Welcome to our webinar.

My name is Lauren Quan, and I'm on the Khan Academy team.

Today, I am joined by my coworker, Dan Tieu,

and our special guest, Conor Corey.

Conor is an expert teacher, a parent,

and a Khan Academy ambassador,

which means he's a Khan Academy power user.

He's gonna be sharing 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 Fastly

for their support of this webinar

and our other remote learning resources.

And 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,

and if you have questions at any point during the webinar,

feel free to enter them in the question box.

And we have staff available to answer your questions.

We're also gonna save time at the end

for live Q and A with Conor.

And lastly, you might be wondering

about the age range for this webinar.

So Conor 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 Conor here to share his advice.

Conor, can you share a little bit about yourself

and your background?

- 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--

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

and try to keep up with--

Three of them are in school, one is in preschool,

but to keep up with all of 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 I look forward to 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 kinda just tell you from my own experience

with teaching and being a parent at the same time,

that hopefully you can see both sides of the spectrum.

- Fantastic.

And yeah, Conor as you mentioned, a lot of parents

are finding themselves stepping into the role of teachers

for the first time, and 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 gonna tell you

that all of my kids are eating ring pops upstairs

just to avoid me for a half hour of coming down here

so I can do this,

and many parents are in that same situation.

But to motivate students and your own children,

I've always kinda tied it to some sort of incentive.

And it's never really a financial incentive.

It's always just your time or something

that they really are interested in,

and it does not have to be academic related.

It could be something as simple as,

you finish all your schoolwork today,

then you get to pick tonight's movie.

Or 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,

taking 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 kinda let them participate with their friends.

You know, they're not really around their friends anymore,

so they need somebody that wants

to just reinforce their interests,

and I think that's a big motivator,

and you can kinda tie that to their academics.

- Mhmm, 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 engaged, it's kind of one of the hardest parts.

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 am not gonna do well. (laughs)

So, when you're just pushing all the 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 with Khan Academy, I always tell parents,

I did kind of like an experiment a few years ago,

where I asked parents to master their child's

fifth or fourth, their child's content on Khan Academy,

so their child's grade level.

And what I found from that was amazing.

Most parents have bought 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

and your child may be in seventh or eighth grade,

and they're doing seventh or eighth grade,

you can kinda do it alongside them

for 15 minutes a day, 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, chemistry, in history, in 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 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 gonna be engaged

because they're doing it with you,

and they're gonna laugh at you when you get things wrong

because you will. (laughs)

You'd be surprised how difficult third

or fourth grade math can be. (laughs)

- Yeah, for sure.

- But if they can learn with them is probably the best way.

- Yeah, and speaking of.

I'm sure it's been awhile for parents

for third or fourth grade math.

And so if kids, for example, if they get frustrated,

do you have any tips for keeping kids engaged

if they get frustrated or if they get things wrong?

- Yeah, and 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

and the different learning styles of every child,

and now they have just their parent

who may not even understand some of the content.

And the frustration level for parents

and students is at an all-time high in education.

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 gonna laugh when you get things wrong,

and that you try it again the next day,

and you try it again the next day.

That 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,

and to understanding this platform and kind of practice

learning with them.

They will see you doing that,

and that's gonna cause less frustration for them

when you can kind of both laugh at each other

that you're working through it.

- Yeah, definitely growth mindset.

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

right now. (laughs)

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.

And then you've some people that are sending them,

"Oh, here's a new one, try this.

"Here's a new one, try this."

And 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.

And that may take cutting certain assignments out.

It may take taking a look through and saying,

"We're not gonna 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, "No, we have to put it

"on Google Classroom and then we have

"to go to this and that."

And that is not learning.

She wasn't gaining anything valuable about that,

so for me as a parent, I just kinda said, "We're done."

Okay, you did the worksheet.

You did it with me, I get it.

We're moving on, and if your teacher wants

to send me an email or I could send her one and say,

"I did it.