is—my interpretation is the teacher has to cover, let’s say negative exponents in a seventh-grade math class, but the student still doesn't understand basic exponents. But the teacher feels, 'But I have to cover this negative exponent standard because that’s what my pacing guide from the district tells me to do.' What should the various parties do in that scenario?

"And you can imagine that's very disengaging for students."

Absolutely!

"And I think what we often see is this tension that you've talked about a lot between having to keep marching forward according to what is in the scope and sequence—that list of what needs to be taught when in the school year versus making sure students have time to master what they're doing.

We really need the balance of both of those things because on one hand, it is important that students have exposure to all of that grade-level work. And on the other hand, it's also important that they have the opportunity to fill in gaps of things that maybe they didn't quite master before or they have the time to do this.

One of the things that we encourage is this idea of thinking about potentially spending, you know, four days of the classroom per week on that grade-level material and then one day on what we call personalized practice—the idea that you can start working with students at the level where they are, thinking about filling in some of those gaps, understanding where they are, what maybe didn't they quite get to mastery on, and giving them additional practice and instruction in those areas so that they can then, when they get back to that grade-level material, they're ready for it and able to do it.

That's one thing. The other thing that came to mind with the 'hands are tied' piece is that sometimes the teacher's explaining it in the way they think about it, but just hearing someone else explain it can give you, 'Oh, aha! Now I get it.' And so that's another way that some of our videos can be helpful is that they provide a little bit different way to explain it or to think about it that someone hasn't maybe heard before."

Very, very helpful!

"Yeah, I completely agree. I think in that case, whatever we can do to help that student fill in their gaps so that they can engage is going to be optimal."

So a couple of related questions. Riffith Tanvir from Facebook is asking, "Do you think motivation is an illusion?" They've been watching motivational videos, but they feel like it hasn't been helpful for them. A similar question from YouTube, Ms. Victoria, The Eyes Are All Numbers, "How can you become more self-motivated?"

So, yeah, you know you hear this thing like motivation. Yes, so-and-so is motivated; so-and-so is not motivated. What is that? Is that like some—do we have like a motivation gene? Is it contextual? Can you improve it?

"Absolutely! It is not something that's pre-programmed in you and you either are or not there! It's very much contextual. You can be motivated to do one thing and not motivated to do something else. And that's very common—I hear lots of parents say, 'Gosh, my kid seems really motivated to play my Minecraft but not motivated at all to read books.'

So it's definitely something that you know you can think about changing. To the point of, is it, you know, the thing that's not going to change it is like motivational slogans. So, you know, just, 'Hey, keep working! Hey, you're doing great!' People don't really believe that if it's not their experience. So there’s definitely—we want to think about this idea of authentic success and giving these messages about why we think that they can do this and why we think they'll be successful, which goes back to some of the things we were talking about earlier about, you know, if you understand how this is actually—you know, changing your brain and how working hard can actually lead to those kinds of changes and improvements.

That then can help think about, 'Okay, now I understand why I might be motivated,' as opposed to just, 'Keep working hard!' So doing that, getting some of that kind of authentic success going in is important.

And then as we think about how to—one of the things that research talks about a lot is a difference between what they call external motivation and intrinsic motivation. So external motivation is being motivated by things from the outside—like getting rewards for what you're doing; intrinsic is being motivated from internal things because it makes you happy, it brings you joy, you find it interesting.

One of the questions is how to move kids from not wanting to do something to maybe being internally motivated to do it. And so I get also a lot of questions about, you know, is giving my kids rewards just bribing them? That seems wrong! But it's okay to use rewards sometimes to bridge the gap between, 'I don't want to do this!' and to get into a little taste of it.

Getting a little success that will lead them to success. So it's not bad to think about small rewards—I'm talking about, you know, maybe it's playing a board game, maybe it's picking what's for dinner, you know, those kinds of things as rewards that something that's meaningful for your student or child that gives them a little reason to try something and then get an experience of it that they can then build on."

I like that! And it resonates with me, and it makes me feel less guilty last night for bribing my kids with being able to watch She-Ra so that they could take a bath. But I'd like to believe that that extrinsic motivation over time they will recognize the intrinsic benefits of being clean and not stinking!

You've also got society helping you with that a little bit once they start.

"Yeah, right! That might be extrinsic motivation too—when you're stinky, people might give you some external feedback that makes you realize that you need to take a bath!"

More questions here. So how do you—this is from Facebook. Andrea Uk Lara says, "How do you motivate preschoolers in a virtual classroom?"

There's one of the things to think about with kids who are really that age is not even motivation, but just attention spans. And making sure first that you have realistic expectations of what a preschooler can do in a Zoom class.

We're talking fairly, you know, short time frames. If you know, a few minutes on any particular activity—if you look to things like Sesame Street in terms of, you know, how often they're switching to a new thing that they're doing, we can't expect—we shouldn’t expect preschoolers to be able to sit for a 30-minute Zoom class doing all of the same, you know, kind of activity.

So one, you're going to want to talk to your child's teacher. Make sure that they're, you know, doing intro, you know, making those switches to doing different things, thinking about how you're structuring that time that they're expected to be in. So that's the first thing I would say.

And so then the second piece is just thinking about what is it that is in those activities that is related to things that they're excited about—things that they're interested in. Make those connections! Hey, did you ever wonder why, you know, our dog and our cat—you know, one goes out for a walk every day and the cat doesn't? I don't know! You know, just like it's silly questions that you might be able to think about and think about how what they're doing in the classroom can bring those kinds of ideas in.

But with younger kids, again, manage your expectations about what they're going to be able to do in this environment."

Yeah, I know—it makes a lot of sense! And I would just add to that, you know, I have—my youngest is almost six, five and a half years old—and what I've seen his teachers do really well is just do quirky, funny things all the time. Interspersing whatever they're trying to do with just some goofiness, some moving around.

And to your point, Kristen, like not do—you know long stretches. For a five or six year old, a long stretch could even be 15 or 20 minutes. But try to break it up and try to make it as interactive as possible.

I also do want to make sure folks tune in for tomorrow as they're going to be our 100th show! The person who can help answer some of these questions about motivating kindergartners and preschoolers, Tabitha Rossbroy—she's the 2020 National Teacher of the Year—so hopefully she can give us some tips as well on motivating that crowd, which I'm sure I can benefit from here at home!

And you know, from YouTube also, to echo that—teachers have great experience doing this! Lots of good tips, so just echoing, encouraging people to tune in for that!

Yeah! Absolutely!

"My other last tip, and I wouldn't even call this a pro tip because I'm not a pro by any stretch of the imagination, is stick with it with the young kids. Even they are very capable of eventually forming some of these habits! And once they see some wins, they too can get a little bit more motivated."

Well, I've seen that with my own son, who's five!

"Since you know distance learning started."

So from YouTube, Kaushik Jaw says, "I started feeling depressed and thinking about goals. COVID literally makes me go through anxiety. What advice do you have for that, Kristen?"

"I don't think Kaushik is alone! I think there's a lot of folks that— you know you have COVID, you have the economy, you have other stuff going on in the world that is causing a lot of stress. And then on top of that, people are trying to figure out, you know, their own life and, you know, I don't know if Kaushik is a student or is working or whatever, but what are your goals? Am I achieving what I need to? Is it easier or harder now? I'm less connected with friends; how do you recommend people navigate this and maybe, you know, try to get out of that and try to maybe hopefully make some forward progress on some of their goals?"

"Absolutely! So, I'm going to take this from first starting just from the learning perspective—which—and just say keep it simple! We don’t have to do everything while we’re in this COVID situation.

We'll be out of it at some point! We'll get a vaccine; we'll be able to go out in the world. If we can just make sure we're keeping up the foundations right now, that's the important thing! So for younger kids, just make sure they're doing some math, they’re doing some reading, they're getting some just, you know, keeping up their curiosity about the world. Those are really the important things that you're doing.

For students that are a little bit older, again, think about what are the most important things for them to be learning this year? What are the biggest pieces that, you know, we want to make sure they get? And let yourself go with all of the things that come in terms of learning on top of that! It's okay if you don't get them now!

We're all really resilient, and we'll be able to pick up again when this is all over and we can get back together and do in-person learning and focus again on all of these things. So that's my first thing. It's okay if you're not doing everything that you were doing in the before times!

So it's okay! When you set goals, we talk about progress monitoring to make sure you're on track. But another skill is actually realizing when this isn't going to work! I can't do this right now! Modifying what your goals are and thinking about whether maybe you're going to extend the time it takes to meet that goal; maybe you're going to change what the goal is a little bit—that's okay! Our goals don't are not like carved in stone! We can change them, and it's actually quite a skill to be able to recognize when you're off track and be able to find ways to either get on track or to modify where what your path is and where you think you're going to go.

Let's say one more thing. I also have a background as a school psychologist, and if you feel like the anxiety that you're experiencing is interfering with your work in your life and that worry and the thoughts you're having are actually interfering with, you know, kind of the daily things you need to do, don't be afraid to seek help for that either!

If you've got kids, you can talk to their pediatrician; you can talk to your general practitioner for some advice and help as well. But make sure that you're staying healthy!"

Yeah! I’ll just echo that last point Kristen made. You know, sometimes you're like a frog in boiling water—you don't realize that things are getting bad until they maybe get too bad. And so it's very; you know, as soon as you get a sense—it never hurts to go, you know, talk to folks, get help, etc., etc.

The other thing I would throw out is, you know, sometimes if your goals are too ambitious, they can become debilitating because they feel daunting or they feel very hard to start on. I think one thing that I've heard from Kristen—not just over the last, you know, several minutes, but you know in the past—is just, you know, make some—you know, make some of your goals need to be things that you can get some wins on so that you can kind of notch them in your belt and move on from that.

The other thing I'd recommend is, you know, and I've talked about this before—is you know, try out meditation! You know meditation isn't some weird thing. All it is is sitting quietly and becoming observant of your thoughts and then letting your mind still a little bit.

And you'll realize that a lot of those anxieties, a lot of those maybe even negative feelings, they come from a part of your brain but that isn't your entire self. I wouldn't call that a substitute for getting help if you need it, but you know look into it! Even if you're able to do two, three minutes a day, you know, I've talked about before—I used to get anxious on planes—I still do a little bit! But by meditating, it really helped me actually not only not get anxious on planes, but in a lot of other circumstances where I might have otherwise gotten a little bit worked up.

So we have time maybe for one more question from Facebook. Rouhoni Arjuni is saying, "My child, although very chatty and extroverted at home and with the family, he's extremely shy with speaking up on video with his teacher in class. How can I motivate his participation?"

I've actually heard this a lot, Kristen. Ideas?

"Yeah! So there's a couple of things to do. So one is make sure that you know what is the kind of importance of speaking out. So sometimes it's not that important if they're not sharing all the time, and they're a little bit more quiet—and that can be okay!

But one of the things that speaking out actually does is it helps us work through the ideas that we're learning. If you explain them in your own words back to the teacher or you're answering a question for the teacher, what that's doing is you're putting into your own words the things you're learning. You give the teacher the opportunity to maybe correct what's going on there.

So if you understand if that's one of the purposes, you want to figure out how to make sure your child's getting that experience. So it might be actually talking to—talking to you a little bit about what are the things that they are learning? What are the things—how would they have answered that question that maybe they didn't speak up to answer? So that you can work with them to do that too.

Second, make sure they know, like, the protocols—what are the norms in their classroom for speaking up? I know I get on calls where there's 10 people—just 10 people online—and it's really hard to get in, like to get heard, and then it's your turn.

So, find out how do they—is there a virtual hand-raising function in the platform you use? Is there a way that they can, you know, how do they indicate when they do have something to say that they want to say something? And make sure they know how to do that—that's the next piece.

And then finally, think about, in the same way that we talked about motivating to do anything, how can we think about setting some goals around how many times...hey, let's see if you can speak up two times in this next hour-long class and contribute to the discussion and say where those are!

So those kind of, you know, think about those same principles—if they're not doing it, do you want to bring in some external rewards for them when they do do that?

And finally, just make sure you've always got that connection to your child's teacher so that your child's teacher is aware that maybe they're having some of these worries and some of these concerns about how to speak up as well. So those are some individual thoughts there about, you know, how to get kids going in these Zoom calls! We've probably all experienced it ourselves."

No, absolutely! I think I've been on some of those calls with Kristen or have trouble getting in.

"Well, you know, Kristen, thank you so much. I hope we do this again! As you can see, a lot of folks have a lot of questions about engagement and motivation, so I don't think this is the end of our conversation! But thanks so much for joining actually, if you have more questions, we're doing a webinar next week, and you can sign up at the place you see here! So one more plug before we go, September 30th for Pacific, seven Eastern!"

Awesome! Thanks, Kristen!

"Yeah, definitely join that webinar! A lot more good information like you just got! I also want to remind everyone for tomorrow's live stream—National 2020 Teacher of the Year, as I mentioned, Tabitha Rossbroy—and we're going to be able to talk about, well, she's National Teacher of the Year especially working with younger kids!

So I think we'll be able to continue some of these questions we've been talking about about motivation, especially with younger kids in distance learning. So I look forward to seeing you all tomorrow. Have a good day!"