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- [Vicki] Hi, everybody.

Thanks so much for joining us today.

I'm Vicki Lang,

I'm a learning scientist here at Khan Academy.

And I'm joined by Dan from our marketing team,

who will be facilitating our Q&A

toward the end of the broadcast.

And a special guest, Dr. Lindsay Portnoy,

she's a cognitive scientist from Northeastern University,

who recently published a book called, "Designed to Learn."

She's an expert in using design principles

to work with kids in schools.

And she's a parent of two children herself.

So she's home working, managing multiple kids,

and is a great expert to draw from

for this broadcast today.

Before we launch into the topic,

I just wanna thank our sponsors,

Bank of America, Google.org, Novartis, Fastly, and AT&T,

for supporting this broadcast as well as other webinars

that we're providing during this time of crisis.

So, we've been getting a lot of questions

about how do I survive at home with multiple children

who have different schedules and different needs,

and different assignments and there's only one of me,

or there's two of me, however many,

and how do we do this?

So, we brought this expert here to talk with you

about some ideas for that and I'm gonna let her kick it off.

- [Lindsay] Thank you, Vicky.

Thank you for having me everyone.

I'm excited to be here today.

So, yeah as Vicki has mentioned,

I have been working in education for quite some time,

and when this whole event transpired,

I quickly moved to figure out what it was

that we were going to do to help support our kids,

and community, some sense of scaffolding and support,

in a time of very uncertainty.

And so, what I have shared for you today,

is something that I like to call, "The Five C's

"For Bringing Your "A" Game."

And, what I realized is that we really are

a very faithful family, and we do very much seek the joy

in all of the learning that we try to do at home.

And so, the C's that I'd like to share with you

are clarity, curation, creativity, curiosity and compassion.

And I'm gonna go through each of these

and show you of how they addressed those mean questions

that Vicki has shared previously.

And Vicki, hopefully, you can help me along here

to make sure that we're getting the most important pieces.

But the idea is that we're trying to keep it

as simple as possible.

We're trying to be as realistic as possible,

given the current constraints.

As (mumbles) now we have lost power.

So it's always something exciting and new,

but simplicity with consistency

and always leaving room for iteration.

The first C for clarity,

I think is a really big overarching concept,

which is basically about establishing expectations,

understanding communications and resources.

And it is really to address this question here about,

what ideas you have for scheduling

with such a diverse group.

So as Vicki and I were talking

I shared with my game plan.

So we use gaming as the analogy,

what's the game plan with our team?

So beginning of each week,

if we have a teacher that's sending us a week case.

So what has to be done and by whom?

And I've created this really simple and fun looking calendar

that my kiddos are now at this point quite used to

in week eight.

And they know what's happening at every time,

where they will find what they need,

and where we will find what we need to help support them,

where everyone will be in the house in terms of space.

We'll talk about that later.

And then when you know it's time to stop what you're doing

and have a break and eat and relax

and stretch and just and check in with us.

Also, another really important part of clarity

for us has been, why are you doing what you're doing

and when are you going to get feedback

on the work that you're doing?

And that really is about communication

and I'll show you later on.

This is just the big game plan sheet that we have,

but later on I'll show you a little bit about

how I should check in about with my kids as they're working

without necessarily getting up

and having to physically go to them

and sit with them every second of the day,

which became pretty burdensome pretty quickly.

Does that makes sense?

- [Vicki] Yeah, that makes lots of sense.

And it doesn't work perfectly.

We just saw I was distracted 'cause my six year old came in

and had a question for me.

So it doesn't work perfectly.

But we have a schedule also at our house

and we've done another webinar on that with Khan Academy.

And this idea of clarity

and just the kids being on the same page as the adults

of understanding what's happening when

and who to get helpful with

and why they're doing what they're doing

is really, really important.

So how do they know what to work on Lindsay?

And how do you prepare it for them?

- [Lindsay] Good question, that's a great question.

So the next C is curation.

And curation is really all about preparation.

So predicting what they're gonna need and when

and planning ahead.

And this reminded me of the question

that I saw which is,

how much active caregiver engagement

should I aim for and when?

When should I be available?

Because like many folks out there, we're working full time.

And so we have to ensure that we're doing our work.

So again, this is a similar picture

to the other one, but this is our schedule.

And the idea is, we have to know ahead of time

what the work is that they have to be doing in each day.

But we also have to predict what problems may arise

and whether it's my two boys getting in an argument

over who gets to use the computer at this time

or figuring out what hang ups they might have to log into,

one of the platforms they use in my kids' school is Clever.

So if they have trouble logging in, where can they go

and just anticipating what potential issues they may have.

And then also making sure that the materials

that they need are accessible for them.

That they know which space they're gonna be sitting in

and when in terms of timing for each child.

We try to figure out a day in advance if we can,

sometimes the week

and that we can see, who's gonna need more time and when.

I mean, I don't know how you're feeling with your kiddo

but for us, this has been really helpful

just to know ahead of time,

what information we're gonna need to give to them

so that we can have it in one place.

I circled here for you the hyperlinks,

I'm a big fan of hyperlinking

because that way they know where their schedule is,

everything is in Google Doc.

And then they click on the hyperlink

and it takes them right to where they have to go.

And there's no questioning,

they don't have to come and ask me for the the website

or the access or whatever, it's already all there.

It's like baked into the document.

- [Vicki] Yeah, and this makes me--

Oh, sorry, go ahead.

- [Lindsay] No, I was wondering,

is this similar to what you're using?

- [Vicki] Yeah.

And it makes me think of when I was in the classroom,

I was a fifth and sixth grade teacher

and one of the most fundamental things you're doing

when you're a teacher is anticipating roadblocks

that kids are gonna hit

and questions that they're gonna have

and trying to set them up for success in advance.

'Cause can you can you imagine if there's 27 students

and they all have different questions,

and you haven't anticipated that?

It's a management nightmare.

So this is a skill that teachers have.

And when I'm baking with my daughter

is another thing It makes me think of;

if you think about cooking with your children

when they're young, it helps if you,

I know it's easier for me if I set out the measuring tools

and the ingredients ahead of time,

and maybe I already have a list

of how much of each ingredient we need,

or maybe I've already measured it out,

and they can just help me by mixing,

that goes much more smoothly than if I just say,

"Hey, let's bake cookies."

And we go into the kitchen at the same time

and I'm looking for stuff

and she's like eating the chocolate chips

while I'm not looking and there's like everything at once.

It helps a lot, it's hard sometimes to find the time

ahead of time to invest to make a plan,

but on the weeks and days when I am able to do that,

the rest of the day goes much more smoothly.

That does sound very familiar.

- [Lindsay] Yeah, absolutely.

No, I mean for sure that we're familiar

and again, that was like using the game as the frame here.

Knowing the different players

and knowing what they're gonna need,

because every kid is gonna need something different.

One of my kids is much, much faster

going through the writing part of his work

and the other one needs a little bit more help

and support and scaffolding.

And so even just knowing where in the day,

they're gonna need a little extra love and encouragement

so I can go and make myself available to them,

or maybe switch where it is in the day.

So if, for instance,

I know that there's a big writing project,

maybe I'll put it at a time

when I know I don't have meetings with my colleagues

so that I can be available to him and help him out.

So yes, know your players.

The next one,

if it's alright if I move along, is creativity.

And here I'm talking about multiple opportunities to soar

and again, the folks are asking questions

about what happens in multi-age families,

how do you create a schedule when there's an older kid

and they see their younger sibling play,

they'd rather play and that is very real.

So again, following along with the game analogy,

is leveling up by being creative and being flexible

and thinking outside the box

about for instance where people are working

at different times of the day

so we have quiet spaces where we know

that we can go to if we have a meeting,

if we have to do go to webinar,

we know that nobody's going to bother us there

and then there are other spaces that are more open.

And of course, this isn't easy every place

and it's not a perfect panacea.

But just being creative and flexible

about where we should be at different times of day.

And then setting aside when we know

we're gonna have lunch together, for instance,