Ask Sal Anything! Homeroom - Tuesday, September 22

Hi everyone! Sal here. I was enjoying the view outside when you caught me. Uh, welcome to today's homeroom live stream!

Uh, today we're going to have just an "ask me anything." So, uh, if you already have some questions, feel free to put them into the message boards on Facebook and YouTube. We have team members who will surface questions to me, and feel free to ask literally about anything.

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

I also want to give a special shout-out to several organizations that have helped Khan Academy over the years, but especially through COVID. You can imagine we were already running into deficit pre-COVID, and that deficit only accelerated as our server cost went up. We wanted to accelerate a whole series of programs and content, so special thanks to Bank of America, Google.org, AT&T, Fastly, Novartis, and many others for helping us close some of that gap during, uh, this hard time for the world, but especially COVID, as we've tried to support folks. But we still have a gap, so anything you can do to support us would be very, very much appreciated.

So, with that, I am eager to take all of your questions about literally anything! So we're waiting for some of the questions to come in. Sometimes, you know, I have to get more used to just being comfortable with silence, so maybe I should just be silent for a little bit while we wait for some questions.

Let's see. I could go to the previous "ask me anything" and find some of the questions that we have from there. Let me see if I scroll back to the previous AMA.

Okay, so from YouTube, Aurora is asking: "Hello Sal, I have a question for you. Do you have distractions, or simply can we manage distractions?"

No, I have no distractions; I'm always laser-focused on exactly what I need to do. No, I have plenty of distractions! I would say, um, for me, the things that I find myself doing when I'm procrastinating is, uh, well, you know, I would say there's good distractions and maybe less good distractions. The good distractions are I like to read, and so I'm doing a lot of reading. I'm actually just started on Victor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning." Some really profound quotes in here that I've always heard about, so I thought I would read the actual book.

So, that I would categorize as a good distraction. It's the type of distraction that you need so that it expands your mind. You're not just always laser-focused on school or on work, and you can kind of think more broadly. I, you know, I am guilty of watching a little bit more TV sometimes than I should, but even there, there's some good distractions and not-so-good distractions. So anyway, uh, there's that.

I try to avoid things like social media and text messages, and that I’m very utilitarian about those things. I use social media! Some of y'all might have noticed primarily to just kind of get word out on things that are going on at Khan Academy or things that folks should know about. I'm infamously bad at responding to text messages from friends and family because I find that phones pull you in and make you—and distract you from your life. So, um, yeah, so those are those.

But in, I would say, generally speaking, though, I do pride myself on being pretty good at not being distracted by distractions. One of the things that really helps is meditation, which I've talked about before, which is, you know, oftentimes your biggest distraction is your own mind. We all have these little parts that are surfacing from our subconscious, reminding us to think about that or worry about that or worry about the future or regret something in the past. And you need that every now and then, but every now and then, you need a break from all of it, and you just need to be in the present moment, let your mind still, and just kind of sit in your awareness.

And when you do that, I actually think it makes your brain better at not being distracted in general, because if you can't get distracted by your own brain, it's going to be a lot more difficult to be distracted by other things.

So from YouTube, Humble Hari says: "What is the next revolution in education after YouTube?"

Well, Humble Hari, to give YouTube credit, YouTube has created something of a revolution! You know, the other day I had to fix a sink in our bathroom, and I was able to go to YouTube and figure out how to do it by myself with the tools we had at home versus, you know, having to hire an expensive plumber. And obviously, there are many other things you can learn on YouTube; a lot of our videos from Khan Academy are there.

But, you know, one thing I always point out is Khan Academy is much, much more than the YouTube videos. That's really, you know, even when I first made them for my cousins, that was meant to just be a supplement for the exercise and the feedback of doing, uh, problems. And so, the real part of the learning process is that ability to work at your own time and pace and do exercises and get immediate feedback. And if you have a teacher who can support you, for them to know where you are so when you get to the classroom they can dig a little bit deeper in and unstick you.

So I'd like to believe that personalization and mastery learning, which are things that Khan Academy is very focused on, are really hopefully bringing out a world where everyone has access to their potential—whether, you know, early learner or Khan Academy kids or whether you're on kind of the main Khan Academy for, you know, that goes all the way through early college.

I think other revolutions in education—I’ve talked about some of them. You know, I have a separate project. It is not a Khan Academy project; it is a separate not-for-profit called schoolhouse.world to pair students who need help with tutoring with volunteer vetted tutors who are willing to run group tutoring sessions. So encourage folks to go there if they're interested in either being a tutor or a student or both.

But related to that, we're also thinking about ways to certify your knowledge. Are there ways that, let's say, you go on Khan Academy and you're able to record yourself getting 90 plus on a unit test or course challenge? Are there ways to use community to validate that and then maybe use that for things like college admissions? You know, really moving towards what you could call a competency-based system. So that's another thing that I'm working on a little bit outside of Khan Academy right now, but I think that could be a pretty valuable thing for the world over time.

So, you know, these general ideas: personalization, mastery learning, education not being bound by time or space, and then ways to prove—and ways to get help from a community wherever you are—and then also ways to prove what you know so that it can get you opportunities like higher, you know, college admissions or a job or apprenticeship.

And so, you know, stay tuned. Especially on the schoolhouse.world side, over the next couple of weeks, you might hear something about that around college admissions.

Let's see other questions. So, uh, from YouTube, Susanna Garcia Dominguez, who I feel like I know even though we've never met, but she always asks great questions: "Hey Sal, you mentioned that you went camping. Can you share a little bit of that trip?"

Well, I wish I kind of made a slideshow ahead of time; I could have shared that. But yeah, I was, um, my family, we went to Yosemite. And you know, it’s called Half Dome Village now; it used to be called, uh, Curry Village. But we, you know, we book it—you have to book it like a year in advance—and we were unsure whether we should go because of COVID and whether it would be COVID-safe. But we went, you know, we had a little tent cabin. It was pretty, you know, basic, but it was a great time!

And you know, knock on wood, you know, it all felt pretty safe, and I think it turned out safe. This was about a month ago. Uh, but yeah, it was—I can't highly, you know, I'm probably ruining my own ability to go to Yosemite when it might be a little bit more quiet—but I can't highly—I can't recommend Yosemite enough! It's really just one of those places where you go, and it's both intimate because you're surrounded by these huge kind of cliff-like formations that were formed by ancient glaciers, so it feels kind of intimate. But the scale of things are also just massive.

So yeah, we did a little bit of everything. You know, my wife and I actually, when we were engaged, we went, and this was 18 years ago. We did Half Dome, um, when we were younger and more—and maybe more foolish because I remember I did it on brand new hiking boots that hadn't broken in, so my feet hurt for several days. Uh, but this time with the kids, we just, you know, we didn't go all the way up to Half Dome; we just kind of went up kind of that four-mile loop there. Then we went to Glacier Point, and then we rented bicycles, and we, you know, in hindsight, I should have brought bicycles. I have a bike rack, but we rented them there.

It's actually a very nice place to bike around in and wade in the rivers. So yeah, it's unfortunate! Right now, I think they just have to close it down because of the fire south of it, so Yosemite—the air is, as far as I can tell, very not so good right now. Uh, but yeah, beautiful place!

So from Facebook, Neha Dayal says: "Thanks for bringing in this wonderful platform for kids! I'm finding it hard to have a defined curriculum for both my kids while homeschooling them, eight and six years old. Any pointers?"

Well, Neha, for your six-year-old, well, your six-year-old's probably at the upper end of Khan Academy Kids. So for any student who is kind of just getting their basic literacy, their basic numeracy, or earlier, I think Khan Academy Kids is great. The Khan Academy Kids team, I hope, is going to be able to move into first grade—well, they already have first-grade standards. So if your six-year-old is working on first-grade standards, I highly recommend Khan Academy Kids. It covers reading, writing, math, social-emotional learning, so all of the major common core standards you need.

But if your child is a little bit more precocious, getting into second or third-grade standards, especially in math, I highly recommend, uh, you know, doing 20-30 minutes a day on Khan Academy. If your six-year-old's a little precocious, second, third grade—if, you know, they’re still kind of getting over some of the motor skills of using a keyboard or a mouse, you can sit with them and help them through it, but let them kind of think through and struggle through the problems their own.

For your eight-year-old, same thing. Get them on—you can get them on third-grade or fourth-grade depending on their level. If you're not sure about their foundations, you can use our "Get Ready for Grade Level" courses so that you can understand where they are and fill any gaps as necessary. And if, on math, if they're able to put in—I would argue 30 minutes a day engaged, if you're sitting next to them. It sounds like you're homeschooling them; I have a lot of confidence that they're going to progress a lot in mathematics and reading.

There's a lot of tools out there. Khan Academy has some English and language arts reading comprehension things. There are other tools: Lexia, Razz Kids, Newsela. But a lot of it is if you just find kind of Lexile-appropriate reading for your children and have them read it, discuss it over lunch, even that can be a big deal!

On the writing, do some journaling, having a writing project of the week, maybe a blog that you share with friends and family on social media. I think that could be really motivating for your kids!

One thing that I've—I really like. Let me see if I have the books here. There's a, um, there's a curriculum—I thought I had some of the books over here—it's by Edie Hirsch. And you know, it's like all things in education is probably more controversial than it should be, Edie Hirsch is a little bit, I guess you could call a traditionalist, you know, a big believer that you do need the intuition for things, but you also need a lot of content knowledge.

And you know, I think he makes, I think, a very compelling argument that our education system, you know, traditional education system, Victorian-era education, was all about memorizing facts, and probably not enough about connecting the facts and building an intuition and making things and having creativity. But sometimes, you know, some—the pendulum might have swung too far where the kids aren't getting enough content knowledge.

And so I'm a big fan of Ed Hirsch's Core Knowledge Curriculum. You can get those books, you know, there's like "What Every Fourth Grader Needs to Know," "What Every Fifth Grader Needs to Know," "What Every Sixth Grader Needs to Know." And I actually think you'll enjoy reading them because they are a set of kind of the essentials of what you need to know. But I think you're going to find that there's stuff that even as an adult, you're like, "Yeah, I should have known that in fifth grade," but I didn't.

So I'm a big fan of that as well. If I were doing a homeschooling curriculum, I would do some combination of Khan Academy, Ed Hirsch's Core Knowledge Curriculum, and then supplement with other enriching things that I find, maybe some other tools.

So from Facebook, Sumith Chatterjee says: "What suggestions do you have for youngsters about money?"

So this is something that I have a strong opinion about because I see so many folks, frankly, make bad decisions around money. Um, I would say that the two biggest levers you have, you know, people are—you are led to believe that there's all these secrets and there are these get-rich, you know, get-rich-quick schemes, or that, you know, people got wealthy by somehow cutting corners on their taxes or having incredible lawyers or tax accountants and there's these loopholes.

That's not really what really allows folks to do okay financially. What really is, you know, your career is going to make a big difference, um, and being able to be kind of gainfully employed. And then the next one is living below your means! If you do those two things, uh, you're going to be fine financially!

And you know, the career one I'll highlight because I know folks who, you know, they'll get an education, but they get a little bit, um, I would say, precious about what they want to do in life. And you should be—you should think a lot about what you want to do in life, but when I say precious, you know, they might have gotten a degree in something, but they're like, "Oh, I'm not going to apply for a job until it's the perfect job."

And I do sometimes get afraid that it's out of a fear of rejection. But you know, you really have to put yourself out there and be willing to embrace that people are going to reject you as part of a job search process. And then once you're in a job, you know, sometimes the jobs, especially at the early phases, or even at the later phases, aren't always ideal.

Uh, and you know, there's things about it that will frustrate you. There will be days that your manager tells you something that you don't like. There's parts of your job that you're not going to enjoy. And if it's miserable, you should think about making a change!

But if it's—but you know, those aspects of work that feel a little bit difficult, that feel a little bit frustrating, that you're a little impatient with, those are the ones that are actually really growing you. And as long as you have a manager that for the most part is a good person, but every now and then it might annoy you a little bit, that also will grow you.

If the, you know, sometimes they're growing you in a positive way and sometimes you're having to sort with, "Okay, that feedback they give me, how much of that is real? How much of that is in their head or whatever?" But these are the types of struggles that really make you grow.

But from a financial point of view, if you're not working, uh, you're really, you know, the opportunity cost is really, really high. I remember when I, uh, you know, was leaving college, I was blown away by, uh, friends of mine that said, "Oh, well, you know, I've worked so hard for four years. I'm going to take three months off."

And for me, I looked at the opportunity cost of those three months, I was like, "Wait, that’s going to be like many, many thousands of dollars!" And I had a lot of debt, and you know, we—I didn't have a lot of money growing up, so I was like, "That's not acceptable!"

So I remember I graduated on a Saturday, and then I started work on a Monday! And I don't think I've allowed myself to—you know, I've taken vacations, but I haven't kind of taken breaks from work, um, since then.

So anyway, that's my two cents. You might have other viewpoints up there, but I've always been pretty conservative when it comes to money is that, you know, be employed in some way, shape, or form. If it's not the perfect job, stick with it until you find another job!

I've never been a subscriber of, you know, quit a job just because you don't like it, and then try to find another job later. And I'll tell you a secret: employers, you know, sometimes if you have gaps in your resume, they'll say, "Okay, was that a gap? They were just taking a break?" Or was that, you know, they'll try to read into things.

So it'll also help you if you don't—the more that you can avoid those gaps, the better! And then the other thing is just really, really live below your means!

Um, you know, budget things out if you can, but I'll tell you if you really live below your means—even like getting a detailed budget isn't as important because you're just going to naturally save money! And that's—the money's going to be helpful for a rainy day, helpful to save up for a house, pay off your debt. And if, heaven forbid, you lose your job, you get laid off, you have an emergency in your—you know, then you have a cushion to rely on!

You know, Khan Academy, at some point, I did have to quit my day job to work on Khan Academy full-time, but it was because I, you know, we had lived below our means for many, many, many years, and we had been able to save up enough money that it was going to be a down payment on a house, but it also allowed us to live off of that a little bit as I tried to get Khan Academy off the ground.

So that living below your means can also make you a much more resilient entrepreneur, whether you want to be a for-profit or not-for-profit, you're kind of in your mid or later career.

So from YouTube, ZF says: "Hello, I'm a seventh grader that struggles in math. Are there any crucial things you need to know when solving math problems and making the most out of math class time?"

Well, Z, what I would recommend if you're a seventh grader who struggles in math—go to Khan Academy! I would start with the "Get Ready for Seventh Grade" course and I would take the course challenge of the "Get Ready for Seventh Grade" course. And if you're struggling in seventh-grade math, I suspect that's because you have gaps from before seventh grade.

And when you take that course challenge in the "Get Ready for Seventh Grade" course, it's gonna sample a lot of the prerequisite skills for seventh grade. And so the things—the units, the skills that you get wrong—go back to those units and try to get mastery in those if you can.

Oh, you know, spend 20-30 minutes a day above and beyond your schoolwork! I know it's extra work, but trust me, it will pay off! If you can spend 20-30 minutes a day, maybe four or five days a week doing that, working at your own time and pace, trying to at least get familiar, or proficient, ideally mastery in everything on the "Get Ready for Seventh Grade" course, and then once you're about eighty or ninety percent mastered on that, move on to the seventh-grade course and just keep working it, you know, twenty-thirty minutes a day!

I strongly believe that in a matter of months, you are going to become much more confident in math and not only, um, build strong foundations, eventually catch up to your class, but I would guess that you're probably going to get ahead of your class.

And the reason why I'm so confident here is I've seen this over and over again. My first cousin that I was tutoring, Nadia, she was your age when I started tutoring her in 2004. She was 12 years old; she was a seventh grader, and she didn't think that she was good in math. And there was no Khan Academy at the time—you know, just me as her cousin was what all that was—was all that existed of Khan Academy.

But I worked with her 20 minutes every day for her to get that help. Um, yeah, that's the thing I would recommend. Another thing, you know, I talked about schoolhouse.world. Feel free to go there; we're accepting kind of these a registration process if you want to participate in group tutoring!

That's a project outside of Khan Academy, but, uh, look for that for some extra tutoring if you're interested!

So, let's see. Nish Chala from Facebook asks: "How to help kids not make silly mistakes in subjects they understand?"

Well, so this is a good question. You know, I think, you know, it's easy sometimes to get overconfident. I was definitely one of those kids that somehow wanted to go through my math test really fast, and then I would be like upset when I got a question wrong because I made a careless error or I didn't read the prompt correctly.

You know, that's a skill of just being—having an attention to detail. Uh, and so, you know, I think the best way to not make silly mistakes is to keep getting practice with things and that when you miss things because you made a silly mistake, that's a good part where your brain says, "Ah, brain, we got to stop doing that! We got to start reading the question prompt a little bit better!"

Or we got to not rush the question, make sure and maybe check our work a little bit, because it's a very, very valuable skill in life generally. Obviously, if one day you're designing a bridge or you're operating on someone, even if you know what you're doing, if you're rushing through it or if you didn't read either directions properly, or if you didn't do the analysis exactly right—it could be a disaster!

So, uh, it's an important skill! But, you know, that's what Khan Academy is there for because you're going to get as much practice and feedback as necessary. You know, I sometimes watch my own kids on Khan Academy, you know, they know the material. On that third question they get it wrong. It's like, "Oh, that was just a careless mistake." I was just like, "Yeah, it was a careless mistake!"

So you have to learn to be more careful, which isn't a—it's a skill above and beyond the academics as well. From Facebook, Reshma Heither asks: "Are colleges going to be obsolete? What about ingenuity, ethics, and morals taught at legendary institutions or institutes?"

I don't think college is going to be obsolete. I think there—I think some form of college will always exist. Um, I think college is going to adapt, and I think there’s going to be alternative paths. You know, right now, the narrative is you pretty much have to go to college in order to have a decent shot at a middle class or an upper-middle-class lifestyle. And that is for the most part true, I think.

But we're also seeing that the cost of college is so high that people are going and getting a lot of debt. Sometimes they don't graduate because they might have not had strong foundations going into it. Or they do graduate and they're underemployed or they're not—they're having trouble getting a job for various reasons. You know, they major in, you know, some degree, and they thought, "Hey, I can, you know, I can become a whatever doing that," but then realizing that the job market's maybe a little bit more difficult than expected.

And so I think all that says are there other paths that could be—maybe it doesn't even have to be instead of college; it could be on top of college. You know, you went to college; you didn't get the skills you need to get a job. There could be another path where you can get those skills and then get an apprenticeship, get a job. Hopefully, those paths are a lot cheaper than college.

And for some folks, they might just go straight into those paths and say, "Look, given the opportunity cost, given the constraints in my life, it's just really important for me to get that gainful employment sooner rather than later."

I also think colleges are going to adapt. You know, right now, colleges, whether it's two years of community college, an associate degree, or four years in a regular college, you know, they've kind of just been engineered around, "Okay, let's keep people here for four years and then fill it up with things, some of which are useful, some of which are not."

I'd like to believe that colleges will unpack that a little bit, that things will be a little bit more unbundled, that employers won't just say "Do you have a bachelor's degree?" They will say, "What are the skills you developed?" And they might not even care as much whether you spent four years or two years or got kind of the meta diploma. They care more whether you built the skills that you need.

And those don't have to all be quote "hard skills." A lot of what happens in college is the socialization, being part of a community, having peers around that push you. And actually, I think that's the part of college that it will be the hardest to replace, uh, with, you know, I guess you could say, just pure technology.

I think technology, in conjunction with a really good community and peers, uh, can, you know, might be a really good model for some folks. And I think some colleges are already thinking about blending in that way.

So, um, the fantastic! From YouTube: "When is AP Computer Science A coming on Khan Academy?"

So we do have AP Principles, Computer Science Principles, on Khan Academy, so that already exists. Uh, but the—you know, the computer science—and I always forget the A, the B, um, on the terminology—we don't have those yet. You know, I hope in the future that is something that we might be able to address, uh, but unfortunately, it's not currently on the roadmap.

So let's see other questions. From Facebook, Bernie Killingsworth asks: "How do you fit all that knowledge in your brain because you seem to know about just about any and every topic?"

Well, you know, uh, Bernie, um, I'm glad that I was able to project that impression. Uh, and what I would say is I actually think most people's brains are capable of—I mean the brain is this incredible instrument that we don't understand. I mean, we're really—if you really think about it, your sentientness, your consciousness, you know that part that you're aware of is sitting on top of or within, however you want to conceptualize it, this incredibly sophisticated tool called your brain.

And I've over time learned to actually not view my brain and my subconscious as me; I start to view it as my helper. And so, you know, even when I have a hard problem, I don't hit my head against the wall. I don't get frustrated if I don't have a solution immediately or if I'm having trouble learning something. I just try to think about it a little bit, and then I say, "Okay, I'm going to delegate this to you, brain."

And then I do tend to find in, you know, 48 hours it just kind of says, "Okay, here's a memo; here's the solution. Have you thought about this?" I'm like, "Good job, brain!" You know, pat on the back! You know, I don't know how to treat my brain just yet; you know, here's a little, you know, Scooby snack for you.

Um, but it works! You know, I've found that sometimes we've all had the experience where you have trouble remembering a name or you know who sang that song or some fact. Instead of getting frustrated about it, now I just say, you know what, brain, you know, you have to figure it out. Go into the deep archives, you know, get it to me within the next hour or so.

And that your brain actually does tend to do that type of thing. And we all know folks who, you know, you might not view as kind of the Jeopardy, the Jeopardy champion or the, you know, the academic person, but they know all sorts of facts about whatever is video games or pop culture, or they memorize song lyrics or whatever it is.

So our brain can store a lot, a lot of information, not just information but connections and intuition, which is really, I think, how the brain processes things. I think even facts exist because of connections that it's able to draw with other, with other facts or other knowledge, however it's represented.

So what I would say is, you know, keep giving your brain practice and delegate to your brain, challenge your brain, and then I think you'll see—and actually get enough sleep—and I think you’ll see that your brain, actually as your friend, can do a lot of this, a lot, a lot more than you suspect.

Um, yeah, that's the best I can—and you know, and you would also be surprised if you're just a curious person and you're always just look, you know, reading and looking up and looking at geography and listening, you know, watching documentaries, you'd be surprised how many interesting facts will all of a sudden surface from your brain at various times.

And you know, I've had the extra luxury of I've been able to make a lot of content that obviously I was exposed to, for the most part, in school, but now I get to revisit at a deeper level, and you know, just that exercise also I think draws a lot more connections and makes it a lot more, um, easy to surface when I need it.

So let's see. Maybe one more question. Smart Bear wants me to make more meditation videos. Yeah, I should do that! I should do that! Let's—so I consider that done, Smart Bear. I will make more meditation videos!

From YouTube, Rahat Ali says: "How do you keep yourself motivated and stop yourself from procrastinating?"

Um, so I procrastinate like everyone else. Uh, you know, I am guilty of reading articles on Quora on how to escape from bear attacks. My Quora feed seems to give me a lot of information on how to escape animal attacks. And I think because I click on them, it's giving me more information on how to skip escape from animal interactions or, you know, animal battles that might not ever have been possible, but in someone's imagination, Quora, I do tend to click on that.

So those are—that's kind of one of my maybe not-so-good distractions, but there's some interesting facts I learned from there as well. Um, but you know, the way that I avoid procrastinating is I try—every day I have a list of things that I need to do, and some of them are more blurry.

And you know, my brain might say, "Oh, I don't want to get started because I don't know how hard it's going to be." Well, some of them are a little bit easier, like making my bed or going for a run or meditating or, um, you know, just getting ready. And I find that if I'm pretty good at getting some of the low-hanging fruit—like I make my bed, I go for my run, I do this or that—then I kind of build a momentum.

I start perceiving myself and that day as, "This is a good day! This is a productive day! Sal, don't be afraid of diving into that, you know, that thing you have to write that you weren't sure how hard it's going to be, or that one—digging into that one domain that you need to make a video on that you at first you don't fully understand where you should jump into it. It's going to be fun!"

And I find that most, you know, building that momentum and then just keeping moving and just forcing yourself to start does a long way to, um, stopping the procrastination is my best advice!

Um, so maybe one more question. From Jean Wang, Facebook: "Conversations about college with my high school senior go sour. How should I talk to my teenager about college, especially during this time?"

Well, Jean, you know, I'm—take everything I have to say with a grain of salt. My kids are five, nine, and eleven, so I haven't had that college conversation yet. I have talked about it with cousins and other family friends who are the same age as your child.

But you know, I think there's always the advantage when you're like the uncle or the cousin or the family friend versus when you're the parent. You know, I think kids tend to roll their eyes a little bit more with parents, but one thing that I try to remind myself is, you know, when you talk to them, try not to make it about—you know, what you are telling them what to do. It's more about that you really see them as a human being, and you want to understand what's, you know, where their mind is.

And you know, listen to them! Listen to what they're thinking. And I think the more that you—and I'm not saying that you're not—but you know, really understand, you know, how are you thinking about things. And if they're, if they're kind of saying, "Hey mom," it's like, "She's just trying to push me because all of her friends' kids went to college or went to that college," and you know, she's worried about what they're going to think, then I think a lot of kids, especially with a rebellious streak, might check out a little bit like, "Mom, don't worry about it! Don't worry about it, Mom!"

But if it's like, "Hey, Mom's actually kind of seeing me for myself and realizing that I might have, you know, a different path," uh, but you know, I think deep down inside, most kids, most people, you know, I say, well, you know, okay, they see me and maybe they do have something that's interesting that I could learn from, because I am actually a little bit insecure about some of these big life changes that or decisions that are in front of me, and maybe Mom can help me out.

So that's my best advice is, you know, try to keep it as Socratic as possible, kind of more on the question-asking than on the advice side. Not that I'm saying that you're telling your child exactly what to do, but I've been in experiences where I've had someone else, a well-wisher, say, "You need to do this and why aren't you thinking about that?" And I think all of us are, our egos tend to kind of fight against that.

It's like those force fields you see in science fiction movies that if you hit it really hard, you bounce off, but if you go in slowly, the force field doesn't know what to do. So that's my best advice—really have real conversations with them, um, and then see what surfaces.

Another thing that I've been toying with is, you know, making videos about your advice and just sharing it with your, you know, on with your family, because sometimes people don't want advice in the moment, but—or they don't want to give maybe you the satisfaction that they're taking your advice, but if your advice is just sitting there, and they know about it, everyone has their moments of insecurity and, like, "Well, maybe I am curious what mom has to say about that."

And then it has time to sink in, and they don't have to feel like they have to rebel against whatever is being told. So anyway, that's my pop psychology I'm completely unqualified to give to answer that question.

Um, so anyway, thanks everyone! Looks like we're all out of time. Again, this is always a lot of fun, but, uh, thanks for joining! And then tomorrow, we're going to have Christian Deservo, who is Khan Academy's Chief Learning Officer, and we're going to talk a bunch about—as you can imagine—learning, especially learning right now and in these very interesting and trying times.

So thanks everyone for joining today's live stream!