LearnStorm 2021 - Khan Academy LearnStorm

Hello teachers,

I'm Sal Khan, founder of the not-for-profit Khan Academy, and I'm here to announce a nationwide back-to-school learning challenge called LearnStorm.

LearnStorm is an exciting way to jumpstart your school year around learning activities. It's designed to motivate your students and to help build their growth mindset. This year was amazing with LearnStorm. I had a group of students that couldn't add, subtract, multiply, or divide fractions. They avoided it at all costs. But since it was an assignment, they would try it, and they would eventually do much better. What was amazing was that the lower-achieving students were able to see that they were part of something huge. They were able to contribute, and that, I thought, boosted their self-confidence, their self-esteem. I didn't realize that would happen after doing LearnStorm.

LearnStorm is a good way to differentiate as well as motivate. With the growth mindset pieces, you can also educate them about why it's important to learn. You can teach them how they learn, how their body is set up to learn, and what strategies help them learn. It's amazing. It's amazing, and it's free.

We think this is really going to motivate your students to understand and appreciate that they truly can learn anything. The activities have been designed to have measurable gains in learning attitudes. One thing I learned from the growth mindset activities is that your intelligence can grow just like your muscles can grow. That's something that really stuck with me because I didn't know that before.

I did over 300 lessons in one week. I felt proud of myself getting all these good grades. It helps the students tremendously. Their confidence is higher, they're able to do it, and it warms my heart that they think that way now. They know that they can keep going and keep growing, and nothing will stand in their way.

So together, as we jumpstart this school year, I look forward to all of us living the LearnStorm motto: to keep going and to keep growing.