A live message from Sal on school closures

All right, so we are where I start in a few minutes, probably a few seconds. You don't mind them, Twitter? Okay, hello! Well, thanks everyone for joining. The whole idea of this livestream, and we're thinking of doing this as regularly as we can, is obviously the world is going through something of a crisis right now around the COVID-19 coronavirus.

Part of that, obviously, people are first and foremost concerned about their and the community's health, the spread of the virus, and how to best stop that. But then, there's obviously side effects of that, and one of them is that we're starting to see increasing school closures. Obviously, other countries like South Korea, Japan, and more recently, Italy and France have closed down schools entirely, and we're starting to see that in the U.S. now.

My children's school was closed as of today, and obviously, Khan Academy's nonprofit mission is free world-class education for anyone, anywhere. The way that we've tried to help doing that is by creating resources online that could be used in conjunction with classrooms that could also be used independently by students. We think this is our duty to really step up now and make sure that as many students as possible feel as supported as possible, as many parents as possible feel supported, and as many teachers as possible feel supported.

So, what we're going to do today, and this is all a little bit of improvisation, is I'll tell you what I've been telling you, beginning a lot of employees from various outlets and things I've been to. I'll tell you what we've been telling everyone—what resources we're going to try to put together—and then I'd just love to take questions from anyone out there, whether you're a parent, student, teacher, or just someone who's curious about things.

So, big picture, what we're saying... so first of all, I kind of know many of y'all are familiar with it. We do have a lot of the core resources that students of all ages will need to be able to keep learning. If you start at the youngest age level, we have Khan Academy Kids, kind of Kevin Kids, as for as young as ages 2 to 3. But it will adapt to students all the way through the first-grade standards. We just added in the first-grade standards, and that's in reading, writing, math, and social-emotional learning.

We can talk more about the ideal use case for it. I think for that younger crowd, maybe 20 minutes a day, or at least no more than 20-minute sessions ideally, you know, sitting on the lap or sitting next to a parent or a loved one who can kind of work through it with them. But that could be an interesting starting point. We'll talk more about some of the ways that you can structure your day as you get into early elementary, middle elementary, late elementary, and you can middle school.

On the English and language arts side, we actually just launched—it's actually not even launched; it's a beta of our English and language arts. It's not perfect; we have to make some product changes so that it can better work for the English and language arts modality, but it has some really great content on it already. So, if you go to Khan Academy, the main drop-down menu on the top left, you'll see when the menu comes down, you'll see it in the bottom right. It will say “LA Beta,” and then you can pick the appropriate grade level once again and learn more about how to use that.

But that has reading comprehension, which is, I think, one of the most important things for parents, students, and teachers to keep up with while we're going through this unfortunate situation. On the math side, this is probably what we're most known for. A lot of people associate us with videos, but actually, I think the most valuable thing we offer is the ability for students to practice as much as they need in any concept, all standards aligned, at their own tiny pace.

That goes all the way from the kindergarten standards. So, we do have an overlap between Khan Academy Kids and the website, where I would say if a student is just learning to read, still quite young, Khan Academy Kids is a better resource. But if you look for the kindergarten, first-grade standards, but if you have a second grader who could use the remediation or could use to go back, and for teachers, they like to start all their students back at kindergarten; that actually could be useful to just make sure they have no swiss-cheese gaps.

But for sure, once you get to 2nd, 3rd, 4th grade, all the way through middle school, high school, and college, we've got you covered on the math side of things. And then, as you go into high school science and social studies, we have most of the core subjects there as well. And then, on top of that, we have the official SAT practice, which is math, reading—it’s, I think, appropriate for any high school student and even some precocious middle school students if they want to just make sure they get that practice in those three areas.

And then for enrichment, I think our computer programming is really a lot of fun, and it could be a really good way to spend some downtime if students are at home. The thing that I'm emphasizing—we're emphasizing as a team to parents—is try to keep things, you know, don't try to do everything all at once. It's not even healthy to be in front of a screen for eight hours a day while the schools are closed. Try to focus first on just like the core fundamentals, and then if that's working, then later on from there.

In online, the core fundamentals are the reading, the math, and the writing. The reading—you can use our English and language arts for students to get practice reading passages, answering comprehension questions on it. So that's a good source of reading practice, and also just reading books. It's really that simple. We hope over the next week to send out some reading lists and things like that to make it easier for parents and teachers and students on their own to know what types of resources they can look at.

On the math side, depending on the age range, we're going to send out archetype schedules over the next week. But for younger students, I think sessions of about 20 minutes is about appropriate. The important thing is to just do the reading and do the math every day: that's what really makes a difference. That will keep students from forgetting over this time period, and I believe actually can help push them forward. If you can get that reading and that math—I would say even two hours a day is just bare bones for students of any age. I think you're not going to be regressing over this period; you might be progressing.

And then from there, you can layer on more, especially for older students. I think what you get to middle school and high school students, we can offer almost a full complete day. We're also going to send other resources that are out there—podcasts, other things you can read, magazines that are good to read, and it’s an honestly very interesting time that our globe is facing. So those are... that's kind of the initial of thinking right now.

If you go to Khan Academy, you'll see a little banner that says, “Hey, if you're seeing school closures because of the virus, click here,” and you'll see an evolving page that has our resources, how do you get started, etcetera, etcetera. Some of what I just talked about we haven't put up yet, so please come on a daily basis; it's going to be changing regularly. I'm hoping by Monday or Tuesday, we're going to put those schedules up. So, if you are a student, or if you have a child, or if you're a teacher of children who are of certain age groups, what could a schedule look like for them, including things like breaks, making sure everyone gets time to run around, play, explore, and pay attention to the news, and all of that.

But with that, I'd love to take questions that folks have! My colleague Irene, she's got a laptop here. Hi, everyone! Great questions in Spanish. I'll share some with you from Kristin Allen. We have the question of, “Is there social-emotional learning on Khan Academy for first and second? Anything?”

So, thanks for the question! So, in Khan Academy Kids, we do have social-emotional learning; it's social-emotional, but in this very broad space. For Khan Academy Kids, that is definitely integrated into that offering, and that's appropriate through students up to six years old—go through the six-year-old standards. But we don't have a deep social-emotional learning offering on Khan Academy proper. I think that is a good call-out, and as we ramp up materials, I think it would be powerful for us to think about how do we do that too.

A lot of what we've been building over the many, many years, I think, are going to be for free, valuable for people of this period; they've been very focused on your core academic. But I think what we're going to try to do with this livestream, as it was really our first run at this, is try to give people a sense of community, try to give people a sense of connectedness as we are all socially isolating, so to speak, and also give folks materials and things to do.

So you're going to see all of us at Khan Academy broadening what we're talking about. I think you're going to, you know, as you see the schedules and things that we put out next week, we're going to say, “This is your time to play; this is your time to meditate.”

We're also going to be exploring with other partners ways if you can all interact in deeper ways so that we don't all feel completely isolated, and also, there’s a lot of learning that's going on in the broader world right now—what's the virus, how does it spread, what's the proper response to it, what's the economic implications of all of this, how is our social interactions going to change maybe forever after this?

So, there's a lot of real-life learning that I think kids could enact, you all of us could benefit from. Yeah, there are a lot! But as for the Allen, I just wanted to say that for questions about the first and second grades, be sure to check out content. You can download that app; there are no ads in it, no purchases, and all the characters really were designed specifically.

Ah, specifically, I made that more effectively. Morning to clarify on the Facebook page; they see my name here because it's originating from the Facebook page, you might be seeing Philippe alive. Yeah, that's still us; it's originating from the video management. Okay.

Yeah, is that the dual nature, and inside on the other side of the screen some work? I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, so that's, you know, this is a—when we put out these, we're going to hopefully by Monday or Tuesday have schedules that you can say, “Okay, if I have an elementary school, state listening to a seven-year-old, an eight-year-old, what could the day look like for that student?”

And it's been said to wake up, change out the PJs, you know, really have a regular schedule, find a place in the house that feels like it's not like you just slouched over on a couch with the TV running and you're trying to do a little learning on the side. It should feel like, “Okay, this is kind of school.”

We were actually going to consult with more experts, and hopefully, as we do more of these live streams, which we're targeting to do on a daily basis during this crisis, I'm hoping to bring in experts who can help us with that too. But some of our first stabs at it would be, you know, create incentives. That schedule will try to set up like a checklist—you might even try to give some frameworks that if a student is able to do XY and Z—what they could do today, here's some treats or some benefits they might get.

There might be a little bit of quid pro quo with your child, but if they're able to do this really focused good screen time, maybe they can get a little bit of less academic screen time. There could be other benefits. And, you know, one of the things that we're trying to do with these live streams is we want to be a little bit of a clearinghouse—if you're a parent who has come up with really good frameworks, we would love to hear them.

And please send them to us; these kind of tips and techniques about how you motivate. You please post them and share them amongst the communities. Yeah, my email—I'm scott@khanacademy.org—email it to us. If we see really cool stuff, we'll be sure to give you credit.

We'll say, “Hey, this is what Fabia came up with for her children,” well, you know, “this is an adaptation of it; it seems to be working for her; this could be good for you,” you know, if you have similar-old children or whatever age group. So, we're going to be working on that.

What are the motivation mechanisms? Another thing that we are contemplating and we're trying to figure out how we can root-source this and do this is: are there ways that we can help kind of in real time communicate with your children and provide them some frameworks during the course of the day? That's something that we're very seriously looking at.

You for that, you can do that. I'm still more questions flowing in. From Jennifer Goldstein, questions about the lessons online with Khan Academy. So, the lessons Khan Academy has been building are around a common framework since the Common Core existed, so the lessons that you'll see in math from K through 12, the lessons you see on Khan Academy Kids, and the lessons in English Language Arts from grades 2 through 8 on Khan Academy, these are not only aligned to the content—these most of them have had external review from some very learned people who did not develop content.

So they are very, very much standards-aligned. If you're in a state that is at the common core state, I would say that there's more alignment than you would think—at least, I am a laureate a country for that. It's not enough; does not follow the U.S. standards virtually. We have actually 40—there's 40 translated versions of Khan Academy.

If you go to those website, you'll see the link at the top, that banner—the Spanish is the most built-out one. But our belief, especially in a time like this, if students are able to engage in high-quality materials that are aligned—well, better pay regular standards and common core is a greater standard. I'm very confident in the opening will progress in almost any standard that that's relevant.

I think the important thing now with what's going on with school closures is to just keep students learning on high-quality materials, make sure their reading skills don't atrophy, make sure their math skills don't atrophy, and make sure that their writing skills are strong. There might be a glass-half-full opportunity for them to maybe even get more practice in this time, a little bit more focus.

Okay, I don't know if Jennifer was a teacher, but just in case for all the teachers out there, you can actually put the Common Core standard things in the search box, and then all the results will pull up the videos from Jessica. Now, do you think this would be good for this time? Looking for? Yes, I think this is actually, for those of you who don't know, back in 2015, we created the partnership with the College Board.

Khan Academy’s official practice for the SAT is not only math but reading and writing. They, to a majority of all future tickets to use it, and if you took the PSAT, if students have their scores linked with their Khan Academy account, then it acts as kind of a diagnostic for Khan Academy.

As one thing that we've always been focused on, both us and the College Board, is we don't view this as just SAT prep; we view this as preparing you for college as measured by the SAT. So the SAT practice on Khan Academy, using our method, is an excellent way to—yes, I said you can let—to keep those reading comprehension, the math, and the writing skills sharp.

It's actually a writing exercise where you can write, and it's auto-graded by another partner. So even if you're not taking the SAT in the near term, I think if you're a ninth grader or above, it can be a great thing to engage them because you're going to get practice in all of the major domains.

And obviously, that will likely reflect and can improve SAT score. You know, one of the issues in high school normally is that you're so overloaded; you have six classes you're taking, and then you're doing many hours of homework at night. Then you have to prepare for things like SATs or other tests, and you kind of have to do that on the margin.

You could view this as an opportunity to say, “Hey, look, you could put in, as a high school student, if you're able to put in even an hour a day on SAT practice—maybe thirty minutes on the English language arts side, thirty minutes on the math side.” Even that is going to make a massive gain. And as a high school student or a parent of high school students, I'm assuming you can have even more self-regulation, and you could spend some more time.

So I wouldn't do like five hours a day; I think that would not be healthy. But if you could do sessions of, “Okay, I'm going to go deep for 40 minutes; I'm going to take a 20-minute break; I'm going to go deep again for 30 minutes, take a 20-minute break.” This is something full of fun with our technique, which is a technique for avoiding procrastination, which we all struggle with many times.

And it is, you know, set a timer that you're going to be focused for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes. I definitely recommend more than 40 minutes, and then at the end of that, give yourself another set; set the timer again and give yourself a 15-minute break. That's great to do whatever you want—hopefully, something comfy—go take a walk, go for a run, do something, get outside, and then dive back in.

And if you're going to do the SAT practice, we've actually been doing some analytics—it's not public yet—but the important thing is, you know, not to just—is to do as many things that are pushing your learning as possible. So take those full-length practices if you can.

The recommendations we've seen suggest that students are able to follow the recommendation because you're always trying to push—they're always trying to push you, but then potentially seeing more gains in the case of colleges are randomly jumping around on it.

So simple answer is yes, I think the SAT practice is a very good way to stay engaged in all the core subjects and in the math movement. Okay, and that question only, and so now we actually have from another Khan Academy mom: “Are you planning to coordinate with teachers’ semesters?”

Yes, we had a webinar yesterday, and then this is just what you're seeing right now is just the very tip of the iceberg. We hope to kind of go forward, to build momentum. Throughout this whole, for lack of a better word, crisis, we hope to connect with teachers, support teachers, and we're trying to talk to other technology platforms, figuring out what types of resources we might be able to, you know, spread out—we also want to be a clearinghouse.

If you find out that someone has figured out a teacher who has to figure out a good way to virtualize their classroom, we want to share it with folks, obviously not just using resources like Khan Academy, but whatever resources are out there. But yes, we want to support teachers through this, support teachers, and then students to do some practical ways to get started.

So, for teachers specifically, we have a teach live Congress dedicated to teaching. You'll be able to connect with all types of teachers and get tips to get started. If you go to our homepage, you can hit the little blue ribbon, and it'll take you to kind of like a blog article, and we'll link to the teacher resources. So we'll just have all sorts of videos, webinars, and resources to help you get...

Let's see. And we have from Olin Minka, “I'm sorry if I am... Is there a solution for remote places for internet access to them?” So open—you know, we don't have a really elegant solution there. You know, our apps—Khan Academy Kids do work offline, and Khan Academy, our main app does allow you to store some of your content.

But we don't have a really good off-truly offline solution for the mainstream Khan Academy. That is one of the gaps. You know, obviously, around the world, we know that's an issue. And in this situation, I know a lot of public schools are struggling with this issue of if we close the school—which is probably prudent at this point for spreading the virus—how do you ensure that all kids have access?

Now, we are fully accessing—there’s content. Yes, it used to be known as k-lite? Yeah, Colibri, which is an offline, so you could look into that. And that's spelled K-O-L-I-B-R-I. Look into that. Yes! And maybe even if you do a search for Kami Life—might show up as well.

And that one is something I think that's really valuable if you're able to look—you should look into it. I actually haven't looked recently at look at their activity ideas, but I think that's more of a look—yeah, people should look into that. I think that's a little harder for an individual to continue on their own, but I think they should try our team just wants to remind us that you can download the videos.

Let's see. We also have from Melinda Wedding: “Are there any plans that help 18:50?” Might be missing the last bit. Yeah, that’s an excellent question, actually. I mean, what's the—you know, we're going to all try to make what we can of this situation. You could actually use it as a glass-half-full because traditionally, an AP test—which I know there are things that students want time to prepare for the rigorous exams—it's usually hard as you go into May.

Students have all their other classes, have other homework. And then between the gaps to prepare for AP could be—I don't know where the College Board is on that. I know some of the SAT administrations have been moved around, and I don't know what's going to happen in key administrations.

I hope they move forward, or maybe they've delayed a little bit. We'll see—we don't know what the world is going to do. But if you like it for much less May, but I think it is prudent for kids to assume that testing is going to happen as scheduled.

And I think that's where we can be really helpful for folks; we have on Khan Academy—calculus, AP statistics, AP biology, AP physics—we were actually in development of a new version of our AP chemistry, but we have chemistry at the high school and college level on site.

We have AP microeconomics, macroeconomics, American history, AP government and civics, and AP computer science principles. I would recommend, if the students are able to put... now they have more time—if they are able to put 30 minutes a day, 40 minutes a day, an hour a day into each of the subjects that they found ticking for the AP test—come May, I think they're going to do very, very well.

As I mentioned earlier, it’s what we have—visit the videos, its exercises, and these exercises have been vetted by third parties. These are the same third parties from tough to develop things like the AP exams; so many pieces of the AP are very rigorously aligned.

So what I would recommend is throw on Khan Academy every course we have—many most of our courses—we have something called mastery enabled. What that means is not only do we have exercises, but it's enabled in a way that it can be a mechanic to try to measure a student's knowledge state on the various skills.

If a student is already feeling like they covered most of the year in an AP class, they can go immediately to what's called the course challenge and take that first challenge, which should take from about 40 to 45 minutes. And then they'll see which units they are strong or weakened in.

And then based on that, they can then go to each of those units, and there's things called unit tests, and then they can get a skill breakdown on their skills. Yes, and then they can go skill by skill. The way that you level up your skills—you can either go to a particular skill, get a certain percentage of them right every time.

And we have a very deep item bank, so they really shouldn't see a lot of free peaks. And if you see that feeling in mixed skill practice on you, the test for your force challenge or what we now have is a home master challenge—just a spaced repetition review—you only get leveled up.

So I'm actually very confident that if students are taking AP, putting in 30 minutes to an hour per day for AP, they're actually going to be quite prepared. And then, I would add, as you get to like the last few weeks of the AP to augment that with Khan Academy, well, I think you prepare very well for the multiple-choice portion of the AP.

For the free response portion of the AP, in most of the APS, we have worked examples of free response. And so there, I would recommend an AP student, you know, start the video, pause it right before one of our team members is about to work through the example, and then work through it themselves before the video.

That's it; that's the best way to kind of consume that content. But yeah, I think AP is a very powerful use case for students and is relatively great. And we're getting close to tonight. There's another question: “Can parents assign things to kids?”

I know I can do so for kids, but wasn't sure about...? So there's two things: first of all, you know, the what we used to call coaches or teacher tools are available to anyone; it's not like you check the Shubert a certified teacher when you—it’s predominately used by teachers.

So we have both parent tools and teacher tools. The teacher tools are more powerful; they're built to be able to support a larger number of students and things like that. And so, from the teacher tools, for sure, you can make assignments. You can assign specific skills; you can assign full units, you can assign things like unit tests, you can assign things like course masteries; if I want students to achieve mastery in the subject by a certain date.

On the parent side, you can definitely monitor. What I would say if you want to do assignments, the safest thing is to teach. Yeah, that's actually where we have more sophisticated tools anyway. And you'll just be a teacher with however many kids you have as your students.

Let's see. From Satya, this is a great question for us to start thinking about how can the teachers reach out to students in school users? Yeah, we're brainstorming. I know, you know, my school district—our teachers and students are just talking about that—we're going to start off with the easiest, most familiar to some, other school systems.

I didn’t pass through or a perfect system for communication. And maybe this question also means, but continue to process communities when you're teaching online. I think so. What we're going to try to do—and this is all improvisation, and I think we're all improvising—over the next few weeks is, so putting all aside all the things that we're able to do, I think there might be a kind of a convergence here.

Is there a world where if you do have Google Meet and some of these other tools that allow some form of video conferencing and messaging at the same time? It would be, I think, pretty cool for teachers to be able to communicate with students that look, “I'm going to be available at these times.”

You know, obviously it could be coordinated with schools all— I do know some schools, my children’s school, where they’re essentially trying to schedule is going to be 90% the same, and they're going to be using these types of video conferencing tools to essentially run their program.

Now, that’s—that would be, I would say, that's the best case. We know that that's a lot of schools don't have time to plan and do that kind of thing. So, I would say, I think it would be interesting if at the same time that we put out what kind of archetype schedules would look like for students in different age groups— it would be really interesting if teachers are able to also message with their students and say, “Hey, if you follow the schedule,” and obviously, at that schedule, whatever you think is perfect for your students, “if you follow the schedule, I the teacher, will be available at these times."

Epic's link on this Google Hangout or on the Skype link or whatever else. And then, you can actually have kind of a virtual station rotation model. Because some of your students, okay, it's 9:00 a.m., the schedule says work on your Khan Academy math for half an hour, but the students also know that you, as a teacher, are available.

So, they have any questions, they can go to you and literally could just change the window and say, “Hey, you know,” and sounds like office hours. So, some big students might be working with you, and then you can do deeper problems, or more challenging problems, or you might be able to glean some ideas to keep some students on tools like Slack or some message or something like that. Say, “Hey, I see you're having trouble. If you can look at the Khan Academy dashboard, I see you're struggling on this concept; why don't you come into my office hours,” essentially—open up a different tab, and I want to work with you.

Okay, so I think that could be really, really cool if students are able to get that type of support while they're working on tools like Khan Academy. And obviously, as a teacher, you'll be able to do the lesson plans that you were already planning to do; that’s even cooler!

And, you know, even in the classroom, you think the best use case is teachers are able to do their traditional lesson plan in highly collaborative ways, and that there's 20%, 30% of the time, students really personalize learning on platforms like Khan Academy. The teachers are still able to see what work and what kids are working on, what they're struggling with, and where interventions are key.

But in this type of a context, it might make sense to have more of the student self-work but has a lot of support from teachers. Okay, let's see. From Rossi, they have a question: “As a lots of homeschool my children, if you have any recommendations?”

I do want to look off the bat mentions that we actually have a current webinar—mark their calendars. It's next Wednesday, and Neely will also be reporting on it and makes that before, in the live stream.

Yeah, okay, you can register for that. Yeah, so the parent webinar... and, you know, the simple answer is everything we've been talking about on this livestream, I think is relevant if you're looking for home school or your child, depending on the age group.

As I said, you know, most of the resources... wait! We have office light from my clients. Most of the resources you need—we at Khan Academy have been working on it for many years. So, you know, math for sure—we can help students learn at their own time paced starting as early as pre-K with Khan Academy Kids, which goes to first grade, and then you can pick up from there all the way through high school and early college mathematics.

Khan Academy, students can learn at their own pace. We're going to try to put up—we only have a lot of materials out there—things like the webinar going to be really valuable for getting a little bit more tactical help. But we're going to put a lot of resources out there for different age groups—what could the schedule look like and what Khan Academy resources could be relevant in each of those periods in the schedule.

And then, are there other resources should folks tap into? Books that might be available online or not online, podcasts that could be good sources of discussion. So we're going to try to support you as much as possible. The reality is a large chunk of the world is being forced to home-school at some level, so I think it's just... oh, yeah!

What we're going to do on that, Sophia, please tell us what question keeps telling us the questions you have. As I said before, my email is s@khanacademy.org; we want your questions, your ideas, things that have worked for you. We would love to then share with everyone else.

Yeah, we really appreciate what's been rolling in! I know that Jeremy, the color teacher webinar last night, has already had like a list of 13 to 18 a survey we sent out. So what we're doing is we're calling through all of your questions so that we can kind of create and get the experts in and feed the webinars and the tips that you're going to keep on doing this, look.

Yeah, other questions have flown in. Let's see— from Sean Rowe, “Does your... from me to teach concepts?” And he talked about having it sound on siblings at home, and I wasn't able to make it through this multiplication table—not until they found an online resource.

So, to some degree, it’s a simple answer. I think Khan Academy Kids is the richest, and that's for younger kids; that's a very rich game-like environment. As you get into the main core Khan Academy, we have some game mechanics. We have things like energy points, mastery points, avatars, a whole mash-up mechanic to try to level them up with confetti when you reach certain levels on the side.

So, we have those types of game mechanics, but it isn’t like, you know, there's a spectrum between game and academic learning. And we always said, “Look, we got—we got to make sure we cover the standards and then how can we layer as much game implementation mechanics on top of that?”

But, you know, we're constantly trying to improve that. Every year, we try to make improvements to make it even more engaging for students. You brought up a really interesting flight around multiplication.

Well, actually, there are two things: you know, we haven't done official studies of Khan Academy with students with various learning needs, whether they're on the autistic spectrum or other issues, other learning needs like ADHD or dyslexia. But we have had a lot of anecdotal feedback that being able to learn at your own time and pace, being able to get as much practice and feedback as you need; you have some game mechanics; being able to pause, repeat, and watch videos at different speeds is valuable for folks.

On the point you brought up about the multiplication teams, I think that's a super valuable one. You know, Khan Academy gives practice on things like that, but nothing can beat—and this is just a great bonding experience—for some of that, you know, if your child is in second grade, third grade, fourth grade, make sure they have that fluency in their under-format.

And then, for math facts, we can give a lot of practice on the different standards on Khan Academy. But there's nothing like sitting with your mom or dad or your teacher and, you know, making sure you have your single-digit addition math facts really fluent and making—and then when you get to about second or third grade, making sure you have your multiplication or math facts really, really fluent.

I can't tell you how many students we've seen who are in fourth, fifth, or sixth grade and sometimes high school who you can still tell they've paid too much of their cognitive load trying to figure out what eight times nine is, so they can't focus on the other math. So, you'll be doing your kids a big favor if you just make sure they're super fluent with that stuff if they're not there already.

We're going to be doing... Yeah, I think that's the hope. You know, this has been great! A lot of folks have chimed in. I know this is a super tough time for a lot of folks. A lot of folks are trying to figure out... I mean, you know, yesterday I was working from home, and my kids were all right next to me.

I do want to do a quick shout-out to Teresa Brand. She just said, “Thank you all for this live stream because there are so many parents out there feeling panicky.” But I think what's your message if you're—yeah, well, you know, Teresa, appreciate that.

I think one of the main purposes of starting this live stream today is that we're all in this together. We're parents; everyone's affected. You know, a lot of people feel fear—we're all trying to figure out this way, and we're in the new—we're in a new society that has never gone through this, at least in modern times.

And I think for all of us—obviously for me—it's comforting to see if, in fact, it's all right now. It's socially isolating, and so I think the best thing we can do, you know, thank God that we have these types of resources so that we can connect virtually right now. But that's what I think it is.

I think this is going to be a time that we see the best of humanity step forward. It's our duty to kind of help all of you—all of y'all: parents, teachers, students—to navigate this period. We're going to be back on Monday. I hope to be able to do this every day, and don't be surprised if this grows into more types of support so that as many people as possible are not feeling panicky.

I highly recommend meditation. We've actually reported some guided meditations recently—something that I've been doing for the last year and a half. I was getting quite claustrophobic on planes, and someone recommended meditation that really helped me reduce my claustrophobia. But it had positive effects well beyond just my plane claustrophobia, so I highly recommend that, especially for people feeling anxious and feeling a little lost.

I think, you know, just ten minutes a day, five minutes a day, just sit silently, try to observe your thoughts, realize that everything's going to get better in the end. You just have to put one foot in front of the other and just do the next right thing. You know, that's what I keep showing to myself and, like, my children—history tends to have... they were like, “What's going on?” Just like, “Look, let's just not...”

Let's just do the next right thing for the next hour, the next day, the next week. It's all going to work out. I think there's going to be some glass-half-full moments, and what I think we can see is the best of everyone stepping forward and we'll do our part on our side.

So thanks everyone for being part of this. I’ll do the next right thing for the next hour, then!