Conor Corey on teaching and motivating students during distance learning | Homeroom with Sal

Wait till we're live. Stand by. Hi everyone, welcome to the daily homeroom live stream. Sorry, running a little bit late. As you can see, I am in a different location. I think I finally got the Wi-Fi fixed in the house, so we're going to try this. You might hear some screaming kids every now and then, but that just adds a little bit of flavor to the experience.

Exciting show today! But before we get into the thick of it, I will explain for those of y'all who might just be showing up for the first time what this thing is. Khan Academy, we're a not-for-profit, and our mission is to provide a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. When we saw, it seems like a lifetime ago, but now five, six, seven weeks ago, that we had these mass school closures, not just in the U.S. but around the world, we saw, given our mission, that we've been creating content and tools to support parents, teachers, and students for the last 10 years, that it's really our duty to step up even more during this crisis.

So, above and beyond all the learning materials that'll hopefully keep folks learning, we've been trying to do parent webinars, teacher webinars, and this live stream, just as a way to stay in touch. As we go through the conversation, very exciting conversation today! I encourage you to put questions for either myself or our guest, who is a super teacher, on either Facebook or YouTube, and we have team members who are looking at those.

I do like to remind folks Khan Academy, as I said, is a not-for-profit. We exist because of philanthropic donations. If you're in a position to do so, please think about donating to Khan Academy. I do want to give special thanks to several corporate partners who've stepped up in the last few weeks to allow us to do this work. We've been running at a deficit even before the crisis, and you can imagine our costs have gone up. We're seeing three times the server load that we typically see, and we're trying to accelerate a lot of programs.

So, special thanks to Bank of America, Google.org, AT&T, Fastly, Novartis, and we need more help. So, anyone out there who wants to help us out more, either as an individual donor or as a corporation, please reach out.

With that, I would love to get into the core of the program. I'd love to introduce Connor Corey, who's an incredible teacher from the Centennial School District in Pennsylvania. Connor, great to have you here. Thanks!

I'm excited to be here, and first of all, this is the launch of Teacher Appreciation Week! So let me just tell you, I think we all appreciated teachers before this—or hopefully we should be! You're a super teacher who we've been appreciating for many years, and I think for many of us parents who now have to handle our own kids in our house, the level of teacher appreciation has gone up.

I agree with you! Very many positive emails from parents that appreciate the help as they're confused and stressed out, as many of us are during this time. So maybe a good place to start, you know, you're what's known as a Khan Academy Teacher Ambassador. Tell us a little bit about what you teach. Tell us about your kids, tell us about how you've been using Khan Academy, and what this means to be an ambassador.

So, this is my 17th year teaching, and I spent the majority of my career teaching in the Sophia School District. That's where I really described, we're pretty underfunded. Many of our students, they didn't have a learning disability, but they were maybe a year or a few years behind. Khan Academy always gave me the ability to remediate content without having to file paperwork or go find a different book.

But it was always like three-act, and from there I kind of continued to make a lot larger and larger part of the curriculum. When the ambassador program came out a few years ago, I applied to that, and it's been fantastic! Right now, we have over a thousand people that donate their time to help other teachers show them different ways to access a variety of education.

When I first started, it was just math, but it has become so much more. Just, you know, parents that are using it in high school, college—it’s really been a huge help for not only the education system, but for the world. So, I will always fully support this program, maybe not financially, but with my time.

No, the way that you're supporting it is as essential as anything, and we really consider you a close part of this Khan Academy team. I think one of the things that has really stood out as an ambassador for Khan Academy, you know, obviously we put those resources out there and we have efficacy studies that if students are able to put in the time, they're able to accelerate their learning.

But the key question that we've been trying to answer, and many people have been asking this in this live stream and other places, is well how do we motivate kids to do it? Especially, they're at home now; it's not the same as being in a classroom. What were your techniques before COVID, and then what tips do you have for parents, teachers, and even students themselves to stay motivated during this crisis?

Motivation's always been fun for me. While I was teaching, I always looked at it as our students are so drastically different and come from different backgrounds. I could buy an Xbox and put that surprise, but then there's a kid in the class that has two Xboxes— that doesn't motivate him.

So, I always found that embarrassing yourself as an adult for a child or what they can't purchase is something that will motivate all of them. So, over the years during LearnStorm, we've had kids throw water balloons at us. We did something called the Wheel of Doom, where with 26 teachers signed up in the winning class, each kid spun this wheel, and whatever it landed on—mustard, mayonnaise—we had a whole assembly! They were able to squirt that in the teacher's face—all for kind of laughs.

We had even our one teacher and our vice principal let us wax our legs with wax strips as a reward, which— we're running out of ideas. You could tell you are a dedicated teacher! I have this sense of viewer of a middle school kid. So, or maybe your legs would not be quite as painful as mine!

Anyway, we're just trying to do the same things and trying to keep it that interaction with the students. We did, yesterday, they finished tied. How many of the parents were nervous? They weren't prepared for seventh grade math! I teach sixth grade math, so they’re very nervous with everything that's happened.

So, I spent a week and only assigned them growth mindset activities that we did earlier in the year during LearnStorm, and I wanted to reinforce that at this time. Then the last week, I gave them seventh grade assignments without much teaching. There was—I was kind of like, you have the background knowledge. Remember, you're going to get them wrong.

Remember the fact that that's what we did last week—the first mindset—and if you have fish, you know, I have studied with students and I will do the one at the blender challenge. I would blend up seven things in my fridge and drink it on camera for them, and we had parents sign up also! I told them to sign their parents up, but today I've watched like eight different videos of parents laughing with their kids blending up disgusting things in the fridge—all for math! Just to kind of get them laughing again and sit around.

We've been trying to do stupid stuff like that, and I have a student now giving me requests. I have two rules: it has to be free and legal. Those are my only rules, and I'll do it.

That's very—I love that because, you know, we always talk about motivation. We usually think it has to be some deep psychological mind trick that you play with kids, or maybe we defer to kind of the not as healthy rewards, like here's some sugar, here's some, you know, not so good screen time. But what you're saying—this is really fun! It's these memorable, quirky—you just have to have a little bit of a willingness to, you know, subject yourself to the whim of a child!

You accomplish this! I, as your teacher, I'm willing to do what you want something fun—quirky—as long as it's legal and no one gets hurt, so to speak.

And related to that, you know, this first question from Facebook, Scott Yang asks, “Hi Connor, how does it feel to teach from home?” So you described kind of what you were doing pre-COVID. I am curious, I think a lot of teachers and parents are curious. So how are you keeping that same—or can you keep that same level of energy or connectedness with your students right now? How are you trying to do that?

I'm trying to... I don't believe it's possible to do the same way because I can't see my students' face live as I'm kind of recording lessons and sending them and answering questions when they record something back. But I know when I'm in class, when, you know, Jake does nothing and I'm talking, he has no idea what I'm talking about. I have to kind of step in there, but I can see, you know, when one student doesn't sit with the friends they usually sit with—that maybe they're having a bad day, and something's going on. As teachers, we're aware of those things, and we really try to focus on that social piece just as much.

It's very difficult this way. And it's also with, I mean, I'm fortunate enough to still have my employment, but many of our parents have lost that. And there's kids—I have four children of my own throughout the house. I can't believe they haven't interrupted yet! But they are usually—we're trying to get everything organized while I'm teaching as well and sharing devices—so it's difficult, and it's high stress.

I think as parents, we need to kind of give ourselves a break from making sure every little thing is done.

And how are you handling personally? I mean, you know, being able to keep your students engaged, your full-time job trying to teach virtually however you can at the same time for kids at home. How are you able to navigate that personally?

Personally, I think I'm doing okay! We—I have a great family, a loving wife, very supportive, and I try to keep my mindset and find the positives in things that are going on. The positives of getting this much time with my children and my family and to really focus on better, the many negatives that you can see on the news and many things as they're going on here in Pennsylvania, as we have severely high cases of COVID.

You hear stories of grandparents and parents and hospitals that are overrun and people are unfortunately passing away. I think it's a good learning opportunity for my children to kind of, you know, work on ourselves and make sure that we're just trying to stay upbeat.

Give yourself time. I mean, it's okay to meditate and give yourself 20 minutes to think before your day starts. It's very helpful, and I think that helps people get through the stress.

And what kind of tempo are you having with your students now? Are you recommending—so these are sixth graders—you’re recommending them do a certain amount of Khan Academy or get certain goals? It sounds like you're also recording some of your own lessons. Are you also trying to do some Zoom or Google Meet? What are the different ways? How does that work right now for you with your students?

So, the lesson will be on Khan Academy, where I use whatever topic—like we were doing circumference last week—so I will kind of teach it on this little board back here. You know, it looks like I'm in a fancy classroom, but I'm actually in my basement! But I’ll teach that, and then they can record videos back to me, and I can kind of answer their questions one-to-one.

Then I can see how they're doing on the assignments that I send to them, and because I'm able to track that data, I'm able to also set challenges: "Will hit me the assignments done?" Or I have them setting personal goals for themselves to work on, and that's where I'll use the time piece more than the actual assignments since they're on various levels.

Yeah! And what advice would you have? I mean, I thought you had some really good personal advice on just how all of us could navigate the situation. What advice do you have for other teachers that are feeling a little bit overwhelmed? Like how do you navigate this? How do you keep your kids learning? Can you even try to do what you would typically do in a normal environment?

I think if you focus on one platform, something that they're familiar with. Every teacher is getting things from their district. Try this, try this—just as every parent is getting a million new apps that they’re able to use or a million different ways to find curriculum that aligns. But it's so overwhelming for not only the teacher who hasn't had to use maybe the digital textbook, or hasn't had to use some of these digital things, but also for the parent when they have, unfortunately for them...

And Connor, your connection's chopping up a bit, which is unfortunate. Maybe we'll bring you on a little bit. I think it just got a little bit worse, but what we'll do is I’ll wind down here. I'll tell everyone, please feel free to ask questions for either myself or Connor, and I'll go into kind of a little bit of an ask-me-anything mode.

But Connor, if your internet is not choppy, you know, any parting thoughts for folks on how to teach or learn? Maybe what message would you have for students in this environment who are trying to learn at the same time deal with everything else?

I think trying to learn in this environment, you really have to focus on growth mindset. For our older students, to look through Khan Academy's career section, I think that is a fantastic way to see a linear path of what you possibly want to do after high school and those steps for them. For them to see the steps they need to take is valuable to know that what they have to do now to achieve that, and kind of the self-learning that's going on all over the globe currently.

Yeah, no—Connor, thank you so much, and I hope we can continue this conversation when the internet gods give us better conditions. I've been there myself many times, so thank you so much, Connor.

Thank you!

So, you know, as you all can see, this is a very authentic show we do here where we’re all dealing with the complexities of being socially distanced. But if anyone has questions, I'm happy to answer them in kind of classic ask-me-anything style.

You know, one thing that Connor mentioned a couple of times that I'm sure a lot of y'all are focused on, but essentially something I think about is a growth mindset. How does he give growth mindsets to his students, or how does he even have one himself? And that's just this notion that you either believe you're good at certain things and not good at certain things—that's a fixed mindset—or you think you have a growth mindset.

The only way you know what you're good at is by pushing yourself and failing and reflecting on those failures and trying again, really pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. And disproportionately in any field, the people who do well aren't necessarily the people who had a strong starting point; they're the people who have a growth mindset, who are always pushing themselves out of their comfort zone.

The more you realize that, the more you realize that your brain is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets! That it's actually when you fail, and you reflect on that failure, that you form the most neural connections! You actually are getting smarter in that way when you fail—that you can really start to exercise that growth mindset.

So it's a super important idea that we talk a lot about in this live stream. So, we're getting some questions. Looks like these are for me from Facebook. Kazi Akash Amith asks, “Greeting Mr. Khan! How does Khan Academy help you make up your life? I mean, you have to spend your part of life for others.” I hope it gets answered!

Well, you're getting answered, so that hope is coming true! You know, it's, I think it's generous when people say, “Oh Sal, you’re putting time of your life for Khan Academy.” But for me, I consider myself the luckiest person on the planet.

I don't think there's a more rewarding thing that I can do. I get to work with an incredible team. I get to work with incredible teachers, like the one that you just saw, and administrators to try to help millions or tens or hundreds of millions of students over time learn. So, I think it's a very fortunate thing that, you know, I pinch myself that I get to work on this, especially considering, you know, 10 years ago, 11 years ago, I was just one guy in a walk-in closet.

The fact that Khan Academy now has so many other people being able to help, and so many people who are hopefully benefiting from it makes a huge deal. In terms of balancing, I think that's just a trick in life. You heard the teacher just now talk a little bit about that, but it's, you know, when you care passionately about a mission that's valuable, but it can easily become all-encompassing.

So one thing that I work on in my life is, you know, how do I balance these two things? How do I make sure that I always have time for my family, time for my kids, where my brain isn't thinking about the next thing at Khan Academy, the next thing to do, where I can really be present in the moment? That's, I think, the best way of kind of of having a balance.

So from YouTube, Sebastian Ruiz asks, “How do you cope with all the things going on?” So you know, a lot of people these days, whenever you get on a phone call with anyone, they're like, “Oh well, how are you doing in the crisis?” and my answer has been I think this is hard on everyone, but relatively speaking, I'm very, very lucky.

I have my job; my obviously, my wife is super supportive. My mother-in-law lives with us, and so together and my children’s teachers are doing heroic jobs, amazing jobs at keeping our kids learning and staying engaged. So that combination of support is really, really valuable as, you know, we're trying to work from home, and sometimes your five-year-old might be having a tantrum. Most of the time there, we can kind of have each other's backs and take care of each other.

I think that, plus— you know, I've talked about it in this live stream before—I do a lot of meditation. I've been doing it for about a year and a half now, and the meditation really can help you not get caught up in some of the stresses that this crisis might be putting on folks. The other thing I say is, you know, try to focus on what is in your zone of control—what you actually can help do.

Sometimes you can get very overwhelmed by what's going on in the broader world, so it is useful, of course, to know what's going on—watch the news—but don't do too much of that because if you do too much of that, you can start to feel very powerless and very helpless. So, say, what's in my zone of control? What can I do? You know, to quote Frozen 2, what's the next right thing to do and just try to do that?

But, you know, as was just said, you know there is a silver lining. I'm able to spend a lot more time with my kids, with my wife. You know, between meetings, I can make the bed or do some dishes or go for a walk. So there is a bit of a silver lining there. I think there's some family time, some downtime that is happening that otherwise there's—it's always a go-go-go type of situation.

So from YouTube, Afton, AftonKid12 says, “Hey Sal, what is the best way to learn honors algebra one as a sixth grader in school?” Well, what I would do is—well, there are a couple of things. If you're a sixth grader, I would go to Khan Academy. And if you've already mastered sixth grade or if you find it easy, go to the seventh grade course on Khan Academy.

And if you think you can accelerate through that, you can use the course challenges, which you can take as many times as you want to accelerate through things. You can take unit tests, and then as you accelerate through that, do eighth grade. And eighth grade actually has a lot of overlap with algebra one, but then go through eighth grade, and then you can go into the algebra one on Khan Academy.

Now, if you feel like you're prepared, you could go straight to algebra one. Try to engage in those first units, and if it's making sense, keep going. But what I would say is try to find what you need, use the course challenges and unit tests to accelerate as necessary.

And then, the most important thing is make a habit out of it! And this is advice for everyone, regardless of whether you're tackling third-grade math, algebra one, or calculus or biology—whatever. As long as you're able to put consistently 20, 30, 40 minutes in a day, over time—and let’s say you're able to do that at least four or five days a week—over time you're going to see that it pays huge, huge dividends.

Other more, I guess tactical advice I would have is focus on the practice, get that mastery. But the videos are obviously there to help you, but the best way to watch videos is not to watch them passively—it’s to watch them actively! So, think about, you know, if a problem shows up in the video, pause the video. Many times in the videos I make, I tell you to pause the video, do that, try to work it out on your own.

Once I say I'm making the video and you see it's worked through, try to pause it and see if you can do it yourself on your own. And these are just good practices! These are things that I used to do in school, where if the teacher ran through a proof or did an example, I would either try to do it before the teacher did it on the board—it was very active—or once they did it, I would then not look at their work and try to see if I could replicate their thought process.

So if you have that active learning with the videos, you worked on the exercises, you put that 30, 40 minutes a day—you don't stop learning, you keep learning through the summer. I have no doubt, especially given that you're asking this question and you seem quite eager to keep learning—which is awesome—don't lose that eagerness! I think you're going to do just fine, and you could also look at some learning plans we have for algebra one. You can look up learning plans on Khan Academy and you'll see the one for algebra one.

It can pace you between now and the start of the next school year, to see how you can pace through that. But I'm confident that if you're motivated, you put that 20, 30 minutes a day in, you're going to do just fine, AftonKid12!

So Kazzy Amit from Facebook is asking, “Is there any chance for online education to replace institutional?” This is a fascinating question! I've been getting a lot of this in the press lately. I think for K-12 or pre-K-12, no. I think, you know, we just saw an amazing teacher. The types of experiences you can get in a classroom, you're not going to be able to replicate that with online, and it's because education isn't just about learning how to factor a polynomial or learning the steps of photosynthesis. There's a whole aspect of socialization—of learning to work with others, learning to communicate—and most students need some extra motivation, some coaching, ways to get unblocked when they get blocked.

There's a lot to learning that goes beyond just understanding the concepts. There's a lot that's going on at a metacognitive level and so, you know, I've said this many times—and this is, you know, Teacher Appreciation Week—so I think it's a good time to resay it. If I had to pick between an amazing teacher or amazing technology for my own kids, I would pick an amazing teacher every time! In fact, that's why I started a school.

You know, I started Khan Academy, but I so strongly believe in the physical experience that we started a school that has many amazing teachers in it, so I would pick an amazing teacher every time. Now, the good thing is we don't have to make that trade-off. The ideal is amazing technology in support of amazing teachers, and so that's what everything we do—we try to do at Khan Academy.

That's why we are so close to all of these amazing teacher ambassadors who give us feedback on how we can be better and in support to allow those teachers to differentiate to the needs of those 30 students, to understand that every student has different levels of preparedness, learns at different rates, and to allow students to get that, which would have been very hard as teachers by themselves.

So I don't think it's a replacement. Now, when you get into—there are circumstances in the world where kids in, you know, some war-torn place, in a refugee camp, where they don't have access to school—well, in those cases, yes, online can be a very good thing to keep people learning! There are situations right now because of COVID where certain school systems haven't been able to support their students as much as others. Well, there, online learning, obviously, is a very powerful way to keep students learning.

And then as you get into, you know, almost adulthood or being a young adult or an adult, that's where I think online learning can be very powerful! You know, there's very powerful things about going to college. I have very fond memories—once again, a lot of the socialization—all that. But for some young adults or even not so young adults, they might say, “Hey, I have a job, I have to support my family; I need more flexibility.” And that's where online learning can be super useful.

So simple answer is I hope that they can always work together—kind of a blended experience, the best of both worlds—that learning does not have to be bound by time and space. But some of the richest experiences can happen in the physical environment. But even there, part of the richness comes from the ability to leverage tools—online tools like Khan Academy.

So Errata Irmo from YouTube is asking, “Can you talk about taking responsibility, such as becoming a doctor? But you don't have the confidence or consistent study habits.” Well Errata, you know, I will just say it's all about forming a habit. It's all about, you know, one of my good friends from school, his name is Charles Duhigg. He wrote a very popular book called The Power of Habit, but you know, there’s science that habits tend to form over, let's call it five, six, seven weeks.

So what I would do is I would pick a goal. Don’t try to solve the whole goal overnight—that could be paralyzing. Don't try to binge study or cram, but say, “Hey, every day I'm going to spend 20, 30, 40, 50 minutes a day towards that goal.” And if you do that for six or seven weeks, you're going to build that habit, and then you're going to see the gains, and that's going to help your confidence!

You know, I talked about growth mindset before. Growth mindset is all about you don't say, “I'm good at this” or “I'm not good at this.” I'm capable or not capable. You're like, “I just have to keep chipping away at it! I have to keep stepping out of my comfort zone! If I get something wrong, if I fail, I shouldn't give up. That isn't somehow me saying, ‘Oh, I’m no good at this.’"

That's when I should say, “Oh awesome! I just learned about my learning edge! Let me reflect on why I failed there or why I got that wrong, and let me keep trying.” And you will be shocked! If you just keep persevering, eventually you will get through those barriers. And you're like, “What? That, what was the big deal there?”

And I got to tell you, the biggest skill in life—yes, it's nice to have hard skills to know how to factor polynomial or science or write well—but the most important thing in life is that resiliency and having that growth mindset. If you have that and you're always just—you keep in motion, powering forward, then frankly, you’ll be unstoppable!

And I’ll say another thing, you know, it's very tempting, especially while you're in school, we're always measured by test scores and this and that. And there’s so much importance on them that it's very easy to assume, “Oh, I keep getting a 95; that person, you know, two desks down always gets a 98. They're always going to be better than me because they always score better on tests.”

And what you see, as soon as you enter into the real world, it doesn't work out that way! The people who do well are the people with the growth mindsets, who don't give up, believe in themselves, have that resilience. You know, if I go back into my own schooling and see, you know, yes doing well in school matters and it correlates, but it's not like you should just stack rank yourself against other people and say, “Okay, that's the ranking; that’s going to be forever.”

It has a lot more to do with mindset than it has to do with any, you know, fixed mindset notion of, you know, quote innate ability, which frankly I don't really subscribe to. So anyway, hopefully that helps!

And I realize that I'm all out of time, so I just want to give a special thanks to Connor Corey—amazing teacher, amazing teacher ambassador. I think he had some great advice. Unfortunately, the sound was clipping out a little bit, but hopefully we'll be able to get him on in the not too far off future.

But I just want to wish everyone out there, especially the amazing teachers in the world, a happy Teacher Appreciation Week. You do amazing work all the time, and I think in this week, you're continuing to do amazing work during this time—the COVID time—and I think many of us parents have even higher appreciation.

So thank you for doing what you do! There's no single higher leverage point for helping humanity, in my opinion, than your ability to empower all of our collective children. So, with that, thank you so much, and I look forward to seeing all of y'all at the live stream tomorrow!