How to motivate and engage your kids in learning while at home

Hey everyone, welcome to our webinar! My name is Lauren Kwan, and I'm on the Khan Academy team. Today, I am joined by my co-worker, Dan Tu, and our special guest, Connor Corey. Connor is an expert teacher, a parent, and a Khan Academy ambassador, which means he's a Khan Academy power user. He's going to be sharing out his tips and advice on student motivation.

But before we get started, I wanted to thank our sponsors: Bank of America, AT&T, Google.org, Novartis, and VASTLY for their support of this webinar and our other remote learning resources. A few other notes for you to know: this webinar will be recorded and sent to you via email a few hours after the session ends. If you have questions at any point during the webinar, feel free to enter them in the question box. We have staff available to answer your questions. We're also going to save time at the end for live Q&A with Connor. Lastly, you might be wondering about the age range for this webinar, so Connor will be sharing tips that can be useful for parents of kids of all ages.

So with that, let's get started! I'm thrilled to have Connor here to share his advice. Connor, can you share a little bit about yourself and your background?

"Um, hi Lauren, thanks for having me, everybody. Yes, I've now been a math educator, mostly teaching middle school math and fifth-grade math, for seven—this is my 17th year—and by far, this is the toughest year for myself and my students. Right now, I also have four children of my own, and it is chaos for myself to teach in my—to try to keep up with, you know, three of them are in school, one is in preschool. But to keep up with all their assignments and to keep up to make sure they’re handing things in and to fully change the role from not only my students' teacher to my own children, it's been very difficult. And, you know, look for the opportunity. Hopefully, I can help, and just maybe some of the things that I'm doing around here. But I may not have all the answers. I can kind of just tell you from my own experience of teaching and being a parent at the same time that hopefully, you can see both sides of the spectrum."

Fantastic! Yeah, Connor, as you mentioned, a lot of parents are finding themselves stepping into the role of teachers for the first time. We're hearing so many questions from parents about ways to motivate their kids. So what advice would you give to parents who are wondering, "How do I motivate my kids to be interested in learning?"

"It's a great question, and it's a difficult question. There's not really one answer that's going to motivate children across the board. Especially for even myself, I'm going to tell you that all my kids are eating ring pops upstairs just to avoid me for a half hour of coming down here, so I can do this. Many parents are in that same situation. But to motivate students and your own children, I've always kind of tied it to some sort of incentive. It's never a really financial incentive; it's always just kind of your time or something that they really are interested in.

It does not have to be academic-related. It could be something as simple as, you know, if you finish all your schoolwork today, then you get to pick tonight's movie. My daughter is—I do construction in the summertime usually, and my daughter's very interested in power tools when she sees me building, so I'm teaching her how to use those. When she finishes her stuff, I know my wife, who has probably never played a video game in her life, but my son and I will play Madden. He's in third grade, and we will play all the time because I'm a giant child. But my wife has started to play against him, and he doesn't care if I play anymore. He wants to play her because it's so different for him to see her in that type of environment and take an interest in what he's interested in, and that has been motivating for him.

So I think if you just try to find something your child is interested in that you usually would not participate in or you could kind of let them participate with their friends—you know, they're not really around the friends anymore, so they need somebody that wants to just kind of reinforce their interests—and I think that's a big motivator, and you can kind of tie that to their academics."

Yeah, I love those creative ideas that you've shared there. Another question that we're hearing a lot is: how do I keep my kids focused and engaged in learning?

"Focus and engage! I mean, it's kind of one of the hardest parts. Our parents have just been given an unrealistic expectation to automatically become their teacher, to automatically have mastered grade-level content in not one subject but four or five or six subjects. I know for myself as a teacher, I am a master of middle school math, but if you give me an eighth-grade biology test, I'm not gonna do well.

So, when you're just pushing all of a sudden all of this on parents, they're very stressed out, and their children fully understand that they don't get the concepts or the content as much. My suggestion for this is to try to learn something with them. For instance, like with Khan Academy, I always tell parents they did kind of like an experiment a few years ago where I asked parents to master their child's fifth or fourth-grade content on Khan Academy—so their child's grade level—and what I found from that was amazing. Most parents have bowed out of math after third grade. It becomes, 'Oh my God, I don't know how they're teaching you this. I don't know this new style of math.'

But the linear approach that Khan Academy gives to learn anything was fantastic for them to see that, 'Okay, this is how they're teaching math.' It's just something if you try fourth-grade math in your child, maybe in seventh or eighth grade, and they're doing seventh or eighth grade, you kind of do it alongside them for 15 minutes, 10 minutes a day. That has been a huge help with understanding where to find relevant content when your child has any misunderstanding. Because it doesn't have to be in math; it could be in science, in chemistry, in history, and SAT prep, all of that is available."

But if you're looking for a video to help your child, you may go through Google, and you'll have 30 different websites, and you start to find one. You don't know how relevant or accurate it is, and you're spending so much time trying to find one thing. If you work through something like Khan Academy on like a fourth-grade level, you'd be surprised how the whole spectrum of education will open up and the understanding will open up of how to find content to help your child. And they're going to be engaged because they're doing it with you, and they're going to laugh at you when you get things wrong because you will. I'd be surprised how difficult third or fourth-grade math can be.

Yeah, for sure, it's probably the best way! And speaking of, yeah, it's been a while. I'm sure it's been a while for parents for third or fourth-grade math! And so if kids, you know, for example, if they get frustrated, do you have any tips for keeping kids engaged if they get frustrated if they get things wrong?

"Yes! Right now, most children are frustrated. They're used to having an expert in that content area who knows how to teach that content area 10 different ways and knows how to reach every child in the different learning styles of every child. And now they have just, you know, their parent who may not even understand some of the content. The frustration level for parents and students is at an all-time high in education.

So by going back to, kind of paralleling, if you learn something with your child and practice and try to teach them the theory of growth mindset—that show them that you're frustrated learning something like fourth-grade math—and that they're going to laugh when you get things wrong and that you try it again the next day, and you try it again the next day. That like kind of theory of growth mindset—that we all can learn anything—is something that if we teach our children at a young age and at a difficult time right now will be so important moving forward because we actually don't know when this is all going to end.

To understand this platform to kind of practice learning with them, they will see you doing that, and that's going to cause less frustration for them when you can kind of both laugh at each other that you're working through it."

Definitely! Growth mindset is definitely something that both parents and students will be a valuable skill to build. Another question that we hear as well from parents is: how do I keep my kids engaged if they don't like school?

"It's tough right now because I don't know that anybody likes school. As a teacher, I do not! I'm teaching from my basement. I think I set up a nice little area for myself, but I miss my students; I miss seeing their faces in live time. Students are now being sent assignments across the board from five or six teachers, and parents are now getting 30 to 40 websites and logins, where three of my children that are in the public school system right now each have like 10 different logins.

Then you have some people that are saying, 'Oh, here's a new one, try this,' 'Here's a new one, try this!' It’s so overwhelming that you have to sometimes just really take a step back and make sure that your child is enjoying learning and not overwhelmed, just like you. That may take cutting certain assignments out.

It may take taking a look through and saying, 'We're not going to do this.' Because it took my daughter the other day five minutes to do a digital assignment that she had, but it was taking her 25 minutes to submit it. And then I'm trying to do it, and she's trying to submit it and she's telling me, 'Well, no, we have to put it on Google Classroom, and then we have to go to this.' That is not learning. She wasn't gaining anything valuable about that. So for me as a parent, I just kind of said, 'We're done! Yeah, you did it with me; I get it. We're moving on. And if your teacher wants to send me an email, or I can send her one and say I did it, she explained it to me.'

But they're having them answer questions, some of them on the little tiny mouse pad where they have to write on that mouse pad, and that is so difficult. I can't do it, but they're answering one little question that takes 10 to 15 minutes for them just to write the sentence out. I’m like, well, she told me she understands it; they're good; it's finished! As a parent, you have that right, and I think you should use it because the stress level is so high for sure!"

Yeah, and I should point out I forgot to mention earlier that Connor summarized many of his tips in a handout that you all can get in your GoToWebinar panel under the handout. So if you want to go ahead and grab that, I would definitely recommend it. So Connor, we're hearing also from parents, and you touched on this earlier, but what tips would you give for parents who are trying to teach kids a subject that they're not comfortable or familiar with the material themselves?

"Accept that you don't know the material. Let your children understand that you don't know the material and kind of together learn it, or together find ways to do it. But what is happening that I see in my own house, and I talk to many friends who call me because I'm the only teacher that they know, is the learning doesn't seem to be happening as much as the handing the learning in and doing these things.

Parents with so many logins, they're not sure where to go; they're not sure how to find it. And I think Khan Academy will help with that if you start to work yourself and learn that platform. Because, I feel, next year as we come back to school, every district in the country will be using this platform, and it's going to kind of give you a head start.

So it's not so much about now and having to understand the content that you're teaching but how you can help your child find the answers and how you can navigate through and have a spot for them almost like a one stop of education where you know you're going to get relevant information. Maybe you can watch the video with them and kind of do things with them, but we're at a time where we have to start looking that if something like this would happen again, I should prepare myself for when it happens again and not worry about getting to June and ending, but more of preparing myself to learn how to help my child when or if something like this were to happen again.

So I think that making sure you master one platform is a really positive thing you could do for your job."

Great! Well, I wanted to have plenty of time to answer a Q&A from the audience, so I'll turn it over to Dan to surface some questions that we've been hearing from audience members.

"Yes, thanks, Lauren, and thank you, Connor, for joining us! I'm super excited to have you here. We have tons of excitement and enthusiasm around this specific topic. I asked the audience to do two things before we get into the live Q&A session. First, go to, as Lauren mentioned, the handout section and grab the tips and cheat sheet that Connor put together. They're really good tips, and, you know, you can download it and also just review links to other resources that we've included in there as well.

And then the second prompt is to please add your questions. We already have a ton of questions coming in in the message board, so keep those going! We’ll get to as many as we can, just ask that you be patient with us.

Okay, so Connor, we have quite a few questions—one from Kimberly and another one from Pamela. It's really around, I guess, some of the kids, you know, ages sixth grade—they're not listening to their parents or they're saying they're doing one thing; you know, they're looking at the assignment, they're caught up in class, and when the parent actually checks in, you know, that's not the case. So do you have any advice for parents who are struggling with keeping—not being overbearing but also just being able to keep track of how their kids are progressing with their school?"

"I think it's important to understand that although they're your children, you know them; they are in middle school and high school, and they're going to think like a middle school or a high school kid. I know that I have my own children; my own students will spend an hour trying to beat the system rather than 10 minutes doing the assignment.

I've told a story one time where I was requiring 20 minutes on Khan Academy a night, and I had a student that was doing an hour for almost a week and a half. I wanted to reward him for his additional work, but there was no progress being made, and I could not figure it out. I actually sent something to Khan Academy saying something's wrong because nothing's moving. Then finally, he owned up and said, 'I've been putting nickels on one of the actual keys for the answer so it shows his activity, but nothing's actually getting done.' He would just leave a pile of nickels on the thing.

I mean, I gave him credit because I thought it was genius, but the assignments would take you 20 minutes. But for him to do all that, I think it's important for parents to realize they're going to try to beat the system. For myself, we have a schedule, and the schedule works for us. What the first thing we do—our schedule is in the morning.

For some parents, it's not everyone thinks that school should be eight to three because that's what it was, but it does not have to be that. It could be at any time throughout the day that works for you, that works for your family. For us, I make my children write a checklist each morning when they kind of check their email, when they check their Google Classroom, that I don't leave it on their computer on their own—they have to kind of hand me a checklist at breakfast. So if I have this, I have this, and I have this, and we've scheduled throughout the day."

"I'm discussing with you prior to this that we have different rooms for each subject in the house. It is in the kitchen they do their language arts, and if they're all in the kitchen, I know they're working on language arts. They come to the basement, where I'm at right now, to work on their math, and then they go into the living room to work on their social studies or science.

But it's a quick way for me to see if they're getting through their curriculum for the day, and it also—if I have the checklist, I can kind of say, 'Did you do this? Did you do this?' But I don't have to go into each one of my children's things and write it myself and figure out all these things; I have them hand it to me, and it's kind of just a quick checklist for me and them as well to keep them kind of progressing through what they're supposed to be doing."

Great! So Connor, we have a question from Diane Rodriguez. As a teacher, I think you're exceptionally positioned to answer this question. Diane asks, "I've been using Khan Academy with my second grader, and it's been very helpful." But her point is that math is being taught very differently than when she learned it, and so her concern is that when they go back to school, that she may have been coaching her child in a different way than the way the schools are teaching it now.

"Do you have a perspective? Should she become concerned about that, or how should she approach that?"

"This is the question that has come, actually, from years. I was a math coach for a few years in elementary schools, and this is why parents buy out because they know how to teach traditional math and addition and multiplication, but then that's not aligning with what they're fully teaching. My suggestion is always to teach—I'm actually an advocate for traditional multiplication and long division, and I fully grasp the analytics of breaking everything apart, and I think it has a true value in understanding.

However, I think they have to master certain skills, like their multiplication facts and their division facts—that they have to know them just like they know the alphabet and what sounds letters make. Or when you start to get into the older grades with variables and exponents, you really start to get lost because you don't have the foundation.

So for me, if you're teaching your child something the way you learned it, I find that to be very positive because that's building a foundation. Then when they go back to school and maybe they change it up, they grasp the foundation of that, so to change the way or learn another way to do the same thing they already know how to do it. So I would definitely suggest, yes, work with your child, teach them the way that they know.

Khan Academy's second grade, third grade, it does both. They show in the multiplication and the division in addition and subtraction; they show the methods of breaking it apart, and they also show the traditional carrying from the ones to the tens column, from the tens to the hundreds column. I would think that whenever they come back, they're going to be fine, especially if you think about maybe not in second grade, but right around now, schools don't want to admit it. But we're in standardized test season, and they may not want to talk about it, but the majority of stuff we're doing is just review. We're not teaching really new content as much as we're reviewing and spiraling the content we've already taught throughout the year, and that takes four to five weeks of review and then two weeks of testing.

Then we're really getting to the end of the year, so I think it's important to understand that whatever you're doing with your child reviewing, it’s helpful, and it's going to hold value for them as they come back."

Yeah, I wouldn't even be able to teach the new ways of math anyway, even if I wanted to! So cool. Connor, we have a question from Alexis Lee Cox, who is asking: our child is only willing to do what the teachers assign, and teachers aren't assigning much right now, especially in science. So no science content! Any ideas in terms of how to continue learning when teachers aren't stepping up, and she won't hear it from us, meaning the parents?

"This really comes down to yourself as a parent. I think that teachers—we don't know exactly what to do right now either, and we're dealing with parents from every end of the spectrum, just like parents are dealing with teachers from every end of the spectrum. I know teachers that are requiring like two hours of work a day, and I know teachers that are requiring five minutes, and it's how they're viewing what is going on—that if their class was two hours, they should have two hours of work. Other teachers realized that, you know, the unemployment rate is at an all-time high; parents are trying to stay in the house; they're trying to make sure they can put food on the table, and something as a Google slide assignment may not have that value.

I would suggest, if you're looking at high school parents, they want to learn science or they want additional work to increase what's happening, that you use something like Khan Academy and try to provide it to them yourself. You don't have to know the content! This is what I mean why it's so powerful; it's free, and you can say, 'I require you to do 20 minutes on, you know, biology.'

That's something that you require of them, and those—you can actually see: did they do the 20 minutes? Did they watch the video? Did they do the practice exercise? Those scores will come up directly to your email, and it could have nothing to do with the school district. But I think we do have to plan long term for what's happening. Everyone is looking towards June, but I think the most effective thing you can do right now is start to get your children in a routine for this summer. Most of us take off in the summer with education with their children, and there's going to be a summer slide every year, but this year, it's so critical not to end in June to make sure that it doesn’t have to be a full day.

It could be, 'Okay, every day you do 20 minutes of math, 20 minutes of literacy,' and I want that routine to happen throughout the summer also. So maybe I don't know what standard it is in what grade, but I know you're consistently learning and you're consistently working, and I think that's going to be one of the most positive things that you can do. But we do all have the ability to teach our children; we've taught them everything they know.

Maybe not academic—we taught them to ride a bike, you taught them how to tie their shoes, you taught them manners, how they act in public, and they're watching you right now to see what they should do in this situation. So kind of setting a new routine and realizing we probably are not going back to the way things were anytime soon."

Yeah, Connor, I would just piggyback off that. I think part of it is just setting expectations with yourself as an adult. I think there are a lot of parents who are expecting that, as you mentioned earlier, this is a normal like eight hours of school time frame that kids would be doing at home. I think that's honestly just unrealistic for most parents.

I mean, one, you just don't have the time between the work that you would have to do, you know, also just all the other myriad things, and teachers are in the same position as well. So, I think, you know, we're getting some questions around like if we're not getting enough assignments, how should we fill in the gap? I would say part of it is, you know, your own ability to fill in the gap as a parent. And if you do have the extra time to make extra assignments, feel free to do that. Use Khan Academy, as Connor suggested, if you do.

But also just with the understanding that it's not a normal school day that your child is going to be going through, and honestly that's okay. I don't think the expectation is that you're going to learn physics and then be able to teach your kid physics in one week, for example. So, just be kind to yourself and just have a different set of expectations for now, you know?"

Great! I think it's important to also realize if you need additional things for a child to do, it does not have to be academic-related. Teach them how to build something! Teach them how—let them maybe paint the room! Teach them how to paint. My daughter has changed, is changing electrical sockets with me because she sees me doing it, and I'm always like, "All right, now I make sure the electric's off." But she's interested, so that's something, and that's a skill.

I know when she goes off the couch, she's going to be able, if she needs to—I don't hope that she will, but it's just a matter of do their laundry. Teach them life skills that you've done for them so far, and try to start to take some of that off of you and teach it to them because everything is not about the eight-to-three school day. And in that school day, there is lunch, there is recess, there are transition times, there is a movie in the one class; there's different things—it's not eight straight hours of somebody giving worksheets—I hope not anyway!"

Yeah, you know, Khan Academy provided daily learning schedules for families to use, and we're kind of advising the same thing, where we're advising to mix it up, to have off-screen activities. That actually also helps with the motivation factor, right? So they're not, you know, sitting at home in front of their computer for eight hours watching a course. They're actually getting up and mixing up different activities.

I love the suggestion of, you know, being a maker; you know, create something and you're still building a different skill. It doesn't have to be academics eight hours a day because honestly, that's probably not going to work at this time. It's not gonna work for me—and four of them that way!

Great! I think we have time for one more question. So here's a question from Monica in Virginia. As a parent of a second grader, is it counterproductive to allow flexibility in scheduling instruction following the schedule like into what the child was conditioned to when school was in session? So, I guess the question is really, is it counterproductive to have flexibility, or is it better to kind of stick to a more rigid schedule?

"I do not believe you should stick to the standard school schedule that they're used to because school is not what they're used to right now. So it's not like you're going into the school building and changing what happens, but you have to make something that's working for you and your family. For instance, my wife works—was able to work from home, and she's still employed and still working from home.

But I always went to school—that was the schedule I left at 6:30 in the morning, and she kind of did breakfast and did all that. Then when the kids went on the bus, then she would start work. Well, I'm trying to give her time while I take all the kids, so I'm doing breakfast, and it's kind of funny. Their, like, 'Oh wait for breakfast; they're going, "Oh, I'll have eggs." All this!' I'm like, 'I meant, did you want toaster cereal?'

But, you know, I'm not mom. But I know that we'll do stuff. But if it's all of a sudden nice, if the sun comes out for 20 minutes, we're cutting everything off. And we're going to try to go in the yard. It's been raining here in Philadelphia, it seems like every day. And yesterday they had the Blue Angels actually fly over Philadelphia. So that was like an hour and a half in the middle of the day where we sat in the yard and kind of looked up and did different things, and maybe they did their literacy at six o'clock at night after dinner, or maybe they did it here.

As long as they understand what they have to do throughout the day, they're going to start to manage their time even at a young age. But to put yourself through that stress—that stress is going to go right to your child. And when you're stressing, your child's stress because you're trying to conform to a system that's not working for you, there will not be learning that takes place.

And it's why online learning is so popular in college and for parents because they can't conform to that. So that's why they can't go back to school. That's why online learning has become so popular for adults and graduates. The same thing’s going on right now."

Unfortunately, we're already at time, and we have like a thousand more questions to get through. Perhaps we'll do another kind of follow-up session in the future. But Connor, I wanted to thank you so much for joining us and sharing your expertise with our family. And Lauren, thank you for moderating the first half of this conversation.

And I also want to thank you, you know, the busy parents out there. I know you already have, you know, a million things to do as part of your day, but thank you for joining us in this afternoon for this live session. I just want to reiterate if you missed any part of this or if you want to go back and review some of the comments and the Q&A portion, we will be posting a recording of this webinar live, and Connor's tips are free and downloadable as well.

Both of these will be emailed to those who have already registered after this, along with links to resources at khanacademy.org. So we have a suite of other parent resources that are available on our website. There’s a blue ribbon at the top dedicated really to school closures and remote learning, so feel free to visit that.

And then before we sign off, we ask you to do us one more favor and take the poll that pops up at the very end of this webinar to help us answer two questions: First, how can we make future iterations of this session even better for you all? And then secondly, what kind of other sessions would you like to see us develop in the future?

We're here to support you. You know, this session was really creative because this was probably the number one requested webinar by you all, and so we hope to be able to do more of that for you in the future.

In closing, you know, on behalf of Connor and on behalf of Lauren and myself, we appreciate that you’re juggling a lot as parents, and we're dealing with all this—all of us together, you know, with this uncharted territory all at the same time. We want to remind you as parents just to be kind to yourself. You know, Connor mentioned it: we know you're struggling with just balancing work and multiple kids and trying to be a teacher now and all those things—just be patient with yourself.

And that's okay if you mess up here and there. That's what growth mindset is about—is just, you know, making some of these mistakes, learning from them, and then progressing that way as well. So from all of us at Khan Academy, thanks again, and good night!"

"Thank you! Thanks for having me; I appreciate it."