Khan Academy Ed Talks with Fenesha Hubbard - Thursday, September 2

Hello and welcome to Ed Talks with Khan Academy! I am excited today to be talking to Phoenicia Hubbard, who is with NWEA, one of our partner organizations that we'll talk more about in a minute. She is the Professional Learning Design Coordinator, so I'm excited to talk to her about professional learning for teachers.

Before we get started, I want to remind everyone that Khan Academy is a non-profit organization, and we are able to do our work through donations from people like you. If you go to khanacademy.org/donate, you will find a way that you can help us continue this work through your donations. Thank you!

I also want to recognize some of our sponsors who really helped support us through the COVID-19 crisis, and that includes Bank of America, AT&T, Google.org, Novartis, Fastly, and General Motors. Thank you!

Finally, if you have missed some other Ed Talks in Homeroom, you can find audio versions of those talks on your favorite podcast provider at "Looking for Homeroom with Sal," and you can listen to Sal and me interview other folks who are influencers in the education world.

And with that, let me welcome Phoenicia. Welcome, and thanks for joining us!

Hi, Kristen! Thank you so much for having me.

Absolutely! So first, let me just give a quick background for folks on who NWEA is. NWEA, as I said, is one of our partner organizations, and they're a non-profit that supports students and educators in more than 146 countries by doing research, assessment solutions, policy and advocacy services, professional learning, and school improvement services.

I know that core to NWEA's work is really fighting for equity, driving impact in classrooms, and pushing for systemic change in our education communities. So that is a big bunch of work to bite off. Tell me, what is your role?

Kristin, I love being at NWEA! I've been at NWEA for about 10 years, and what I do is really support our educators nationwide. I do that by designing the professional learning that teachers need to stay on top of their craft. I really enjoy the work.

That is awesome! How did you get into that? How did you get to be in this role supporting teachers?

I think to support teachers in this way, you had to have been a teacher, so that's how I started my career. I started teaching middle school math in a very large school district, and it was through an alternative certification program for career changers. These were people who had established careers who said, "You know what? I really want to support students." So I started off doing that, and then was very quickly immersed into the world of professional learning. I started designing learning for teachers, coaching teachers in math, and that led me to where I am today.

That is awesome. So I mentioned that one of the things that NWEA does is research and understanding more about student learning. I know you've just released a report on learning during COVID. What were the kinds of questions you were investigating?

Yeah, great question! Our research team, Kristen, really wanted to see how students were faring during the pandemic; that was our main focus. And what we noticed is that if we focus on the good, gains were made, right? These were very challenging two years, but gains were made. However, students showed a lower performance compared to past trends.

When we think about math education, there were declines in math across all the grades and all the groups. So we think about, but you have a nice visual there. The largest declines in math, Kristen, were among students of color and students in high poverty schools. So I think one of the biggest things we should do right now is probably talk about what we are going to do about it.

Absolutely! I like the positive that people did learn something over the pandemic but didn't get as far as we would have liked them to get likely. So let's start with parents, and thinking about parents first. What can parents do to support students in learning math?

That is the question, particularly because so many of our young people spent good quality time with their parents these past couple of years. So I know that question was coming up repeatedly: as a parent, how can I support my child? What do I need to do? I think, Kristen, what we really want to encourage parents to do is to get their students talking about math. We want to help young people get their thoughts out of their heads and let it come out in the best way.

Students always ask, "Why? Why does this work? Why do I do it that way?" I think as parents, we need to do that same thing: get our students asking why a lot more. Particularly when they come to us and they might say, "Hey, can you help me work through this problem?" or "I don't understand." Throw that question out there: "Well, why would you do this? And why does this work? And why do you think that?" I think that helps us to really get insight into how students are thinking about math and the ways that they think about it.

That makes sense. I've heard friends who are parents worry about what do they do if they don't know the answer? If they don't know how to do a math problem that their child brings to them, any suggestions for that?

I think Khan Academy has a great suggestion, but I wasn't trying to lead you there. Before we start seeking external resources like Khan Academy, which is a great external resource, I think really having the students step into the position of an empowered learner with their parent is going to be key. So empowered learner meaning, you know what? I do bring something to the table. I do have something that I understand about the content, but I also have a stumbling block.

If I can come to the table and start talking through my misconceptions, as a parent, what you can do is just help guide my thinking, help pull it out of me. You don't need to know all the content to do that; you just need to know how to ask really good questions and how to read me as your child, understand my body language, and the things that I might be stumbling on and the things I'm confident about.

That makes sense, and I know there's good research to support that using the language of math and just talking about math is really important for learning outcomes. So that totally makes sense, too. It's about having the conversation sometimes instead of having to find the right answer right away. But that rings true, right?

All right, so what about teachers? We've got this idea of maybe learning gaps that have opened up where students aren't where they might have been in the past coming into the new year. What should teachers be thinking about to address some of that?

That's a really good question, too. I think one, we should all come to an agreement that there was a lot of interrupted learning that took place. I think once people are okay with admitting that, you know what? There were some breaks in the routines and how we learned. Because of that interrupted learning, students might have some unfinished learning. Unfinished learning refers to the skills and the prerequisite knowledge that students might need in order to be ready to learn what's coming next.

I think teachers are well-positioned right now to really assess what unfinished learning students might have, and they can do that through the use of assessments. The data can tell us what students might be ready to learn and what they might have already mastered. We can do that through actual tests, and we can also do that through formative assessment, which is something that teachers do so skillfully every day, and that's informal ways to get data to inform instruction right on the spot, in real-time.

What are some of your favorite more informal things that teachers do to start to understand where students are and what their skills are?

Oh, that's a great question. I love math language routines. I think about a math language routine like the Problem with Three Reads, for example. So we're working on a math problem; I'm simply going to start off by asking you to read the problem. Then I'm going to ask you, "What is this problem asking us about?" So just simply asking that question gives me an understanding of how my students are interpreting that.

Then we might read the question again, and I would say, "Okay, what information do we need in order to solve this problem?" So that gives me insight into the student's level of readiness in terms of background knowledge that they might need, and so it's really helping me unpack the context and purpose from my students' understanding. Teachers are generally very skilled at these strategies.

Another thing we might do are entrance and exit tickets. I think you said "three reads." Is there a third read? Did I hear the third reading?

Okay, let's go back. The three reads: first the problem, and then I say, "Okay, what is this problem about?" Then you're telling me what you think the problem is about—not confirming or affirming; I just want to know. The second read, now I ask you, "What are we trying to find out?" So a little different there; you know, what parents can use.

Parents, I hope you're taking note: "What are we trying to find out?" Then we read the problem again, and now I'm going to ask you, "What information might be useful to solve this?" Knowing the information means we're starting to get to the math behind it.

That makes sense. Yes, yes! Then that sounds like the teacher would get a lot of information about what the student knows and what they can do from that kind of interaction.

Definitely. I think the intent is to really get behind what students are thinking—how are you thinking about the math? And that helps me understand what you know about the math and what misconceptions you might have.

What do you see as the biggest challenges teachers face in teaching math? Maybe it's different for elementary students versus older students, but just what are some of the big challenges?

I think the challenge that we face, since time immemorial, has been illuminated and heightened during the pandemic. That's the challenge of how do I meet the needs of so many different levels of readiness in my classroom? If I teach seventh-grade math but I have students who are academically ready for content maybe at the fifth-grade level or I have students who might be ready to be challenged a little more at the ninth-grade level, as a seventh-grade math teacher, the challenge for me then becomes making sure I have a good depth and breadth of understanding of the content, and that I can really scaffold my instruction for my students, no matter where they are.

That is a huge challenge that was heightened during the pandemic, and when I say "scaffolding," that's literally thinking about how you might build structures to help students grow from where they are in the learning.

Does that make sense, Kristen?

Yeah, it does! It does. So now, if we have students where there's even more variability throughout the class of where students are, we've got even more levels that teachers are trying to address. What are some of the things they can do if they have students who are at seven different levels in what they're trying to learn?

I think we want to first encourage teachers to stay grounded in what the expectation and the standard is for the students. Because if you immediate—and I'm only saying this from a teacher who has experience—I’ve taught in a classroom where you have students whose literacy level is pretty much non-existent versus students who just need to be challenged at a higher level in math. I have been there, okay? So I understand the immediate reaction to first go to the reality of the fact that I have to cover so much content with all of these students.

I think if we start at that point, then it feels too overwhelming; it can feel daunting. So I think it's important for our teachers to really get clear on what is it that my students need to know, what's the grade-level standard, and what are the expectations that I personally hold for my students?

I had just mentioned the interrupted and unfinished learning. Sometimes, Kristen, when we have a lot of interrupted learning, it can lead to assumptions—meaning I can very easily assume that my students don't know past content simply because they missed so much. When we have assumptions like that, I have a colleague, Chase Nordegren, who always says that assumptions are a threat to equity. And I think, in this case, assumptions could be a threat to equity because then it can start to limit the content that our students are exposed to, and ultimately, what we want to do is ensure that we're exposing our students to grade-level content irrespective of their readiness level.

And the challenge then for teachers is how to do that. That's the biggest challenge. That was a challenge I faced throughout my entire career: helping people understand how do I keep my students engaged at levels that honor where they are but still hold the standard or expectation for their grade level?

I think that is a matter of really getting clear on the content.

So let's break it down; make it real. If I'm a student who really is still struggling with my multiplication facts, for the life of me, I cannot tell you what seven times six is—that trips me up every single time—that should not stop me from then being able to learn about measurement in terms of area and volume. Now the job becomes for my teacher: how do I still teach me this higher-level concept while still throwing in opportunities for me to practice my facts?

That's a daily challenge that teachers face. We want to make sure that we still expose students to that higher-level standard that we want them to be at.

Another challenge for teachers, then, is to really understand their content across grade levels. So we think about, yes, if I teach seventh-grade math, I have to master that, but I also need to understand third, fourth, and fifth-grade math and sixth-grade, and then eighth, ninth, and tenth-grade math. Because there are some concepts that you teach where you absolutely have to know the prerequisite skills. You have to know them.

And so now my job, then, as a teacher, is to figure out how do I lead that knowledge into the lessons.

Does that make sense, Kristen?

It absolutely does, and I think that point about having both the exposure to grade-level skills and the ability to start to practice those prerequisites that are really necessary to be successful on those grade-level skills is such a difficult balance. There's only so many hours in the day and where students get, and for a teacher, I can imagine. Do teachers need to basically prepare lots of different lessons? Or how do they think about preparing, say, that area unit?

They know they have some students that struggle with multiplication, but they have some students who maybe already understand volume. Kind of increase—how do they go about that? Just the preparation for teaching that area standard.

I feel overwhelmed just hearing that question! Because if I were a teacher and thought that I had to then plan a bunch of different lessons to meet the needs of all of my students, I would probably decide, you know what? I'd probably need a break from teaching.

We don't want to take that perspective of needing to design lessons that meet the needs of every single student in the sense that I'm designing a lesson for each student group in my class; that's not the approach we want to take. What we want to do is really make sure we understand what the big lesson is that we're teaching and, in our lesson design, build opportunities to really have student discourse.

We have to have students talking, telling how they're thinking. The reason you're doing that is because you're leveraging your students' funds of knowledge in the classroom. You're helping them to support the instruction of this lesson. So what does that mean in layman's terms?

If I have a student in my classroom who's really struggling with those basic facts and that's keeping them from understanding how we're doing the Pythagorean theorem and how we're drawing that out using triangles to figure it out, what I want to do then is make sure I'm asking questions that get that student talking about what they understand and then possibly showing their work and how they're thinking.

Then, as a teacher, this gives me an opportunity now to maybe take how my students are thinking and start to tell a story. Right? So if I'm engaging in a lesson and I know that I'm going to have a group of students who are going to get it right away, I’m not going to start off by using their work as an exemplar.

I want to tell a story that builds on the math such that I'm starting with the student who is missing; they might have greater misconceptions. Then I'm going to build on that, and I'm going to draw in another student’s sample work where they have a greater understanding, and in building that story, then students can start to have a better understanding of the concept.

So that's a very long-winded way of saying we're not designing lessons. You're not taking one lesson and designing like 30 other mini-lessons to go along with it. What you're doing is building opportunities in the lesson that you're designing to uncover what students know to give everybody an opportunity to engage, no matter what they know.

Right? So if you're just at the level of the basic level on this ladder of instruction that we're climbing, then I want to make sure you have a voice in this discussion in this lesson. So I'm building in equitable opportunities for everyone to participate, and in doing that, ultimately, I'm going to meet my goal of making sure that all students are getting access to that top rung and moving up the ladder.

That makes sense!

So both of us work for organizations that believe that technology can potentially have a role in helping to address this particular problem of thinking about differentiation and making sure that students get the support they need and access to grade-level material. We're really happy with our partnership that's created something called MAP Accelerator to help teachers meet some of those needs. Can you talk a little bit about that MAP Accelerator experience and how it might fit into this?

Definitely! I'm really glad that you mentioned the MAP Accelerator. So Khan Academy has partnered with NWEA, and we've partnered to create a MAP Accelerator. The reason behind the partnership is, one, Khan Academy by itself is a dynamic and wonderful tool. When you bring in MAP Growth, which is our assessment, MAP Growth is a test that students take, and the data their results tell us what they're ready to learn.

It tells us what their level of readiness is. So it's not a test of mastery; it's not saying, "All right, I'm going to test you on all the fifth-grade skills to see if you have mastered those." It's going to say, "You know, I'm going to test you on a plethora of skills, and the test is going to adjust based on how you answer because what I'm trying to do is figure out what's your zone for learning, what's your zone of proximal development."

And then, once I have that information, it's put into MAP Accelerator, and then MAP Accelerator designs or creates a learning path for me as a student that grows with me. So it starts at my zone, and as I progress through my zone and I learn more, it moves with me.

So it’s just a wonderful, powerful tool that we have to really support teachers and the wide variety of student readiness in our classroom. So we've got teachers doing all the great things that you described with those activities that are accessible for students who have skill gaps but also challenge other students and all of that.

And then, paired with that, we have this tool that, when students are working individually, can help really target where they are based on those MAP Growth scores and help bring those together. So that seems like a good balance. How do you see technology fitting into classrooms?

That is the key question! Now we have to put this all in context. We have to keep in mind that our students have engaged with technology over the past couple of years in a way that was very different than how they engaged before, right?

So we have to be mindful of the fact that our students, they feel some type of way about technology. They could feel overwhelmed; they could have gotten into certain routines. So what we want to do is really empower teachers and students to have the routines that you want to employ from MAP Accelerator.

A routine might be, "We've got 30 minutes a week. That's our MAP Accelerator time; that's my Khan Academy time." And then let's create some rituals to support that. The ritual might be something like "Talk It Out Tuesday" or "Work It Out Wednesday" or "Think About It Thursday."

So what we want to do is create these rituals that engage students and teachers together. So we've got the technology in the center, but we want to use our discourse to bring us together so that it becomes an interactive tool for everybody.

So a teacher might say, "All right, let's Talk It Out Tuesday. What I want you to do after your MAP Accelerator time is go back and find that one problem that you kept getting stumped on, you kept having to hit the 'Hint' function for—the problem just stumped you and you had a little struggle with it, productive struggle."

And what I want you to do is now talk it out with a partner in the classroom, and in the talking it out, you might gain a little bit more clarity. Or we could have a "Work It Out Wednesday" where students are encouraged to go to their caregivers and show and tell—let them see a MAP Accelerator experience—and then work it out with that person.

So that gives the student the opportunity to then step outside of their head, do their thinking out loud, and continue working on their path. So I think, Kristen, what we want to do is leverage technology in a way that's really going to empower our students right now, being mindful about the experiences they've had over these past couple of years and how do we re-empower them?

Yeah! I heard a couple of things: I heard the peer-to-peer learning piece going on, and we know that that's powerful. And then I heard them explaining to a caregiver, which then puts them where? It goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning about using math language with an adult. Maybe they can become the expert and explain how it's done.

I like both of those ideas, where we're not just having students sitting in front of a computer isolated by themselves, but creating more of a community around the technology.

That's right! We need to have so much more discourse; I mean, that's what's going to bring everything alive. And I feel like after this past year, everyone is just really eager to make those personal connections with people that were more difficult when we were all in quarantine during the COVID situation.

That's right! So we talked a bit about the past year and how those students were faring, and one of the biggest questions we got was how do we keep students motivated? How do we keep them engaged in learning and what they're doing?

So, all right! What tools are there? Technology tools that could help keep students engaged, and what other suggestions do you have for teachers?

Yeah, well, one, MAP Accelerator! So we definitely want to make sure that whatever digital tools we're using with our young people, we’re making it something so that it's a self-regulated tool for them. But we have to find ways to stay engaged with them and get regular feedback from them, and allow them time to share with us what they're doing.

So I think that's one of the biggest tools that we need to employ. I would love to see teachers supporting students in goal-setting more. Because we all like to experience success; it feels good! It empowers us, right? It gives us inspiration and motivation to keep moving forward.

So I would love to see teachers working alongside students to set goals with their MAP Accelerator, and then checking in on those goals regularly. Short-term goals, too! So we're not talking about, "By the end of the school year, I want you to be able to do this." No! I might set a weekly goal because I have weekly MAP Accelerator time, and that goal could be around two or three skills.

I want to make sure that's an achievable goal, that it feels achievable, and it's something I can track my own progress on and I can talk about it and I can find reasons to celebrate.

Fanisha, you're speaking my language! I can't tell you how often I talk about goals and goal-setting! That is a way to motivate, because we are motivated when we see success and when we feel like we're going to be successful. And nothing shows success like past success, so yeah, goal-setting is huge for me! I love that we're connected on that.

So we're almost already out of time! We have a couple of questions—we have a question from Facebook from Charles Drayden. He has just, this might be a good one to end on: "I have a young child. How can I help him flourish in his math studies?" I like that question—that that isn't just succeed but flourish! So any other tips you have that we haven't gotten to?

Well, thank you so much for that question, and thank you for chiming in on Facebook! I think it's really important for parents and caregivers to find ways to bring math alive in our students' everyday life. Sometimes people say, "I don't even know how I use math in my everyday life."

Let me tell you, one of my favorite books is a children's book called "Math Curse." It just talks about how everything is a math problem! So, a lot of our school students are starting back in school—you might have an eighth grader who doesn't have to wear a uniform to school every day, and they have the opportunity to express themselves, and you know, at that age, it's all about them anyway.

So how does that turn into a math problem? You could ask them, "How many different outfits could you put together from these four or five items of clothing?" That's a math problem!

You might have a second grader who's totally fascinated by the cicadas—well, here in the Midwest at least, we have cicadas. I’ve heard the sound at night is beautiful! And so they might be fascinated by cicadas and grasshoppers and crickets. How does that turn into a math problem? I want you to go listen to those insects, and I want you to tell me who's chirping the fastest!

So now we're talking about frequency, right? Everything becomes a math problem! So Charles, what I think you and other parents can do is really find ways to make math come alive in everyday life. Because math is fun, and it should be fun! We have to all be able to say that learning is fun.

Let's not forget that!

That seems like a great note to end this on. Thank you so much for joining me today! It was great to hear your wisdom and ideas, and I love that you are out there working with teachers to better support students for learning.

Thank you so much, Kristen! I always enjoy working with Khan Academy. Thank you for having me!

Excellent! Thank you all, and we will see you next time!