🎉100th show! 🎉 Homeroom with Sal & Tabatha Rosproy - Thursday, September 24

Hi everyone! Welcome to the Homeroom live stream. Sal here from Khan Academy. We have a very exciting guest today! We have Tabitha Ross, Pro 2020 National Teacher of the Year. So, if you have questions for what it's like to be a teacher, especially a teacher of early learners, start putting them on the message boards on Facebook and YouTube.

But before we jump into what promises to be a really fun conversation, I'll make my standard announcements. Reminder, Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization. We can only exist because of philanthropic donations from folks like yourself. So, if you're in a position to do so, please think about going to khanacademy.org/donate.

I also want to make a special shout-out to several organizations that stepped up when they found out that we were running at a deficit going into COVID. That deficit has only accelerated because of our costs going up due to our server costs. We're trying to accelerate a whole bunch of programs for teachers, parents, and students. So, special thanks to Bank of America, Google.org, AT&T, Fastly, and Novartis.

I still also want to remind folks about Homeroom with Sal, the podcast. That's essentially a modified version of the live stream, kind of some of the more poignant moments that you might find useful. You can consume it safely in your car, wherever, without having to see things. So, I encourage you to go subscribe to the Homeroom the podcast.

So, with that, I'm excited to have Tabitha Ross Bro on. Tabitha, good to see you!

Tabitha: Hi! Good to see you too! Thanks for having me.

Sal: No, it's my honor! You are 2020 National Teacher of the Year. You're based in Kansas. So, how did you become National Teacher of the Year? I asked what was the process like.

Tabitha: So, I was nominated at my district level for State Teacher of the Year, and you go to a regional banquet. There are four regions in Kansas, and I was named one of the finalists here in Kansas, and then I was named Kansas Teacher of the Year shortly after that. After that, you submit an application to CCSO, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and they have a team of 17 different organizations that pick four finalists, and I was one of those. I was really surprised when I got the phone call because it was a Washington DC number, and I thought it was a political call, you know, just going into an election year. So, I didn't answer at first before I got a text message asking me to call them back. After that, we, the other three finalists, who are incredible, we all went to Washington DC and interviewed with those varying education organizations. We did keynotes, we interviewed with press, and just a short while later, I was selected as National Teacher of the Year.

Sal: Wow! Well, congratulations! You know, I was lucky to see some video footage of some of the things you do with your students. I didn't see what the other teachers are doing, but it made me pretty convinced that you are very well-deserving of National Teacher of the Year. I think we have some of this footage; if we could take a look at it, Felipe, and if you could talk us through what's going on.

Tabitha: Oh yes! This is a Zoom call with a class full of preschoolers, which I'm sure some people can identify with. You know the older kids, you can't get them to talk, but the younger kids, you can't get them to stop talking. So, it's incredibly unique to be on video chat with four-year-olds. I think at this time, I was just reading them a story about why they couldn't be at school. This was really shortly after the school buildings had been shut down in the spring.

Oh, and this is one of our Friday dance parties! Yes, every Friday we have a dance party, and occasionally, in between, when the students ask for them or we just need a break. I have a disco light that I got pretty cheap online, and we play oldies. We play things that they like from their favorite YouTube stars and have a great time celebrating together. I hope to attend one day; this seems like a better party than most of the things I'm invited to!

Oh, and here we were releasing some of our butterflies! This is outside of the nursing home that my preschool is housed inside of, and what you can't see is kind of offscreen. We have some grandma and grandpa residents—that's what we call the volunteers who live there—watching us release our butterflies that we watched grow from caterpillars.

Wow! Here are my students! One thing I really focus on in my classroom is social emotional health and self-regulation and those relationships from student to student. Here we are doing an activity that builds those relationships where they're doing a "Row, Row, Your Boat" game. They have to keep each other safe. It's playful, it's silly, there's positive physical touch and just loving interactions, and that helps them grow closer to each other and build those super, super strong relationships.

Sal: Wow! No, I’m envious of your students. I mean, I had some great teachers too, but I don't remember the dance parties or the "Row, Row, Your Boat" simulations and the butterflies. So that's incredible! And the age group you teach out there in Kansas, you teach, you said preschoolers, mainly four-year-olds?

Tabitha: Four-year-old preschool! Yeah, my classroom is funded by the public school and special education and at-risk dollars. But yeah, we're a public school program for four-year-olds.

Sal: What kind of gravitated you to that age group, and what do you think is kind of the mindset or the special sauce that you bring? You know, day in, day out, I'm sure many other teachers do as well, but you clearly are one of those teachers that I think these four-year-olds, even when they're 40 or 50, are going to remember those moments. What drew you to teaching, especially that group? And how do you view it that gives you that special pixie dust?

Tabitha: You know, when I was in high school, I knew that I wanted to help people, but I began taking a dual credit college Spanish class in which I got to go down to the preschool in our district and teach Spanish to preschoolers. Before we started interacting with the students, we got to just observe in the classroom, and I remember this moment so clearly. It was the first time I had ever witnessed teaching from an outsider perspective. You know, I had always been on the end of being delivered instruction, and it was the first time that I truly saw teaching as the art form that it is. That teacher that I was watching, her name is Pat Walton, and she is now retired. But the way that she connected with her students, that she really acted as a guide for their learning, the way that she built relationships with them—it was magical for me to see. From then on out, I knew that I wanted to work with kids, and I knew that I wanted to work with really young kids too.

Sal: That's incredible! There are tons of questions coming in because I think especially the young kid crowd. My youngest is five and a half, so I won't make too many of the questions about, you know, my personal help that I need. But from YouTube, we have a question from Carys Alexander: "What tips do you have for older siblings trying to help younger siblings with tutoring and homework and distance learning? How much should we help?"

Tabitha: That is a great question! You know, I have so many students in my class who you can tell when they haven't had to talk for themselves or do things for themselves, and usually, they have older siblings. So, what I would do is just have a conversation with your older kids and talk to them about the role that they play, right? They want to take care of them, but the best way that we can take care of our younger siblings is to help them learn how to do things for themselves because we won't always be there, right? And they need to be able to solve problems on their own.

And so, you could give them a list of things that they could do to be helpful, including being a good role model. You know, like, "What does it look like when you are doing your own work? Include your younger sibling in that time." But I would just be really open with them about that and be thankful for the moments that they are helping because you definitely don't want to see them go the other way and not be interested in that at all. But I think for sure older siblings can be great models, but you're right on that sometimes we give them a little bit too much help to help them help themselves. And I've got to believe that Carys is a pretty good older sibling. The very fact that they're asking this question shows that they care a lot, so your younger siblings are very lucky.

Sal: From YouTube, Miss Victoria asks: "How do you react to sassy kids—the ones that say 'You can't tell me what to do' etc.? I've never encountered sassy kids; my kids never do anything like that! But I guess, in theory, other kids might! So I'd love the advice there too."

Tabitha: You know, I think that one of the first things you have to do as the adult in the situation is recognize your triggers—so that definitely would have been one of my triggers—being talked to disrespectfully. Because when I was a child, that did not fly in our house. So, now I see how that triggers me because I'm super aware of it.
But what I would say is when that happens, your child or the child you're working with is probably not in a state of their brain where they can make good decisions and be a good friend and be kind and respectful. So, you're going to need to help them sort of co-regulate in that moment.

And so that means if you react aggressively, they're probably going to react aggressively too because you know aggression begets aggression. So, what you're going to want to do is to take a deep breath. I just say to myself, "This behavior is information," right? I didn't make that phrase up; it's not unique to me. But when we view behavior as information and not as our students or our kids being out to get us or trying to push our buttons, then we are more likely to come up with a solution that is helpful rather than hurtful to them and to us and into our relationship.

And so when someone says something super sassy to me, I might just take a deep breath and give myself a second before I respond because sometimes they are looking for a quick response from you. But I would just say, you know, you can either address that hurtful statement: "I don't like it when you talk that way to me." If you want to speak to me, you can use kind words, and give them an example! Or I can tell you're really frustrated. I'm going to give you a few minutes to calm down, and then I'll come back.

Sal: That's powerful advice! Not just for dealing with young kids, I would say any relationship! Feelings are real; don't escalate; try to understand where they're coming from. Just to add to that, I mean, I was joking, obviously; I'm always trying to navigate. And I think, you know, I fall into that trap as a parent. If, like, you know, your child is not eating or whatever, and you're trying to push them, and then they dig in their heels. They’re trying to push boundaries a little bit, you know? And especially if things get really, you know, fall apart—they're having a tantrum, or maybe you feel like having a tantrum! How do you deal with that? You know, I can imagine, especially the four-year-old crowd, sometimes with my five-year-old, he just falls apart—when we're trying to put him back together. How do you deal with that?

Tabitha: You know, tantrums are hard, right? My heart goes out to people when I see their kids doing it in public because I know they're so embarrassed. But what you just need to remember is we've all been through that; we've all gone through that. And if people are judging you for when that happens, then just, you can ignore them. But again, I would say you remaining calm is the most important thing in that moment. Sometimes it will look like me, you know, asking a child if it's okay if I can hug them or hold their hands and just doing some deep breaths.

Because at that moment, you can't reason with them. They're just different areas of your brain, and usually when they're throwing a tantrum, they're in a lower center of their brain where they can't reason, and they're in fight or flight mode—probably fight if they're in that tantrum mode. And so you'd just want to breathe, and you calmly breathing, not engaging verbally, usually will calm the situation enough where you can get to a point where you can reason with that child.

Sal: Wow! That's masterful! I feel more empowered just hearing you say that.

There are a lot of questions coming in. From YouTube, Harsh Gotham asks: "How do you feel when a small kid asks a lot of questions? How do you deal with them? What to do when a kid asks a question, and you don't know the answer back?"

Tabitha: This happens to me all the time! I always say you never know what you don't know until a kid asks you to explain something. And so, like, our high school mascot where I live is the Vikings. Someone asked me, "What's a Viking?" I was like, "How do I explain this to a child?" You know, what a Viking is!

Once someone asked me, "What is chocolate?" Or, you know, just some simple questions, and I was like, "I really gotta go through this!" So, first, I would encourage you to follow up, and I think it's okay to admit that you don't know something. So when a student asks me a question, and I don't know, I'd be like, "Let's look that up together! Where do you think we can find out what that is?"

So you can teach them how to do those beginning steps of research. But I think also when they ask you something that you don't know, ask them what they think it is and see if you can get an explanation from there. Kind of turn it on them and maybe start working on some of those critical thinking skills.

Sal: It's interesting that you brought up Vikings! I recently read an article that even our perceptions of Vikings, you know, we imagined these—you know, their Vikings were definitely from Scandinavia—but, you know, they were the seafarers who would go and, like, pillage coastal villages and things like that.

But apparently the Vikings might have been different than we imagined, but anyway, that's a whole other topic!

Tabitha: Why not? Yeah, it's fascinating!

One question—I mean, this is related to the last one, but this is something I deal with a lot at home—is, you know, I have three kids: 11, 9, and 5. You're dealing with classrooms of many four-year-olds. You know, one thing that kids like to do is they like to show adults that they care about the things that they've done. But, you know, sometimes after a long day of work—and I'm sure sometimes you’re, you know, you're tired at work—you know, you have five kids come at you at the same part-time and say, "Hey, Miss Ross-Broy, look at what I did! Look at—did you know that this is true? Did you know that the Vikings never ate chocolate?" You know, whatever! How do you deal with that?

How do you triage that inbound that I think I see a lot of young kids like to do?

Tabitha: Oh my gosh! Yeah, they can be exhausting! I sometimes have bruises on my shoulders or my legs from being tapped so hard. I did make a rule in my class: if you want my attention, you need to say my name instead of tapping this card. And then, you know, you just hear your name constantly!

And I, you know, I would just really try to create some boundaries. If you know that the minute that you get home that you're not going to be able to handle this, you can create those boundaries with your kids and say, "Alright, when I get home, let's do hugs, high fives, kisses—whatever you're used to. And then I need 10 minutes, and I'm going to be in this room, and I'm going to put a little stop sign on the door, and that means don't come in!"

Then do what you need to do to collect yourself, to meditate, to exercise, to check your emails, spend a little time by yourself, because it's overwhelming—that fatigue from managing a household and managing a job. And then I would say come out and be ready to have those discussions. If your child is struggling with that, I sometimes give kids a notebook. And then they can write or draw the things they want to talk to me about, and then later when we have time, I might point to my schedule and say, "Okay, it's time to show me the ideas that you wanted to share at circle time when it was everyone else's turn to talk."

So, I just think creating some routines might be helpful in that situation.

Sal: No, that's super valuable. I'm gonna try to apply that.

The related question from YouTube, Deathstroke, asks: "What if a child asks a question that shouldn't be answered at the time, like adult stuff? What do you do?"

Tabitha: They do, they like to know. But what's funny is most of the time they don't know that it's adult stuff! And so you know, sometimes I will even get questions in my classroom about religion or about things that aren’t really my place to comment on. I mean, even politics at preschool sometimes.

I try to be just, you know, really neutral, and I will say, you know, "Everybody believes different things. This is something you might want to ask your mom and dad about, or your grandma about, your caregiver—whoever they live with when you get home. And if you want me to help you do that, let's write a note to them and know that you brought that up!"

But if it's something kind of inappropriate, I think that I might just say, you know, "What? Let's talk about that a little bit later! Right now, we're talking about math, or right now, we're talking about letter A," or something like that. I just wouldn't make a big deal about it because once you make a huge deal, the other kids know that it was something inappropriate, and probably the pattern is going to be then other kids will ask about it too. So, just try to be chill. That's what would be my advice!

Sal: Yeah, no, great advice! So, from YouTube, Susanna Garcia Dominguez asks: "Hi Tabitha, how do you teach young students to regulate?"

Tabitha: Okay, this is a great question too! So, I am a huge fan of conscious discipline! And if you've never heard of that, I would start by reading the book "Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline" by Dr. Becky Bailey. I'm not in any kind of partnership or promotion; I just love conscious discipline!

I'm writing that down. Let me get some paper. What is that again?

Tabitha: "Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline." That book changed my life, and now I am a huge fan of Dr. Becky Bailey and all the work she does. She has tons of free resources on the conscious discipline website for families and for teachers.

One big thing to do is first you have to teach them sort of what feelings are, right? What's it like to notice, "What’s it feel like when I'm angry? What’s it look like when I’m sad? What is my body doing?" You want to work on helping them notice things like that about themselves and others.

A big way that you can do that is not using judgmental language! Like, you know, "I like it when you're mad," or "I like it when you're happy and calm. I don't like it when you're sad or angry." Because feelings are okay! What's not okay is exploding when you're angry, but it is okay to be angry.

Your feelings give us information; we just need to teach kids what to do. We need to teach them those replacement behaviors for tantrums and for throwing things or hitting or hiding—things like that. And so, again, you want to wait until they're calm to do the teaching. You want to model calming strategies like deep breathing, maybe coloring a picture when you're feeling overwhelmed or getting a hug from a person that you love. I mean, I could go on and on about this.

But I think the biggest part is letting them know that feelings are okay and helping them notice what feelings look like and what to do when you're having those feelings.

Sal: Really, I'm going to buy this book right after. That's actually something I've only recently appreciated—not just with dealing with kids, but, you know, just relationships in general—is that you should never question someone's feelings. Feelings, by definition, are real!

So, you should never tell someone that, like, they're not real, or you can't have that. Our perceptions of reality might be different, and people can be right or wrong about their perceptions of reality, but the feelings are real. And so, yeah, no, I'm definitely going to take a look at that book!

So, this is a question I've been getting a lot. I would love your advice because you deal day in and day out with young kids. From Facebook, Irene is asking: "With the short attention spans that younger kids have, how do you keep them engaged when teaching online?"

Tabitha: This is so hard! I differ a lot in my school of thought from what the, you know, the reality that many of our schools are in right now. You know, I think 5 to 10 minutes max is the attention that you can keep online! As you can see, it is a struggle!

I would say the biggest thing is to do is to make a schedule! One of the big things I offer to the families of students in my class is some kind of first-then picture schedule. So, you might have a picture of "First, I'm doing Zoom," then "I get to do a preferred activity like play-doh or play outside."

You can draw pictures; you can print pictures from the internet. If you want to find me on social media, I would be glad to share with you resources that I have already made for this if you wanted to make your life way easier.

But just helping your kids understand what the expectation is helps them feel safe, and that helps them be able to learn better and be able to regulate their emotions when it's not something that they really feel like doing. But also just to let them know, "Hey, here's what I expect for today. Here's what you're going to do, and here's what I'm going to do." I think that really helps—just having that routine and the expectation set.

Sal: No, just watching you, I mean, you exude positive energy, but you seem to just have it figured out! I'm very impressed!

There's a question here; I don't know if you see it at the preschool level. I can imagine to some degree, from Facebook, Moona Youssef is asking: "How do you encourage kids to report bullying?"

I guess we could broaden that: how you deal with bullying. I'm curious, do you see bullying at that age group, at the preschool level? Then how do you deal with it if you do?

Tabitha: You know, I am of the idea that bullying is still a huge problem. I think it's a little more invisible than it used to be because it's become more like cyberbullying or online. But, you know, again, I'll go back to conscious discipline.

There's a great video out on YouTube about like, I think it's called "Making a Bully from Scratch," and it talks a lot about what we do as a society that encourages that kind of behavior and what we do and how we help victims in that situation. One huge thing we have to work on is building relationships between our students.

One thing that Becky Bailey, Dr. Becky Bailey also says is that willingness comes from connection. So, I'm a lot more likely to want to work with you and get along with you if I feel connected to you and feel like we have something in common.

So, I think it's the job of teachers at every level to be building classroom community within their school. Like, I'm doing this as intentionally as I am doing math and literacy and social studies. It is a part of every day. It is a part of every subject that we are looking for ways to teach kids to see others with love and empathy.

So, I think if we could, if we could do that, you know, at every level, our kids would be way better off, and I think that our bullying levels would go way down.

Sal: And it's a good point! You know, it starts from some place. And the more you can build that early on, the resilience against bullying. So, from YouTube, New Trap Nation asked: "What do you think about the way we are learning during COVID-19?"

And I'll expand that question a little bit. You know, what are you seeing in your students? You know, I think your students are very fortunate to have you, and, you know, I think you're doing it as well as anyone can. But are you seeing some gaps? Are you worried about even your students? And what are your kind of concerns more broadly for, you know, what kids are going through right now?

Tabitha: So, I'm troubled by some of the things that I see happening. I think that teachers, administrators, everyone is doing their absolute best, but there are just requirements that we have to meet from our states, and there are requirements we have to meet federally.

I would like to see some relaxation on some of those requirements because in the situation of virtual learning, it is never going to look just like school does when you're in person. And I think the expectations that we put on families and on students to have kids doing this synchronous learning experience six hours a day from home, it's not sustainable!

It's not feasible, and it's burning a lot of people out—students and families and teachers all included in that. What I would like to see is some more asynchronous opportunities. So, say teachers upload videos of themselves teaching or lessons or activities, and families are able to complete those within a week's time, within the time frame that works for them.

Sal: Yeah! Now, what you're saying makes a ton of sense! I mean, what we've been saying when I'm asked the same question is we have to—I'd argue even pre-COVID—we're probably trying to do too much. But especially during the time, to try to transplant six hours of in-person with six hours of video conference, um, it's not, it's gonna burn out the teachers, it's gonna burn out the students, it's gonna burn out the parents, it's gonna only add anxiety.

This is a time that less is more so that you have more space for families to just take care of everything else and not atrophy. What are these, Stan? You know, is it just that the teachers are feeling pressure from the state, and I guess then the districts that, hey, I gotta cover this many standards in this many days?

And that they're saying you have to have this much face time, you know, in person?

Tabitha: I think, you know, what they're expecting is kind of six hours of learning time. And so, some teachers are really able to do a certain amount of minutes together online and then some of the stuff on their own.

The reality we're facing is, though, that some students are at home alone, or they don't have someone helping keep them in a routine, or older siblings are the caregiver. And so, I think some teachers are feeling pressure because of that to be more present in those student lives.

But for sure, I think most of the pressure is just coming from regulations. Some schools just don't have enough staff to do anything except for let kids do synchronous learning. So, I'm going to be teaching in class. If you're a remote learner, you're going to be watching me teach in class.

And so that creates all of that time online that it's just not healthy and not good for kids to just sit for six hours!

Sal: So, what I hope is that we're going to find some more creative ways to engage online. But I know that like the hybrid models that are happening are some of the most challenging.

And we have time for maybe one last question! These conversations always go faster than expected! From Facebook, Manipushan asks: "How do students bond and interact with fellow classmates in the virtual classroom environment? Our kids are missing that healthy interaction that they had in class with their classmates."

Tabitha: This is also tough! You know, I love technology! In some ways, it makes our world a lot smaller; in some ways, it makes it a lot bigger! You know, I find the biggest, most important thing when connecting kids online is not just giving them face time with me. We do need that individual face time and whole class time, but setting up small groups!

I've seen several teachers do this, and they do things like lunch buddies! Every day of the week, different groups of three or four students will meet and have lunch together. Then kids, you know, are more likely—and that's virtually—kids are more likely to open up in a smaller group, especially our older ones.

With our younger ones, they’re a lot more likely to be validated and heard because they have lots of things to share online. And so, I think that any opportunity you have to decrease the size of the groups that you're working with, you should definitely take, because that will help build those bonds.

Sal: No, I love that idea! No, we've talked, we've been throwing out the idea of instead of having 60 minutes with 20 or 30 kids, why not have 10 minutes with five kids or six kids?

Yeah, yeah! Increases the interactivity! It fits into what you're talking about around attention span, etc.

Well, Tabitha, we're all out of time! I could keep talking to you, and I said—I don't say this—you could watch the other films of other people that we've been, you know, you naturally exude this very positive energy that I think is part of the reason you much deservedly are National Teacher of the Year for 2020.

Do you have any, you know, final messages for either parents who are especially parents of four or five-year-olds struggling right now, and teachers, you know, who are struggling with their regular lives and trying to do distance learning right now?

Tabitha: For teachers, the main thing that I would say is use your voice right now, okay? We have a big audience, whether we like it or not. For the first time, all eyes are on school, and we need you. We need the aides, we need the custodians, and all the support professionals to be using their voice to talk to the people in their district about what their needs are and what their students’ needs are. We need you to advocate right now!

And also hang in there, because you're doing your best! So, give yourself some grace! And that's what I want to say to families too. This is a big, big, big change in the way your lives have operated. And so, just give yourself some grace!

Do the best that you can! Keep your kids on some kind of routine and schedule, but also give them a break, because this is hard for them too! But just hang in there! You know, I always say together we'll see it through, and I think that's totally true! And the more that we work together and communicate and advocate, the better off that we'll be.

Sal: Wow! Well, great advice. I feel less anxious after you saying that! So, thank you, Tabitha!

Thank you so much! And once again, congratulations on being National Teacher of the Year—much, much deserved!

Tabitha: Thank you so much for having me!

Sal: Thank you! Well, thanks everyone! I think you all probably felt the same, you know, positive energy that I felt! It's really inspiring to talk to a teacher like Tabitha.

Thanks so much for joining, and I will see you all. Let's see, the next conversation is going to be next Tuesday. We're going to have Lisa Damour, who's a New York Times columnist specializing in kind of social emotional and emotional well-being, which is obviously a very important topic; some of which we just touched on.

So, I will see you on Tuesday on the Homeroom live stream. See you then!