Mr. Brinson teaches 2nd grade in Oakland, California. He learned about TalkingPoints from his school and decided to give it a try. He used to use emails to communicate with his parents, but now he uses TalkingPoints to send parents messages almost daily. Parents have been responsive to his text messages about daily homework assignments, upcoming field trips, permission slips and scholarship opportunities for high schools, as well as general classroom reminders. Mr. Brinson shares an important tip for how you can use TalkingPoints to communicate with your parents on a regular basis.
“Make TalkingPoints part of your daily routine. It makes life easier for you. In the morning, I arrive an hour before the students arrive to get my classroom ready for the day. I set an alarm on my phone for TalkingPoints. When the alarm goes off, I stop what I’m doing and go to my computer and write a message to parents about that day’s homework assignment or reminders. This takes only 5 minutes. I schedule it to go out around 3:00pm when school gets out and parents are picking up their children. The scheduling feature is helpful, because once I schedule it in the morning, I don’t have to think about it again. I use TalkingPoints to communicate with my parents almost daily, because it’s easy to use and I’ve made it part of my routine.”
By being in close communication with his parents, Mr. Brinson was able to plan a field trip on short notice after finding out about a good learning opportunity for his students. 90% of the permission slips were returned within 2 days and his class was able to go on their special field trip. This is just one of the examples of how having strong communication with his parents has been helpful for his class.
We hope by making TalkingPoints part of your daily routine that you can easily communicate with your parents for the benefit of your students.
