Family engagement is an effective lever to help improve student outcomes, yet many educators may lack training in family engagement best practices. To help strengthen teachers’ family engagement “muscle” while also making their job a little easier, TalkingPoints is introducing best practice tips for teachers as part of our back-to-school 2024 enhancements.

This built-in capacity development tool will show teachers a new best practice tip on their TalkingPoints for Teachers (web) home page each week. These research-backed reminders and suggestions help encourage appropriate levels of family engagement, and some are even accompanied by a pre-templated message that lets teachers immediately put the tip into practice.

When will the best practice tips for teachers be available?

This new feature will be activated for teachers for back to school with the first weekly tip scheduled to display the week of August 12, 2024.

Who will have access to the best practice tips feature?

The new feature will be available for teachers associated with a partner school or district on their TalkingPoints for Teachers (web version) home page.

How does the best practice tips feature work?

In the TalkingPoints for Teacher web application, teachers will be presented with a weekly tip for best practices on how to engage with families to help drive student outcomes. These will appear on the teacher’s home page at the beginning of each week and include a general family engagement tip. (see image below)

The weekly tips provide friendly reminders that guide teachers in how to best engage families. Some tips also include a “send message” button. If the teacher wants to act on the tip, they can simply click the button and the compose message window will open with a related best practice informed message template (see below). From there, the teacher can edit and tailor the pre-built message as they like or send it as is after selecting recipients. Teachers get the benefit of best practice tips, suggestions, and message templates all built right into the TalkingPoints application.

Is there a way to hide the tip or mark it as completed?

Yes. The teacher has two options to select from for each weekly tip. If they want to acknowledge that they have reviewed or acted on the weekly tip, they can select “mark completed” above the tip and the text will change to “Completed” with a check icon.

If the teacher wants to simply remove the current weekly tip from their homepage, they can select “hide”. Note: once a weekly tip is marked ‘hide’ there is no way to retrieve it later and teachers will not be able to access the tips from prior weeks. A new tip will simply appear at the start of each week.

Is there a tip for every week?

Partners should expect a tip almost every week of the school year. If there is no tip available for that week, such as during winter break, the “Best practice tip of the week” section does not appear.