Ms. Carter is a second grade teacher in Los Angeles, CA. Two years ago, her school adopted TalkingPoints and she’s seen a complete change in her parents’ involvement.
Before TalkingPoints, Ms. Carter found it difficult to reach parents and get their buy-in, due to language barriers. Parent participation was around 50%. TalkingPoints has allowed her to directly engage with her parents in their home languages. Now, she’s having 100% of parents showing up for conferences. Her Spanish-speaking families think she’s fluent in Spanish, because she’s communicating with them in Spanish through TalkingPoints. “It makes teachers seem more accessible. They know they can reach the teacher if they have any concerns.”
Ms. Carter has also seen a noticeable difference in her students’ classwork and homework completion. During her first two years at this school, her students’ homework completion rate was around 5%. It has jumped to 75% since she started using TalkingPoints to engage parents. Now, parents know their children have homework, what the assignment is and ask them about it. Parents also ask questions and feel more comfortable asking questions, because they have a direct line of communication to her.
“Students are also very aware how quickly I can send a message to their parents. This has resulted in positive behavior changes in the classroom. For example, one student who was very disruptive, once he found out I could communicate with his mom, turned his behavior around. He asked me to send his mom positive notes home and pictures of him doing well in class. His mom responded saying this was the first time she’s heard nice things about her son from his school.
I try to send parents pictures and messages almost every day of student work to celebrate my students’ successes. Through TalkingPoints, I’m able to build stronger relationships and achieve more consistent communication leading to increased parent involvement and changes in the classroom.”
