At a Glance
Independence High School is a comprehensive neighborhood high school of about 2,200 students and is part of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, one of the largest and most diverse school districts in North Carolina.
School Challenges
- Maintaining contact with families of students in over 30 different home languages
- Finding immediate and accurate translation for diverse languages
- Ensuring all families are up-to-date on student progress and grades as well as upcoming school events
TalkingPoints has been included in the school’s improvement plan to help with Family Engagement. With TalkingPoints, the school has found solutions to some of their largest challenges:
TalkingPoints Solutions
Easy-to-use, two-way communication with translation in over 100 languages. Teachers can use the web browser or mobile app, while parents can choose text messages or the mobile app. Messages are automatically translated both ways between English and family home language.
TalkingPoints is the only platform investing in the highest-quality translation, contextualized for education, using human translators and machine learning/AI.
Teachers can seamlessly communicate with families to check in on students and share important information about grades or school updates. Additional features like polls and videos with translated captions help teachers connect with families.
TalkingPoints Impact
- The use of the TalkingPoints platform school-wide led to an immediate solution to their translation needs.
- Teachers and staff are able to show evidence of communication with families, keeping them up-to-date on grades, schedules and school events.
- Polls have allowed for gathering information quickly and easily from all families.
In just six months, Independence High School administrators, teachers, and families have sent over 120,000 messages. TalkingPoints was especially useful when sending information to parents about a food giveaway event. Principal David Legrand compared the family responses from last year’s event, when he communicated via phone calls, to using TalkingPoints this year. He was very impressed with the number of responses he was able to get using TalkingPoints polling feature.
