Nurses, counselors, bus drivers and other critical staff can connect directly with families through TalkingPoints platform, increasing family engagement
Written by TalkingPoints
San Francisco, California (January 26, 2022) — TalkingPoints, a nonprofit working to remove systemic language, access, and technology barriers to effective, equitable, family engagement, announced the expansion of its platform so a student’s full learning and well-being team — including nurses, English Language Learner teachers, counselors, bus drivers, coaches, paraprofessionals, psychologists and more — can connect directly with families, regardless of home language.
“Every student has a full care team critical to student success, and we want that team to form strong, enduring relationships with families, especially as students face significant social-emotional and academic needs from the pandemic,” said Heejae Lim, founder and CEO of TalkingPoints. “Family engagement is equitable when all families have access to the many staff resources supporting students, and our platform now allows real-time, two-way communications directly with families in more than 110 home languages.”
The TalkingPoints technology uses human- and AI-powered, two-way translated communication and personalized content in order to eliminate barriers to create effective, equitable family-school partnerships for the success and well-being of each and every student.
Several school districts, including Elk Grove Unified School District near Sacramento, California, and Pickerington Local School District in Ohio are using TalkingPoints among non-teaching staff. To date, 88,000 messages have been sent by non-teaching staff this school year.
“Before TalkingPoints, relationships between school staff and families could be blunted from needing and waiting for an interpreter. Now, in addition to teachers, our counselors, EL teachers, and other staff connect directly, deeply and quickly to form strong relationships with all of our families,” said Elizabeth Curtis, District English Language Learner Coordinator at Pickerington Local Schools in Ohio.
“The pandemic has revealed that all of us in schools are essential workers and, at the same time, shined a spotlight on the importance of communication between our student’s homes and our schools. Elk Grove Unified believes that learning starts at home and continues at school, and the relationships students have with the adults they encounter on their way to school, in school, and after school, all contribute to a child’s overall success,” said Lisa Levasseur, Director of Family and Community Engagement at Elk Grove Unified School District. “Students entered this school year with unprecedented levels of need, so we needed to respond with unprecedented levels of family support and Talking Points has allowed us to do that.”
About TalkingPoints
TalkingPoints is an education technology nonprofit with a mission to drive student success by removing barriers to school-family partnerships to unlock the potential of family engagement in children’s education. Our multilingual technology platform connects and empowers families and teachers by using human and AI-powered, two-way translated communication and personalized content. This unique approach is driven by a relentless pursuit to eliminate barriers including language, time, mindsets, and capacity to foster strong family engagement in development of students’ academic success.
