Ep. 80: Teachers and parents break down language barriers with an app

When parents and teachers talk children do better, period. -Russ Davis, CEO SchoolStatus The Perfect Marriage For the past six years, the software company, SchoolStatus, has been in the business of aggregating student data for school districts. They offer a platform that allows districts to see trends within large amounts of information quickly. This data includes attendance, test scores, and records of discipline. Now, that same app is being used to translate conversations between educators and parents. A few years ago, SchoolStatus decided to marry that data with a teacher-parent communication tool. Now, using a desktop or mobile app, educators can review their student's data, and with a quick click of a button, they can call or text a parent without sharing their personal number. The calls and text messages are also archived for proper record keeping. "You can see who you've contacted, when, what they said...when they read it," said Tupelo, MS middle school teacher Kirsti Turner. Recently, SchoolStatus honored Turner because she sent the company's millionth text message. "The rate at which they [teachers] have been adopting it, has just been insane," said Nick Peterman, Vice President of Operations and Development at SchoolStatus. Peterman says they are on pace to hit 3.5 million sent text messages by the end of the 2019 school year. In today's day and age, text messaging is a convenient form of communication between parents and teachers. But teachers don't necessarily want to give up their phone number, and sometimes they may forget to document the conversation. SchoolStatus seamlessly eliminates both of those headaches. Tearing Down The Language Barrier One of the most impressive features of the SchoolStatus application is that they have built in a way for teachers and parents to translate their communications. "I have a couple of parents who don't speak English at all," says Turner. "So I've had to translate my messages, and whatever they send to me they'll translate." Peterman says teachers have told them that these conversations would not be happening without the translation feature. Tupelo, MS middle school teacher Karla Scott said, "One of the parents, she really informed me about a lot of things that were going on with her child that I had no idea about because I think that she thought I was a Spanish speaker." "That's just another barrier that this tool has allowed us to overcome. It's been fantastic," said Peterman. To learn more about SchoolStatus and the communication and student data features, listen to Episode 80 of the Class Dismissed podcast.  You can find Class Dismissed in your favorite podcast app or on iTunes. All Rights Reserved. Class Dismissed Podcast 2018