How Khan Academy is Here to Help During COVID-19

Hi everyone, Sal here from Khan Academy.

Uh, as I'm sure you're aware, we are finding ourselves collectively, our planet, in a very interesting situation right now. A lot of unfortunate things are happening, and one of those unfortunate things is the potential for school closures.

So, all of us here at Khan Academy, we've essentially stopped what we're doing and reviewed it as our duty to be able to support you through this to help you help ensure that students continue to learn. I know a lot of districts are facing a lot of difficult decisions to make, thinking about whether to close or whether to virtualize. There's a lot of equity issues at stake: who has access to internet and computers at home?

There are other things around child care, free and reduced lunch, but we're going to try to do our part to support everyone as much as possible. Big picture, if you have younger kids, if you're a parent and you have younger kids at home, early elementary or even pre-k, I think the key is to focus on the basics.

Even if students are able to put in a solid two hours of learning per day, that will at least keep them on track. I would focus on reading, so that could be if they aren't able to read on their own yet, reading with them. We're going to be sending out reading lists and different activities you could do with your students, and some form of mathematics.

We have Khan Academy Kids, a free app, non-commercial, anyone can download it, and that has over 100 books available that you could read with your child. It will also read to your child. We think the best use case of Khan Academy Kids is maybe in sessions of about 20 minutes, ideally with your child next to an adult, you or an older sibling.

That covers not just pre-k through first grade standards in math, but it also covers reading, writing, and social-emotional learning. On top of that, if your student has time to do some handwriting practice, we think that is great, or some type of journaling if they are already at that level.

As we get into later elementary and middle school, Khan Academy math we think can be really valuable for them to help them stay on track. You can start them at their grade level. We're oftentimes seeing a lot of success if kids start well before grade level and then are able to master their way through grade level.

I would recommend also for the older elementary and middle school students to have at least an hour of reading per day. That could be broken up into two 30-minute sessions if needed. Once again, we're going to try to provide some reading lists and things like that.

As you get into middle school, early high school, and high school, we have even more resources for students. On top of what I just talked about regarding mathematics, which we have that goes from pre-k all the way through early college, we can help those students with enrichment things like computer programming.

We'll also provide reading lists for them, also in the sciences. I think students as early as middle school and definitely in high school, obviously biology is of interest today. Glass half full, that could be a learning opportunity: learn about viruses, learn how disease spreads, and learn about exponential growth.

I think a lot of students at the middle school and high school level could begin to engage in our high school level biology or even some of our high school level chemistry. As you get into the core of high school, above and beyond those things, we have high school level physics, we have economics: micro and macroeconomics, American history, civics and government at both the high school level and the advanced placement early college level.

On top of that, we have official SAT practice. So, if you're an older student, I would recommend you could structure your day even longer. We're going to be giving out some schedules that you could work from so that you can stay on track to be prepared to get college ready and make sure that you don't have any lost learning.

So, we'll be sending out more details, more videos, and more information as we learn more. But we are doing everything we can to make sure that we can have you covered. It's our duty as a not-for-profit with the mission of free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere, to support you in this very challenging time.