The leading Universal Family Engagement solution — designed to drive student outcomes through highly effective partnerships with all families.

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THE ESSENTIAL WORK OF SCHOOL DISTRICTS IS TO:

Schools and districts work tirelessly to address the challenges in accomplishing this work…

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Supporting �mental health �and well-being

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Driving equitable outcomes

Building strong school culture

Teacher

retention

Ensuring

graduation

…and working harder just isn’t an option

Improving attendance

Accelerating academic achievement

Preparing all students for success after graduation

Effective family engagement is the most underutilized superpower when it comes to addressing these needs

2x

$1K+

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Research shows that �family engagement is �twice as likely to predict student success as family socioeconomic status

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Effective family engagement equates to �an additional $1,000 per student to a school’s annual budget

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Applied family engagement practices aren’t fully realizing their potential to accelerate student success

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.Districts struggle to harness this superpower.

How do you ensure �that family engagement is truly effective?

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How do you ensure �that family engagement is truly effective?

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Universal Family Engagement

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The practice of improving outcomes for all students by fostering effective partnerships with families, regardless of barriers or circumstances.

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Three essential components of a Universal Family Engagement solution

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Scaled family communication

Family engagement expertise

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Data-driven interventions

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Up to this point, technology has only provided partial solutions…

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Family Communications Platforms

Family �Engagement �Guidance

Data & �Intervention Analytics Platforms

Scaled Family Comms

Data-Driven Interven-�tions

Unable to unlock the power of families

Unscalable, inequitable family-school support

Overtapped, exhausted school-based resources

Universal Family �Engagement Platform

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TalkingPoints provides the only solution that includes all three components of Universal Family Engagement.

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The gold standard of Universal Family Engagement

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As a nonprofit we are taking Universal Family Engagement to the next level…

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We have proven results.

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We make the hard work districts and schools are already doing

go further by amplifying the impact for each and every student

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TalkingPoints Translation Difference

Admin Family Connect

Document Translation

Support in 145 languages, not including non-machine translated languages (full language list)

Thank You!

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The best translation platform in K12 education

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Strengthen the home + school connection

Communicate with Families in 150 Languages

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Spanish Hindi

Vietnamese Russian

Chinese (Traditional) Urdu

Persian (Farsi) Korean

Chinese (Simplified) Dari

Punjabi Cambodian (Khmer)

Hmong Amharic

Pashto Japanese

Arabic Lao

Filipino (Tagalog) Portuguese

and many more...

Unlocking the potential of all families with accessible technology

Understandability, equity, and accessibility are core to the TalkingPoints mission.

We invest in offering enhanced accessibility features on our platform so educators can engage all families in conversations that lead to meaningful home-school relationships.

Whether a family contact is communicating in English or one of the other 145 languages we support, and regardless of their level of formal education, our platform helps remove barriers to engagement so all families can participate in their children’s educational experience.

Removing barriers to meaningful school-family partnerships

Understandability

Our apps are easy to use so teachers and families spend less time learning the platform and more time communicating.

Equity

With TalkingPoints, all family members receive the same information regardless of the language they speak.

Accessibility

ADA compliance and enhanced features help further close the communication gap with family members of all types.

Overcoming language and literacy barriers

Understandable and Equitable Communication

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• Families can click and see a definition of school terminology without leaving the app
• Families can access an in-app glossary of common school terminology (academic vocabulary)
• Schools can send families translated video captioning
• School staff or family members can click for human translation support
• Teachers receive in-the-moment alerts and guidance to support readability in messages
• Busy families and those with limited literacy skills can use text-to-speech and speech-to-text

Readability Flag

• To help teachers communicate with families who may have low levels of literacy and/or speak different home languages, we've added a flagging tool to alert educators when their message may not be understandable to some families.
• If an educator composes a message on the TalkingPoints web app using language above a 5th-grade reading level, an orange flag will appear. If the educator clicks that flag, they'll see a prompt to simplify their message for optimized translation and readability and be offered links to resources for writing for translation.

Help Me Understand

• A feature that is available on both our TalkingPoints for Teachers and TalkingPoints for Parents apps, the Help Me Understand feature allows users to run a message past a human translator for a second time if it didn’t quite make sense the first time.
• Common use cases include when a message contains a mix of English and a different home language, spelling or grammatical errors, or spacing errors.

Text-to-Speech

• Families are able to easily press a button within chats with teachers to listen to messages. This feature supports contacts who have limited literacy or prefer audio vs. text-based messages.

Speech-to-Text

• Within the TalkingPoints for Parents app, users can click the microphone and speak into the phone. As they speak, their words will be transcribed. Once the user is done speaking, they can press the arrow and send it directly back to the teacher, translated into English. This feature supports contacts who have limited literacy or prefer audio vs. text-based messages.

Videos with Translated Captions in 100+ languages

• When teachers using the mobile app attach a video to a message, they’re asked if they want to add captions. If they select OK, the video, recorded in English, will include translated captions so their family contacts can read along in their home languages.
• This feature allows teachers to add an interactive and engaging element to messages and can be used to demonstrate academic concepts, give tours of classrooms at the beginning of the year, send check-ins to families with a much more personal touch, and more!

Helping families navigate

the US education system

Parent Ed101

• Many terms that are common for educators are unfamiliar to parents. To demystify these terms, we've added this easy-to-use tool.
• We've highlighted education terms in messages that teachers send parents, so parents can click on the term and see a definition, all without leaving the app.
• We are continually adding terms to the tool, so it will continue to expand.

In-app Education Glossaries

• TalkingPoints’ custom translation solution includes proprietary, human-translated, family-friendly glossaries. These glossaries ensure that words that might otherwise be mistranslated, like school terms (“IEP”, “parent-teacher conference”), proper nouns, and words with multiple meanings (“hotspot” or “sub”) make sense in an educational context. These glossaries help avoid misunderstandings and confusion when messages are translated.

In-app Education Glossaries at work

• English: I'm sending you a message to schedule a meeting to review Antonio's IEP together.
• Spanish using machine translation without education glossary: Le estoy enviando un mensaje para programar una reunión para revisar juntos el IEP de Antonio.
• TalkingPoints’ translation with education glossary: Le estoy enviando un mensaje para programar una reunión para revisar juntos el Programa Educativo Individualizado de Antonio.

Using standard machine translation, the term ‘IEP’ did not get translated, so it's not going to make much sense for the family member who receives it!

Example: “IEP” translated in Spanish

In-app Education Glossaries at work

TalkingPoints’ education glossary translates the concept of “Transitional Kindergarten” as Kindergarten preparation class so that parents, especially those who did not attend school in the U.S., can understand its meaning.

• English: Hi Ms. Lee, welcome to transitional kindergarten!
• Korean using machine translation without education glossary: 안녕하세요 Ms. Lee, 과도기 유치원에 오신 것을 환영합니다!
• TalkingPoints example with education glossary: 안녕하세요? 유치원 준비반에 오신것을 환영합니다!

With standard machine translation, the term is translated literally as ‘transition kindergarten’ without providing context for what this concept means.

Example: “Transitional Kindergarten” translated in Korean

No training needed for families

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Family text messaging

Family mobile app and web app

First Messages to Parents and

Conversation Examples

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First Message to a Parent

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Sample Message from Parent View (TalkingPoints app)

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1. Who is this coming from?
2. Text to Speech
3. Help me understand - human translation support
4. See original message (in English)
5. Reply in the families home language

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3a

Sample Send a Message from Teacher App to Parent View (SMS text)

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Supporting students with all of their whole child needs can sometimes happen more effectively when more family supports are included

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Simple barrier-free communication opens the door to learning about students’ and families’ circumstances, making supporting a student easier

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Parent View of Spanish

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Parent App View

Parent View: Receiving messages in app:

View of parents with multiple children in M-DCPS (app)

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More in-app support for families

Human-Translated Parent App

• The TalkingPoints for Parents mobile app is translated with support from professional human translators to best meet the needs of multilingual families.
• In our agile, ongoing development cycle, we update our apps every few weeks. For optimal understanding, every update is translated with support by our network of professional human translators.

Click here for a VIDEO explanation of Equity Features

From one-way communication, and the common challenges that go along with it…

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TalkingPoints Readability Flags�

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TalkingPoints Education Glossaries�

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TalkingPoints Text-to-Speech and Speech-to-Text

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TalkingPoints Parent Ed 101�

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TalkingPoints

Help Me Understand�

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Data Matters!

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School staff give an “excellent” rating to TalkingPoints, with an NPS of 75

Families rely on TalkingPoints for understandable two-way communication with less than 2% of families opting out

Up 7%

overall

Up 8-12%

for the under- served

Down 15%

overall

Down 22% for Black students

Down 17% for Latino students

Down 25% for students w/ disabilities

Down 18% for EL students

Increased academic performance in reading and math course proficiency

Decreased absenteeism and gap closure for traditionally underserved

Will it be used?

Will it matter for kids?

Two of the most important questions to answer about a family engagement tool…

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More about our Causal Research Study

TalkingPoints analytics tells the story of engagement and needed support

Bellevue TalkingPoints Analytics, 6.29.23

And how to uniquely support family engagement at each school

School level analytics to drive engagement at individual schools

Teacher + Family engagement

Family engagement with the school and teachers

Plus teachers can review their own analytics for their individual classrooms

Increasing Impact on Student Outcomes

Student Messaging in TalkingPoints

Coming soon!

Student Messaging!

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What else?

Sharper focus on best practices to student outcome improvements!

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Building community through connection

Teachers love TalkingPoints. In fact, one of our music teachers who works with hundreds of students and communicates with them all the time was so thankful to have access. To know that a non-ENL teacher who mostly works with English-dominant students really values TalkingPoints made me very excited.

Lyda Ragonese ENL Department Assistant Director�Syracuse City School District

We love to support our partners

TalkingPoints is an absolute game-changing experience for our culturally diverse community. The best part for me is the personal connection. I can’t get over how communicative and receptive and helpful the TalkingPoints team is. No other company operates this way. You guys are truly an amazing organization. I know there are competitors but there isn’t a chance they come close.

Sharlene DeSteph, Director of English Language Learning, West Springfield Public Schools

Human translation + 2-way = “game changer”

Teachers love TalkingPoints. The comment I hear most about Talking Points from teachers is this communication tool is ‘a game changer’ in how we engage with families.�I think two-way communication and human translation are big advantages to TalkingPoints compared to other tools�we’ve used.

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Lisa Levasseur, Program Specialist, FACE,

Elk Grove Unified School District

Real-time updates from my child’s teacher

I thank you all for this because I can keep in touch with my kids’ teachers. We’re always talking about how my kids are doing, and when they need me, they message me on TalkingPoints. I’m grateful for TalkingPoints. As a parent, I like the teachers to keep me updated.

Karen Cabrera, mother, Haverhill, Massachusetts

Building community through connection

Teachers love TalkingPoints. In fact, one of our music teachers who works with hundreds of students and communicates with them all the time was so thankful to have access. To know that a non-ENL teacher who mostly works with English-dominant students really values TalkingPoints made me very excited.

Lyda Ragonese ENL Department Assistant Director�Syracuse City School District

Pittsburgh PS case study

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TalkingPoints Implementation and Training

Menu of Options

To meet your goals within your parameters, guided by your PSM

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• Pocket PD
• Recorded Trainings
• Synchronous Training
• Deeper Professional Development

Note: zero entry access and use for all families - no training needed

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Staff Roll Out and Initial Use:

TalkingPoints has developed a set of on-demand Quick Start Pocket PD, which includes:

• Communications for staff and families
• Quick guide on what is TalkingPoints and how to access
• Basic staff functions to start using TalkingPoints TODAY

QuickStart Pocket PD

On-Demand, Quick and Easy…Get going NOW!

“After dozens of hours of testing, we recommend TalkingPoints as a standout messaging tool for families, teachers, and students.”

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Best Family Communication Platform for Teachers & Schools, 2021-2023

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Fall 2024

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Click on each listed feature to learn how it will help realize your family engagement superpower!

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TalkingPoints PREMIUM Offering

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TalkingPoints Document Translation is a new premium offering, included in every renewal contract for unlimited use with one annual fee

PREMIUM Solution: TalkingPoints Document Translation

Includes 145 languages, does not include non-machine translated languages

Ensure your families won’t be left confused or worry that they missed vital information in message attachments (not for use with legal documents such as IEPs)

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TalkingPoints NEW Features and Functions

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You shared, we listened! We dedicate this set of features and functions to YOU, our amazing school and district partners. The best improvement ideas come from those who will benefit from them. Thank you for your partnership!!

Solution: TalkingPoints Student Messaging

Promote agency and ownership of outcomes for your older students by making them part of their own learning team with their school and family

Adheres to COPPA - only for students age 13 or older

Solution: TalkingPoints Base & Custom Roles

“Just right” permissioning so everyone can engage with families effectively regardless of their role – hitting the mark of accessibility while maintaining the highest security standards

Solution: TalkingPoints Admin Mobile App

Responsive to the real life of administrators, allowing messaging and announcements while on-the-go to capitalize on great family engagement anywhere

Solution: TalkingPoints Analytics BETA

Access to the kinds of actionable data needed to drive systemic improvement in family engagement in across schools and districts

Solution: TalkingPoints School Groupings

Leaders that oversee groups of schools within a district can provide data-driven support to those schools with quick data reflecting just those schools

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TalkingPoints Research-Based

Embedded Engagement Support

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Because every student deserves the benefit of a school-family “wrap around” team… but it can’t come at the cost of more time and energy for staff, families, or students

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Best practices message rewrite guidance

Compose a message, click a button and Message Mentor will return suggested best practices language to use, edit, or discard.

Start from scratch

Save even more time! Let MessageMentor know what you want to talk to a family about and Message Mentor will created a message on the spot within the guidelines of best practices

Solution: TalkingPoints Message Mentor

Save time and engage more effectively with the push of a button…all while keeping control with the message sender

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Research-based knowledge and guidance messages

ready-to-enable in-platform once-per-week school-based messages, created universally for all families and ready to schedule for the year.

Absence reporting

give all families access to the only universally-designed platform to share reasons for absence, so all families have a voice and all absence reasons can be analyzed to provide targeted, preventative and early intervention absence support.

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Solution: TalkingPoints Attendance Toolkit

Improve attendance by ensuring every family has equal access to knowledge about the importance of attendance and how to support better attendance AND learn about reasons for absence and how to support your families getting every student to school!

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Instant understanding support for families

An expansion of the current Help My Understand human translation request, Help Me Understand will now provide guidance for families to better understand the context, terminology, and general content of a message with the push of a button.

Solution: TalkingPoints Enhanced “Help Me Understand”

Remove confusion that can naturally happen through quick messaging, by giving any family contact the ability to receive on-the-spot clarity when they need it – without adding a task for school staff

V1 is for Spanish only - will be evaluated for success before expansion to other languages

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Engaging harder to reach families

Surface the families who have not responded to message outreach, and utilize best practice guidance on targeted outreach shown to motivate families to engage.

Solution: TalkingPoints “Reach Everyone”

Reach families you have never reached before with in-the-moment guidance about who hasn’t engaged and how to message in a way that will motivate two-way engagement

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In-platform embedded best practices

The top research-proven practices of family engagement infused throughout the product and surfaced through the messaging staff and families are already creating; time-savings and best practices happening together!

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Solution: TalkingPoints Embedded UFE* PD

UFE = Universal Family Engagement: The practice of improving outcomes for all students by fostering effective partnerships with families, regardless of barriers or circumstances.

Don’t let great engagement happen outside of the work of schools. Embedded, just-in-time best practices guidance infused seamlessly to improve engagement with each message sent

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TalkingPoints PREMIUM Offering

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TalkingPoints Admin Family Connect is a premium offering, for use by school and district leaders, for a low per-student cost added at partner request

Admin Family Connect: equitably engage all families

using an enhanced suite of purpose-driven tools for site and district leaders

All features universally designed, including highest quality translation

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Ensure each and every family has universal access to the most important information, and seize the opportunity to build trusting relationships between families and school leaders by letting your families see and hear the people behind the messages.

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Build trusting relationships with families with video messaging

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This is Elmdale Public Schools Superintendent, Ms. Pechacek. On behalf of each and every member of the school district staff, we are thrilled to welcome your child back from Spring Break on Monday, March 18th. Thank you for trusting us to care for your child. We are ready for a great rest of the year together!

TalkingPoints Video Messaging

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• Create a video each week during the summer to let students and families know you are excited to see them in the fall and to share a weekly tip to capitalize on the summer and get ready for Back to School. NOTE: Think about the information you wish every family had when kids head back each year to school.
• Consider a theme like, improved self-regulation. Share spoonfuls of information each week that can provide equitable information to all families and helpful tips to support students at home.
• Short videos can be a great way to get families to engage with other information. Consider adding a video explaining why a family would want to read an attached pdf, for example.
• Have fun and share your voice! If a picture is worth 1000 words, think what a video can do! Let families hear from you, help shape your own school or district narrative, and build trust with your families by helping them see the people behind the messages.

Video Messaging Best Practice IDEAS

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Look for a message from your child’s principal later today asking you to provide important information about your child, how they feel about coming back to school on Tuesday, September 4th, and what the school staff can do to make them feel welcome. You are such an important partner for your child’s school to make sure your child is supported and successful.

See and value each and every family with audio messaging

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Ensure each and every family receives important information regardless of literacy proficiency.

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At the same time help them feel seen and valued knowing you took the time to speak to them, in their home language.

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Look for a message from your child’s principal later today asking you to provide important information about your child, how they feel about coming back to school on Tuesday, September 4th, and what the school staff can do to make them feel welcome. You are such an important partner for your child’s school to make sure your child is supported and successful.

TalkingPoints Audio Messaging

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• Consider an audio message in place of a robo-call. It will be received by all families regardless of home language.
• Audio messaging can be a great tool to share very important information in a way that addresses varied literacy levels of families. Walk the talk by sharing a weekly highlight for your school or district that helps families see school engagement as a positive experience.
• When sharing large amounts of information that can be difficult to get families to engage with, add an audio message “pitch” to explain why families will want to read or engage (e.g. upcoming parent teacher conference detail or testing season information)
• Think through past communications that weren’t equitably received and consider how audio messaging might make that information more accessible for all. Where can it be most helpful for families to feel seen and valued. Consider using an audio message for these situations.

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Audio Messaging Best Practice IDEAS

Partnering with schools & districts just like yours

2 in 3

1 in 2

5M +

500M +

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US schools use

TalkingPoints

US districts use

TalkingPoints

Families & educators building relationships

Over ½ billion messages exchanged

Leading education funders invest in accelerating our impact

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Thank you!

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Adam Lindstrom

Account Executive

adaml@talkingpts.org