Office Hours With Sal: Thursday, March 19. Livestream From Homeroom

All right. It looks like I'm online on Facebook. Hello everyone at Facebook! Sorry, running a little bit late. If you ask, I'll tell you about my morning. And it looks like we're online on YouTube. All right, so this is good.

As you can imagine, this has been an interesting improvisational situation for all of us. So my apologies for getting started a little late this morning. But this is our fourth live stream that we're doing, and you know the whole goal of this is we have all these resources at Khan Academy that we've been building over the last 10, actually 11, 12 years. We could have never foreseen this type of a situation. Khan Academy, we've always imagined the ideal use case being in physical classrooms so students can learn at their own time and pace, give teachers information on where students are, and be able to do more focused interventions free of class time for other things. We also support students who might not have had traditional schooling or if you're in some part of the world that doesn't have that.

We would have never foreseen this school closure situation we're in. But Khan Academy is eerily well suited to at least help us work on this. Because obviously, we have things from Khan Academy Kids for early learners for math, reading, writing, and social-emotional learning. Then you get into the core of Khan Academy in math for sure, all the way through from middle school, high school, elementary school, through college, English language arts, SAT practice. We have the sciences, especially at the high school level, AP level, and also several humanities—American history, etc.

The purpose of this live stream is to give a little bit more connectedness to this. Some people are starting to call this kind of a homeroom for us, and like homeroom is in school, it's a time to talk about anything, a time for whatever announcements need to be made, etc. And also just get a little bit of motivation, a little bit of energy for the day. Whether you're a teacher, you're a parent, or a student, this is just a reminder that we're all going through this together. And we're all gonna figure it out together.

So, I encourage anyone to start asking questions, whether you're watching on Facebook or YouTube on the streams. I have team members who are looking at those questions. We're going to be surfacing them up on my tablet right over here, and so I'll know who to answer questions for.

You know, just a couple of updates on our side. We are seeing— and I guess this isn't super surprising—unusual traffic on Khan Academy. What I heard from our team is that on Monday, we saw 50% larger than expected usage, and then yesterday, 80%. We're seeing kind of, you know, 10x the number of teacher, student, and parent registrations. So that's great! It sounds like a lot of people are realizing that this is a resource that they can turn to; it's free, it's accessible. And hopefully, as we go through this crisis, folks become more comfortable using it.

I think there are some ideas we can talk about of how to complement it. I do want to say a thank you to Bank of America. For those of you who don't know, Khan Academy is a not-for-profit. That means no one owns Khan Academy. We are not a company. I don't own Khan Academy; you own as much of Khan Academy as I do. We're funded through philanthropy, and we love that we're able to serve everyone right now as we have this crisis. But our server costs are going through the roof. We're having demand for more folks to be able to do things like webinars. We had a very large parent webinar that had a thousand parents on it last night.

It's really valuable that Bank of America stepped up. You could do a Google search and read about that press release, but they stepped up to really support this. You could almost call it a relief effort that we're trying to up our game at Khan Academy to make sure everyone feels connected and supported. Expect to see more from us and our partners like Bank of America. So thank you to Bank of America for that.

But let me get to some of the questions here. The first question is, “How do I figure out what my child should be learning?” There are a couple of ways to answer that. Obviously, as a parent, you might know what grade your student is in, and you might say, “Okay, my student is a fifth grader.” That might be an indication that fifth grade on Khan Academy might be a really good place to start. I will put a little asterisk there, a little bit of a caveat.

What we found, even when working with traditional schools, is the reason why a lot of kids have trouble—this is especially true in math but it's also true in things like reading and writing, especially in math—they might have trouble in fifth, sixth, or seventh grade math. It's not because they're not bright; it's not because the subject matter is difficult. It's because as they went through their academic foundations, they had some gaps. They might have been in third grade when they were learning multiplication tables. They just didn't learn their seven times tables well, and they got a C on a test. Then they just moved on to the next thing.

So when they have to multiply something by seven in sixth grade, they just have to spend a little too much cognitive load, or their decimals in fifth grade are a gap. When they see a decimal in seventh grade, it's a gap. So one thing we've seen teachers do to great effect—there's an amazing teacher, Tim Vandenberg, who was talking to two days ago. He was telling me how with his sixth graders, he starts them all on kindergarten on Khan Academy. If you know the material, the students can go through each course quite quickly. We have things like course challenges, unit tests, mastery challenges that can accelerate students through it.

That helps them build some momentum, build some confidence, and get familiarity with the platform. Then it ensures that they don't have any gaps. So he has his students do early learning and then do the arithmetic courses on Khan Academy. The third grade courses he views as the foundational ones to simultaneously work on the grade level course on Khan Academy. If your student has, for the most part, been proficient in math, then I would go straight to the grade level course on Khan Academy.

Since we're already well into the year, I would have your child—and if you're a student, I would have you take the course challenge. The course challenge will sample every unit, and if you take the course challenge and you get an 80 or 90 on it, keep taking the course challenge and try to get higher and higher scores until you have mastery in the course. But if you see there are some gaps that you're consistently not getting right, then those skills—you can look at those units that they come from— then you can ensure that you get mastery in those units.

So that's a way that, you know, we're three-fourths or 80 percent through the year that you can quickly know what you know and what you don't know and where you need to actually fill in your gaps. That's my personal view of the quickest way to figure out where it might be the right zone for you. The same thing is true at the high school level, you know, even high school students. It doesn't hurt starting a little bit behind; you have more time now and make sure you fill in those gaps.

Things like our SAT practice that we do with the College Board that adapts to you. If you start getting questions of a certain skill wrong, it'll give you slightly easier ones or then slightly harder ones if you get them right. So that's my best advice there.

You know, some people have been asking for just general tips, and I was on some of the morning shows today. What I say is make sure you have some structure. Today, as we get more days into the social distancing, it's very tempting to stay in your pajamas and kind of, you know, try to work from bed with the TV running and all that. That's not going to be good, and it's not good even for your mental health. It's good to have a pattern. Wake up in the morning just like you would have done for school. Have your breakfast, get ready.

I even heard about some people pretending like they're on a bus for some period; I guess that's maybe a form of meditation. Then break into the schedule. We at Khan Academy have released some schedules for school closures, and it's for different schedules for different age groups that have different amounts of breaks and things like that in them. But use those! You could use those just as they are, or you can modify them to meet your needs. If you have that schedule, then that also gives you a clear sentence: “Hey, if I get all this done by one o'clock in the afternoon or two o'clock, I can then relax. I can then go do other things, pursue my passions, work on other hobbies.”

Ideally, you have a place in the house that is nice and clean, free of clutter, where you just associate that with work. That spatial association, I think, will help your productivity.

All right, so we have Syed Mohil Razal who's asked, "Will Khan Academy always be free?" The simple answer is yes. Our mission statement is free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. The whole idea about being a not-for-profit—there's nothing wrong with for-profit companies. Most of my career, I had worked at some form of a for-profit or another. But a for-profit company at the end of the day, their bottom line literally is, you know, maximizing shareholder value or income or things like that. Nothing wrong with that; that's how capitalism works.

But a not-for-profit, its bottom line is its mission. Our mission is free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. The reason why we set it up as a not-for-profit, you know, 12 years ago—I could have never foreseen this scenario—is because there are certain parts of our market economy where market forces alone might not work properly, or if they did work properly, it might not lead to the types of outcomes we want. I frankly think education and healthcare are the two areas where you don't want someone's access to it to be gated by their ability to pay or, you know, what their parents do for a living or things like that.

That's why Khan Academy is free and will always be free, and it's not for profit. It's primarily funded through philanthropic donations.

So Tana Bevel says, "Frustrating trying to help my college engineering son with his internet issues. He also needs tutoring in Calculus 2 and Physics. Any help?" So it depends on what the internet issues are. I don't have good advice if there are connectivity issues. Maybe the local carrier, whoever might be able to help with some of that. But if he's taking Calculus 2 and Physics, we can help there. Khan Academy has a full—depending on which college you go to—the first two semesters or three semesters of college calculus. Not just videos; we have exercises. You get as much practice as you need, so I really encourage your son to get on that.

Make sure he, same advice I had for the younger students, takes the course challenge to understand what he knows and doesn't know. Then, he can focus on the units that he has some gaps in. If he's able to get to, say, 90% mastery on our college calculus or our Calculus BC, which is AP but still a first-year college course, I think he'll do great. We have the same thing in first-year physics. He could use our AP Physics, which is really college physics, that I hopefully will help him.

So let's see. Alessharova Kilola asks, "How do I motivate my little brother to study during the quarantine? He really doesn't want to do anything." I empathize with you, Alessharova. I have three kids at home, and the older two—I have to give them a lot of credit, 11 and 8 years old—they are really productive. I think even more productive than me. Their school is doing a—you know, they're getting a list of stuff to do every day. They're connecting on Hangouts with their teachers at appropriate times, so they're fine.

But my five-year-old, I've been having a lot of difficulty motivating him. I think he's just getting used to the circumstances that we're all finding ourselves in. We had a good tip from a homeschooling parent a couple of days ago on this live stream where she said you just have to stick with it. At first, it's hard; everyone's getting used to the same patterns. But it's just about sticking with it, maintaining a pattern, having consistency.

You know, for very young kids—I hope none of you are, well I hope you are listening—but my technique with my five-year-old, sometimes the direct course of action is not the ones work on this, he will resist. But if you say, “Hey, that was really amazing how many points you got yesterday,” then you know, kind of strokes his ego a little bit, he gets a little excited about that. Or if you say, “Hey, tell me about that song you really like,” and then while he tells you about the song, I kind of open up the work he needs to do—his handwriting or whatever else. So that's one possibility.

But I think, you know, this is one of those times don't beat up yourself. I mean, it's really impressive as a sibling you're trying to help your sibling. But you know, don't put too much pressure on yourself. Do what you can, keep some consistency. What the homeschooling parents are telling us is that it's still the first week for most of us, and so you know it's okay. We can give all of ourselves a break.

And you know, this is the other thing: we're going to probably form some habits over the next month or two, as the schools are closed, and it sounds like in many places they will be closed to the end of the school year. We're hearing that in California. But then we have the whole summer to continue learning to, you know, catch up if we need to fill in gaps and then continue learning. So as long as people are able to ramp into the summer and keep learning during the summer, I'm not worried that they're going to be able to do just fine when schools reopen.

All right, so someone says, "How will Khan Academy get me into places like Stanford University?" I understand. Oh, I understand a guy who was locked up for 15 years used your resources and got into Stanford. Okay, so Adam Bucker asked that question.

So I'll first give my disclaimer: where you go to college does not define you as a human being. I think too many times in our society—and look, a lot of the signals you get in high school and when you're young from your friends are like, you're defined. But you know, you're trying to find your identity, and you might be defined by your test scores or where you go to college, etc., etc. Your life is far more than that than these test scores or where you go to college.

Now, for those of you who are, you know, there's nothing wrong with wanting to go to a highly selective university, I would just say just don't be attached. As Buddha says, “The source of all suffering is attachment.” You should always try your best, and it's great to be able to find a college that will challenge you, that will put you around other people that will make you better. My best advice—and I tell this, you know, we have a lab school downstairs, and I tell this to the students about your age—is make sure you really master material. Don't try to, you know, do everything; master the core for sure, you know, the mathematics, the sciences, the writing, the humanities.

But make sure you have time and space for your passions. You know, you see a lot of students who they think they have to do everything in order to impress other people. In some ways, the other people say, “That person is just trying to do everything to impress me; who are they really?” I've talked to a lot of admissions officers; we have some on our advisory board here at Khan Academy, and they all tell us, "We just want to see authenticity." For sure, they need to see kids who they feel confident will be able to handle the academic rigor of their campus, but they just want to see authenticity. They want to see curiosity; they want to see creativity.

So I think find your passions. You have, you know, glass half full, the school closures—you might have a little more time now. This is a great time to explore your passions. Find solutions for people in your neighborhood; there are all sorts of people who need help right now. Do it authentically—don't do it just to get into college. Say, “Hey, there might be senior citizens who can't go to the grocery store; maybe I can drop off groceries at their porch.” Maybe that can turn into a thing me and my friends can volunteer to do that. If you do it authentically, then when it's time to apply to college, and if you're academically prepared, you've given it your best shot.

So that's my best advice. You know, the example you gave of Jason—who was, for those of you who don't know the story, this was a young man who, when he was in his teens, he got arrested for selling marijuana. He got 30 years in prison in Illinois. While in prison, his mother gave him transcripts of Khan Academy videos so he could start to learn. They had no access to the internet. He had his sentence shortened to 15 years, so he gets out in his early 30s, and then he gets on Khan Academy for real at the local library, uses our official SAT practice, and he's able to kind of catch up.

Initially, he is at his local community college, but he decides that he wants to apply to Stanford, and he was able to transfer. I met him, and that's how I even know the story. So, I don't say that as a way that, you know, you need to go to Stanford, but I'm saying that as a way that I think anyone, if you apply yourself, you put your best foot forward, and you're authentic about it.

I would say what's really powerful about Jason's story is how authentic he is and how much he owns his own history. I think that's really powerful, and people would be impressed by that.

Let's see. Abed Sheikh says, "Do you have any science classes for middle school on Khan Academy?" That is actually a gap that we have officially. We don't have middle school science per se. With that said, what I will tell you is I think the high school biology is completely doable by a middle school student. The math prerequisites you would have already seen in middle school—things like negative numbers, decimals, and exponents and things like that.

Especially because high school biology is super interesting right now because you learn about viruses and DNA and RNA; you know, that's very relevant to the world we're in. So I would recommend high school biology to middle school students on Khan Academy. I think that could keep you busy, and you'll learn a lot. That's just a useful skill for life.

All right, so Lethal Hipster—interesting name—says, "Hi, Khan! How long have you been teaching?" Well, it depends on how you define teaching. You know, I've taught in various formal and informal settings over many years. If I were to go really far back, the first time I realized that I enjoyed tutoring or teaching was in high school. It might not surprise people, but I was the president of the math club. I assure you it was cooler than you might imagine!

As part of that, we used to tutor a lot of our—we used to have free tutoring for everyone in our school, and I saw over and over again that students, my friends who thought they weren't good at math—if they just had a little bit of attention, a little bit of being able to fill in their gaps, then all of a sudden they're like, “Wait, this isn't so bad,” and then they were off to the races.

That's what first stuck in my head: the reason why people are held back isn't because of their ability; it's because of these gaps and they just need a little bit of personalization, so to speak, to fill in those gaps. Then in college, I did some actually—I taught at the—there was a local school district in Brookline, Massachusetts, and they had lost funding for some of their classes. So they were looking for volunteer teachers. When I was in college, it was actually myself and my roommate, his name is Shantanu Sinha, and he was actually the first president of Khan Academy.

We used to go volunteer teach at Brookline Devotion School; this was in Brookline, Massachusetts, in middle school students. Later, in college, I was actually doing some test prep stuff for folks like Princeton Review. My career took up completely different; I went into tech, etc. But I was always fascinated by this whole teaching side. When my cousins in 2004 needed help, I was like, “Hey, can I tutor you?” because I just love—it’s just fun to be able to connect with people. I love the subject matter, and then that's kind of how I got started on this Khan Academy adventure. That was about 16 years ago.

Yesterday someone commented about how old I look, and so that's why. Someone is asking—Andy says, “Hey, Sal, it's 8:17 a.m. here and I'm about to live with the schedules that you planned. Thank you so much, Andy!” Great news! And yeah, my apology. I know these live streams conflict with the same schedules that we publish, and it's hard because those schedules are whatever times when you're on, and obviously this live stream is happening at different times depending on what time zone you are in. But I'm glad you're using the schedules, and we are going to look for more ways to support those schedules and get you support.

See it says, “How can I learn personal finance at Khan Academy?” You could literally look at our menus—there's a course menu when you go to the top left. Finance and personal finance are sections on Khan Academy. Those don't have the exercises the way that math and other subjects do, but there's a lot of videos there. If you look at those videos, especially if I’m working through a problem, you pause and you try to do it on your own, you'll be surprised how much personal finance you might learn. I'm happy to answer actually any personal finance questions if anyone has any. I know this is a time that might be stressing folks' finances, or maybe they're having questions about the stock market, and my—you know, my whole life I used to be an investment analyst, so I don't mind answering questions about that.

Okay, so Christine Pretty says, "Will you be adding more courses, etc., if schools stay closed for a longer time?" A great question, Christine! You know, we’re looking to do anything and everything necessary to be able to support folks through this school closure situation. It looks like they will be closed, and you know, in many places, through the end of the year.

We're talking, you know, everything we do is philanthropically funded. So, you know, we talked earlier about the gap we have in middle school science—I would love nothing more than to be able to create some middle school science content on Khan Academy. We need to find philanthropists—small and large philanthropists; every donation counts—so that we can start hiring up a team of folks who can start helping build that content.

You know, a lot of times I get disproportionate credit for Khan Academy because I make a lot of the videos, and you know, I'm kind of the mascot (for better or worse, not so pleasant of a mascot!). But there's a lot of people behind the scenes. We have over 200 employees who have salaries that we need to be able to pay so that they can do their work. Most of these people have taken salary cuts from what they could be doing in the for-profit sector because they're so passionate about this mission.

On the content side, I have a ton of support from people, oftentimes with Ph.D.s in the subject who are curating what the sequence should be, how we cover the standards, writing these thousands of items that we have to write per course, and getting it vetted with outside third parties. There’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes for those courses.

But I hope that we can add more and more courses, especially if it looks like this crisis continues for, you know, beyond what we're thinking right now.

Let's see. High school seniors are stressed about school closures, no problem, no graduation ceremony. What advice do you have for them? So I'm—I don't know how all of this is going to play out, and you know, there's some part of it that's not so great that you, you might miss out on some of these whatever you want to call them rights of passage.

What I would say to you is you and your generation, especially those of you who are high school juniors and seniors right now, this is going to define your generation. You know, when you're my age, y’all are gonna sit around the table and reminisce about 2020. Remember that? Remember coronavirus? Remember what was special about our generation? I think that actually will, in many ways, form deeper bonds than, you know, all of the other things that you might have done in the past.

I think there are ways that you can still have those experiences. Let's say you graduate—let's say we're still in this quarantine or stay-at-home policy and so you're not able to get those formal ceremonies. Maybe they can happen in the fall once all we surface from this or at a later date, and that could be fun too. You know, I'm supposed to be involved with a few graduations earlier this summer and yeah, I'm assuming they might not happen. But I hope they eventually happen so that those students can get their proper congratulations for what they've done.

So it'll all be good in the end. So I wouldn't worry about it too much. Take care of yourself more than anything, and I think it'll all work out.

So let's see other questions here. Lisa Moore says, "So homeschooling parent here can confirm it does get better. The routine becomes normal. Important to keep a routine of sorts." And you're right, ditch the PJ 24/7 habit; it’s harder to break later on.

Okay, so reinforcement: change out of your pajamas, patience, and perception. Know yourself. Know your kid. Great advice, Lisa! Thank you for that.

You know, I just got news from—I just got news from our team here that our partners, Bank of America—who, you know, we had an earlier question about financial literacy—they were the ones that have funded that financial literacy work and career work we have on Khan Academy over the last seven years.

Especially for many of you who are teenagers or in your early twenties, we have a ton of content not just on financial literacy but different career paths and how to navigate them, and the pros and cons and the financial stresses or benefits of different careers. The bank has been instrumental in funding all of that over the last seven years. As I mentioned, they've been the first company to step up, literally over the weekend, when they realized that we needed support as a nonprofit. They stepped up, and it looks like they just announced a hundred million dollars of support to nonprofits worldwide.

So that's a huge deal! You know, I know the folks at the bank for a while—folks like Anne, Foren Newton, and Meredith and Michelle. I've just been inspired by their willingness to step up and help the world as just human beings. I think that is just representative of the whole bank.

So let's see, any other questions? There's more questions coming in; we're close to time. Maybe I could do one more question. But, well, you know, I’ll just finish up with with a standard message. This is a time that is challenging for all of us.

But you know, the point of this live stream is to remind all of us that we're in this together. As I've said in previous live streams, this is actually something that I really enjoy connecting with all of you because I've been pinned up in my house for this week. So I think as all of us are navigating this, as long as we stay connected, as long as we keep learning, and as long as we recognize that this is all gonna sort itself out over time, it’s going to be a blip in our life; it’s going to make for great stories to tell our children and our grandchildren how we all stepped up and dealt with this and supported each other in this together.

I'll also just give a public health announcement: I really do encourage people to take the social distance seriously. I posted a video over the weekend. I think you'd do a search for like Khan Academy and COVID or something like that. It'll tell you how, you know, these things grow, and the reported cases are probably for sure undermining the actual cases out there, because not everyone is tested; not everyone has had symptoms. You might be carrying it, and you might be lucky and not have so much symptoms, especially if you’re young.

But if you want to protect your parents and your grandparents, do your best to keep a social distance. That's the best way. The sooner that everyone does that, the quicker that we will get through this and the lower chance we have of overwhelming our healthcare system.

So, thank you everyone! It's a real treat to be able to do this with you. Thanks for joining in, and you know, get on Khan Academy and learn. Use the schedules and tell everyone about it as well. I think there's still a lot of parents and students who are feeling a little lost. And so the more that...