PART 4: Sustaining Success—Leadership, Strategy, and the Path Forward

Written by Alanna Dushok

School-Based Technology Specialist at Fairfax County Public Schools

Fostering timely support and intervention

Administrators at Westlawn utilize the platform to ensure timely and convenient communication. They value that the concise messages go directly to the guardian’s phone and allow preferred language translation. Administrator Stephanie Carpenter recalled an instance during an early release day where a student was terribly upset over losing part of a water bottle. Carpenter quickly messaged the mother, who responded immediately with reassuring words that could be shared with the child, allowing the student to quickly transition back to the group.

Another administrator, Erin Theiss, uses TalkingPoints to send positive messages and communicate regularly about students she supports, ensuring families are aware of minor interactions or attendance/incentive plan communication, helping her connect with families more often, regardless of language barriers. 

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By meeting families “where they are,” often preferring quick, tech-friendly, timely communication over phone calls, Westlawn is utilizing TalkingPoints to fully embody its mission to partner with families to create an extraordinary experience for every student.

Principal Christoph Hill echoes the sentiments of his fellow administrators and highlights TalkingPoints’ ability to “allow us to whisper into families’ ears” about school events and deadlines. Hill added, “TalkingPoints has revolutionized education in a way that few things do. It is a purpose-built program designed for this generation of parents. I love how it meets their needs instead of forcing them to fit into structures that we already had in place.”

Cultivating the conditions for success with TalkingPoints

Westlawn has been using TalkingPoints for five years, and originally adopted the program due to the school closures implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. When the school originally adopted TalkingPoints, they asked teachers to sign up for the free product and manage their own accounts. After two years using the free product, Fairfax County Public Schools funded it for the entire school system and Westlawn transitioned to the full product, which allowed school administrators and school-based technology specialist Alanna Dushok to use newly available data to make decisions about communications schoolwide.

In the first year of having access to the data, Dushok focused on celebrating the successes of the staff members who were “power users” of TalkingPoints through monthly shoutouts in Westlawn’s weekly staff kudos slide deck. Although most staff were on board with using the tool by that time, the kudos raised awareness of the number of messages sent by the school’s top users and highlighted TalkingPoints’ ease of use. Throughout the course of the year, Dushok and Westlawn’s administrative team monitored the data and supported homeroom staff who were not yet using TalkingPoints to its full potential by offering workshops, setting up email alerts for messages, and modeling program use via sending schoolwide announcements.

In the second year of having data access, Dushok and the administrative team focused on using announcements and direct messages to ensure that families could receive “just in time” information about upcoming events and links to virtual evening events. They also used TalkingPoints as the primary vehicle to gain parent permission for students to access digital resources, a task that must be accomplished annually. Their efforts resulted in families relying on TalkingPoints as the primary source of school-related information.

Now, in their third year of having data access, the Westlawn team is focusing on non-homeroom staff and their use of TalkingPoints to continue to build community. During eight after-school sessions throughout the course of the year, all non-homeroom staff at Westlawn gather together and brainstorm different ways to use TalkingPoints to reach families in ways that complement homeroom teachers’ efforts. The goal is simple, yet effective: to help families directly connect with all the staff at Westlawn who support their child, from specialists to ESOL or special education teachers, to instructional coaches.

Dushok says, “At Westlawn, we embody the idea that ‘it takes a village.’ We want families to be as engaged as possible, and we work tirelessly to lower barriers to entry to ensure that everyone feels welcome. There is a concept from Brené Brown about a marble jar, where small acts of kindness add marbles to the jar and eventually build strong, trusting relationships. When our students leave us for middle school, we want all families to feel confident in their understanding of the American school system and comfortable advocating for their children throughout the rest of their experiences in K-12 education. TalkingPoints is the most significant way we can add marbles to the ‘marble jar’ we have for each family, which also makes it the most powerful lever we have to reach our goal for family engagement, not just with us at Westlawn, but also as our students advance into middle school and beyond.”

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Celebrating 10 years of partnership and impact

For a decade, TalkingPoints has supported students, families, and educators through the power of effective family-school partnerships. As an education technology nonprofit, our award-winning communication and family engagement platform has improved outcomes for districts and students across the country.

We connect 9 million+ educators, students, and family members annually and have facilitated more than one billion conversations—building trust, fostering relationships, and fueling student success. Named by Common Sense Education as “the best overall family communication platform for teachers and schools,” TalkingPoints drives measurable gains in attendance and academic achievement, backed by rigorous, causal research.

Join us in building a future where every child has the support they need to thrive.