from Khan Academy.

Hope you're having a good hump Day.

I know we're kind of in a hub season right now

trying to get over this big thing as a society.

So, I appreciate you making time out of everything going on

in your lives, both professionally and personally

to be with us.

And speaking of that, I have to give a huge shout out

to Chris Casper here, because Chris is not only

a dedicated special education teacher in Arizona,

he's also the father of three kids, five and under.

So, when we talk about work life balance,

Chris is juggling as many balls in the air

as you can imagine.

And so we really appreciate you taking time out

of all that chaos to share your expertise

with us today, Chris.

- Absolutely, happy to be here.

- So just to give folks a sense of where you're coming from,

tell us a little bit about sort of what you do

as an educator in normal times,

and then how you're coping today given these

very abnormal times we live in.

- So, on a day to day basis outside of a pandemic,

I do special education math.

Specifically, I have an ELA counterpart.

And I do this year I'm doing seventh and eighth grade.

Last year, I did fourth through eighth grade.

And so I do a little bit of pull up,

but most of my stuff is pushing,

helping support the students and the teachers.

- Cool, and how are things starting to shift for you,

as you've gotten to this remote learning environment

all of a sudden, especially given

special education students.

- Special education students, for me,

it hasn't changed a lot.

I'm meeting more one on one.

Rather than like groups of three or four,

I'm just having kids schedule their time.

But before the pandemic started,

I was using Khan Academy to track and do goal progress stuff

with the students and allow them to track their own progress

and be aware of what they need to be working on.

So, that part of it hasn't changed a lot for me,

from pre-pandemic to currently.

- Cool, I love that you're still that lifeline for students,

even on a one on one basis,

'cause I know that's hard to scale,

but so important for students.

- Yeah, and I haven't been pushing it a ton

because they have so much other stuff going on.

So, it's been a few emails, just checking in.

I've done a few video conferencing

experiences with them, which has been interesting.

But yeah just letting them know that I'm here

if they need to talk, if they need to see my face,

if that's helpful.

And then just reminders that these can still access.

And I still need them to access that stuff

that they've been doing on Khan before the pandemic.

- Cool, and talk to us a little bit about sort of

what your expectations are with Khan Academy,

especially in this moment.

So, that folks who are trying to replicate that

for maybe the first time can get a sense

of how to approach it.

- So Khan Academy, in terms of special education

how I use it.

All the kids that are on my service roster are in my class.

And it's, I think the name changes every year this year,

it might just be Casper.

So, they're all in my class.

And then from there, I assign them specific standards

based on their goals in their IEPs.

So, if I have, I think I have a caseload of 14 this year,

so I assign 14 students different

assignments based on their goal.

So, if I have an eighth grader who's working

on one step equations,

their assignments will be gauged towards one step equations.

And then one of the things I really like about Khan Academy

is I can scaffold them up to that.

So, I might assign just combining like terms,

and they show that they mastered those different

components of solving equations,

I give them the actual equation.

- cool, just sort of illustrate

what you're talking about here.

Obviously, you can make assignments

from your Khan Academy classroom,

where you can search for the exact thing

that you wanna hand out throughout your exercises

in that area, and then assign it not just your whole class,

but the individual students.

So, you get that sort of differentiation

that you were alluding to there.

- And one of the most helpful things for me is,

when I've written that IEP, and it's enforced,

I'll go on Khan.

And I'll assign the standardized assignments that they need.

And then I'll change the due dates based on

when I want them due.

So, it like progresses towards that year and goal.

So they, so then I have it set up right away.

And so like on this when this pandemic started,

all my kids were already set up for year of

instruction because I did it at the very beginning.

- Very cool, and so even for folks

who are just getting started in this moment,

you can absolutely catch up with Chris

in the sense of getting your students onto Khan Academy

by handing out that course link or using Google Classroom

if you have it.

And then you can start to give

these differentiate assignments.

I know a lot of teachers are really curious

what you do next, like what are your expectations

for how fast an assignment should be done?

Do you grade it, do you give feedback.

- So it depends on every student, right?

Not every kid is gonna go through their assignments

at the same pace.

I come at it from I have an assignment that I want them

to be able to master by the end of the year.

And so my due dates are pretty flexible.

Because what I'm looking for most is that skill mastery.

And even if it's taking a long time,

that's still giving me data.

And so what I talked with my students about

is one of the best things about Khan is that try again,

where they can do it.

And I can see their score and they can see their score.

And we can go over that assignment.

And then they can try it again.

To let them know that

just because they did it and got a certain score,

that doesn't mean they're done.

They have to keep learning it and

they have to keep that understanding with them

as they move forward.

So, I really like to try again, option.

One of my favorite things,

is when I go on and I see that kid has tried 14 times,

and then I go up to him like this is awesome

that you keep trying it.

Because we my school in particular,

we really preach that growth mindset.

And it's hard to have that growth mindset on worksheets.

It's just a lot of work to do worksheets

over and over again, in my mind.

I find the students a lot more willing

to try those five questions or those seven questions again.

Because it's easier than worksheets, in my opinion.

- Cool, I love that.

And I think probably now more than ever,

growth mindset is so essential for every student

all across the country all around the world,

who is now basically being asked to keep pushing

in the face of adversity.

And Khan Academy actually has a bunch of activities

and exercises that you can share with your students,

even right away.

That being said, when you share out these assignments

with students, how do you keep them motivated?

I know this sort of speaks to the growth mindset piece

but like a lot of teachers have been asking, okay,

motivation is even hard in my physical classroom.

Now, with distance between us,

how do I keep people engaged,

even in the face of everything that we're never up against?

- One of the things that I've found motivating

for the students is that when, like I tell them,

they have to reach a certain score.

And then they can be done and they just,

they can move on to the next thing.

And to me, the students being able to progress

at their own pace is motivation.

Like, they can be done as quickly as they wanna be done

depending on how much effort they're putting in

and how focused and all that.

So, I think just the self pace of Khan Academy

is more motivational for the kids.

- Cool, and so to that point,

where you assign multiple assignments

at a time so that students can work ahead if they want to,

as well as focus on just one if they need that mastery.

- Yeah, so I usually have like I said,

for this students with math goals,

I have them set with periodic dates.

And so it's like these ones need to be done by this time,

these need to be done by this time.

But as soon as they're done, they can move on.

And so like, all have kids that finish all that stuff,

and it showed mastery of their IEP goal

before the year is up,

which is just a huge point of celebration for them,

and then we can continue working

to continue progressing.

- Cool, definitely different ways to slice and dice it.

It also gives students that runway,

so they can really start to take autonomous ownership

over their learning.

Okay, so at this point,

I actually wanna switch gears a little bit

and take it over to questions directly from the audience.

And thank you to everyone who's been sharing those already.

If you haven't seen it yet, you can ask questions directly

to Chris and get them answered live

by going to the questions feature

of the GoToWebinar control panel.

Right now I'm seeing questions from Kathy,

and Carrie and Jeanne.

And we're gonna just take those as they come in.

So, submit questions whatever's on your mind.

Chris is brave enough to take them on left,

right and center, okay.

So, I think Kathy's first question

is being answered a little bit here.

She says, I'm a grade one teacher,

but I have students in my class who are

at a kindergarten level or grade two level

for certain skills.

How do I make sure that every student is getting

what they need, even with those different levels?

I think that's kind of what you were talking about

with one by one assignments.

- Yeah, so you can assign if you have your students

grouped by ability level, or however you have them grouped,

you can assign specific students.

So, as you're seeing on the screen,

you can pick what students are given what assignments

so you can have a 30 year class on the kindergarten level

standard that you're working on in your first grade class.

You can have a 30 year kids

on that first grade standard that you're working on,

and you can have a 30 year kids working

on that second grade level standard.

So, Khan Academy is beautiful in the way

that you can differentiate and scaffold

for all of your students.

- Cool, hi, so I think that speaks to that.