Overview and key findings: Texting for Rapid Youth Support

Shelia: the joy of a cell phone for communicating whenever

Written by Mica Pollock, Uche Amaechi, Maureen Robichaux, and Ted O'Brien for the texting project, with input from students at Full Circle/Next Wave

Summary

What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go? (For example: Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? At this point, what are our main AHAs about improving communications in public education?)

Over the 2010-11 school year, we worked with two teachers and 40 young people at Somerville’s alternative middle and high school to test texting as a tool for rapid youth support. All 40 students have chosen or been forced to leave Somerville’s mainstream schools and are vulnerable to dropout. They’re also fabulous young people, and great research partners.

In the texting pilot, we all set forth to learn how texting might enable supporters in each young person’s life to communicate rapidly with the young person -- both about how he/she was doing personally and academically and about actions that might enable his/her success. There is often a gap in such rapid support communications in schools. People don’t always have time to meet face to face to discuss students’ needs and experiences. After the school day ends, communication becomes very difficult: increasingly, people don’t have (or answer) home phones. Many students at risk of dropping out are absent from school quite a lot. Often, teachers don’t know how youth are doing outside of school and other supporters are unaware of how youth are doing in school. All this in an era when technology could make rapid communication with young people more normal than ever in schools!

Our initial vision was to enable an entire support “team” to communicate rapidly, using whatever media would work best. When we decided to try texting as a rapid communication tool, we started with student-teacher texting and planned to add in new “team” members over the year. We ended up finding student-teacher texting so fruitful that we stayed with it for the entire year. We’ll continue to test one-to-one texting between more teachers and their students in fall 2011, allowing us to see what happens when people new to texting get rolling. We’ll also now test a group texting tool supporting rapid communication between “teams” of youths’ chosen supporters. We’ll also test a tool allowing teachers to “blast” texts to all of their students at once.

So far, then, we have been testing one-to-one (private) texting between teachers and students, and secondarily, between students and eight graduate student mentors from the Harvard Graduate School of Education who helped us connect to the students to check in. We’re using Google Voice, a free service that records all of the texts in teachers’ inboxes. This allowed two researchers in the group (Uche and Mica) to review the texts along with teachers to see if they were helpful -- with students’ advance, overall permission. (GoogleVoice also gives teachers a separate phone number, so they’re not using their personal phone.)

Since starting, we’ve seen student-teacher texting after and before school take off successfully with middle and high school youth. In the fall, we plan to test ways to enable youth and a "team" of their chosen supporters (including afterschool providers, peers, and family members) to communicate about any topic via group texting.

Here’s what we currently think about texting’s potential in schools:

MAIN AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

We think this point is made best by the texts themselves. Most of the actual texts can be found here, but we wanted to show you a few examples of what supportive teacher-student texting can look like:

Teacher: Everything ok? 9:30 AM

Student: Ted? 10:39 AM

Teacher: Yup 11:02 AM

Student: Everythings alright I guess im gonna b in tm .. Is there anything I can do to put my grade up for your class 11:05 AM

Teacher: Be on time tomorrow, we'll talk then. 11:06 AM

Student: Alright 11:09 AM

Teacher: [Student,] do you still have the math book I gave you for homework? If you do let me know and [teacher] too 2:38 PM

Student: Ya I do 2:59 PM

Teacher: Use it! 3:27 PM

Student: Ok. I will 3:31 PM

Student: I just left my house right now so I'm going to b late 7:47 AM

Teacher: And I need to know this? 7:48 AM

Teacher: Hurry up! 7:49 AM

Student: Because I don't want you to worry 7:49 AM

Teacher: You miss school regularly silly goose 7:51 AM

Student: I came in all this week and collected points 7:54 AM

Teacher: Get here, we can celebrate 7:55 AM

Student: Hahaha okk I'm on cross street now 7:58 AM

Teacher: Like I said, you need to get it from him. Be on time for school today 7:00 AM

Teacher: You’re doing great 7:00 AM

Student: I will and u woke me up .thanks 7:01 AM

Teacher: You’re welcome 7:03 AM

In discussions throughout the year and in several focused data analysis meetings, student and teacher participants argued that texting had two key benefits: individualized, timely student support and the ability to strengthen student-teacher relationships. Students argued that supportive texts from teachers were giving them the motivation or information necessary to come to school on time, complete homework, remain aware of requirements, and participate in afterschool activities. Over the semester, we also saw texting teachers and students having more frequent, and deepening, conversations about school commitments and life struggles, both via text and then in person. In reviewing texts between students and university mentors, we have seen that afterschool supporters can also use texting to build stronger relationships with students and to communicate regularly about careers, jobs, and school persistence.

In sum: most school districts are out to regulate and restrict texting and fear student-teacher texting as somehow inappropriate. We’ve seen that texting can simply extend relationship-building and student support outside of school hours. But this raises several overall questions for public schools. One: adults’ time. If gluing a relationship together outside of the school day helps young people do better in school, is it “worth” teachers’ time? Two: Where do the school walls end? If a teacher supports young people’s school success through wakeup texts or afterschool reminders, is this an appropriate reach into the home or out of the classroom? Three: appropriate student-teacher relationships. If good teaching requires real relationships between students and teachers – a form of friendship with role boundaries-- how can they communicate via today’s most “friendly” media but still within age- and role-appropriate bounds of partnership? It may be that we need to redefine “appropriate” student-teacher relationships in the digital age. As Shelia, age 17, put it in this pilot, texting definitely put students and teachers more “on the same level.” Texting was definitely a “youth medium” when we started, but it may not be for long!

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

Communication we hoped to improve

Of the various technologies in our lives, it is cell phones that are with us all day, and keep us most connected and available. Texting (often called “SMS”) and other mobile text based communications (like instant messaging) give people even more control over when and where they communicate. In theory, people can review and respond to texts at their leisure--in the evening from home, or over the weekend after sports practice. They can fit communications to their schedules. At the same time, a text is particularly hard to ignore, and responses to texts often arrive in seconds -- which is why in summer 2010, Somerville students told us to try texting for rapid youth support (see the full story |here..

Further, texting has been shown to be a particularly used channel for youth communication today: according to a 2010 Pew Research Center study on teenage use of mobile phones, teen use of texting has increased dramatically since 2006 (Campbell et al, 2010). Between 2006 and 2010, the percentage of all teens that used text messaging doubled from 27% to 54%. The only other communication medium that increased during those dates showed more muted gains: cell phone calls increased from 34-38% and the use of social networking sites increased from 21-25%. While calls remained a “critically important function” for teens, especially when communicating with parents, teens were clearly taking to texting in a much more dramatic way than any other communication medium. By 2009, the use of texting had increased among young people between the ages of 12 and 17: on average, older teens were even more likely to text than younger ones (Campbell et al, 2010). Furthermore, the Pew Polls have found that 70% of teens use texting to do "things related to school work," and a smaller but more dedicated 23% of teens use texting for school at least daily. Texting seems to be used more for general school-related communications than for detailed discussions of assignments and homework: 30% of all students and 45% of poor students specifically report never texting about school assignments (Campbell et al, 2010). In its small character capacity, texting may not be an obvious choice for discussions of the details of homework. But by providing a channel for anytime sharing of basic information and typically informal, individualized information about life and school experiences, texting could support the sort of ongoing personalized attention we know is necessary for supporting young people in schools.

Still, do a Google search for student-teacher texting and most of what you will find is fear: districts considering bans on texting or teachers quietly posting updates about their own personal experiences with trying it. Many view texting as an inappropriate mode of communication between teachers and students, for several main reasons. Even more a year ago than now, texting feels like a “youth”-owned medium. Also, because texting really feels like a private “tube” between two people, the sort of support texting can offer immediately seems particularly personal. That privacy is exactly what scares some people about misuse: teachers and students somehow seem more “alone together” while texting (even though private classroom conversations after school are equally “alone”). Texting also extends the boundaries of potential communication with students outside the school day and into teachers’ own afterschool lives.

Instead of just fearing texting, we decided to learn together what it could offer public school communities. So, we – teachers, researchers, and students -- rolled out a texting pilot with 40 students across multiple classrooms.

In some ways, our site -- Full Circle/Next Wave, Somerville’s alternative school -- is a special school: all teachers work in what our participating high school teacher Ted called “teacher-counselor mode” and expect personal support relationships as part of their job. Each teacher has a co-counseling group that meets twice a week, where he/she gets to know more about young people’s personal struggles. Teachers work in a “triangle” with clinicians and students’ other counselors. But really, teachers at FC/NW are simply encouraged by their school to build teacher-student support relationships, something every teacher has to do but may not have the time or the administrative support to do.

As we describe in more detail [Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|[here,]] some teachers in Somerville weren’t ready to try texting for reaching their students; these students and teachers were. They really were pioneers in testing how a communication tool already in the hands of most young people in the building could be pulled in for everyday student support.

AHA: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

Our work, and our AHAs

What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? What were the main communication ahas and implementation ahas, and turning points?

Mo and Ted, texting teacher pioneers, with Uche and Mica. . .and donuts

Design based research is usually about proceeding in very clear “stages” to test something. As stated earlier, we wanted to test rapid support communications among a “team” of youths’ chosen supporters. We began with testing a school-based online social network and eventually moved toward testing one-to-one texting instead, with the vision of testing out “team” texting next.

So, our work proceeded in stages and also in a rolling manner over two years, based on ongoing reactions to students’ and teachers’ insights and interests re. support communications that might assist youth.

Throughout, we kept our core questions constant. Who needs to share which information with whom, to support a young person? What are the barriers to that communication, and how might those be overcome? And, we came to ask: how might texting enable (or not enable) the rapid exchanges of information and caring often so needed to support young people?

Note: Unlike in our ePortfolio pilot, where the goal was to create ePortfolios that would succeed and stick at Somerville High School, we decided in this case not to “make sure texting works, by doing whatever is necessary to make it work.” Instead, we wanted to explore how teachers and students would use (or NOT use) texting in youth support, if they were just explicitly invited to text for school-related communication. We also wanted to know if some type or series of communications could help make a young person more connected to school or more successful academically.

So, in a nutshell, we offered the channel and waited to see what everyone would do with it. We didn’t push any particular use of the texting, but instead kept talking about actual uses. Mo, Ted, and the students became a research team with Uche, Mica, and the HGSE students, together exploring the use of texting in rapid youth support. We put our Ford support resources into stipending teachers $25/hr (2 hrs/week) for their extra time piloting the tool and analyzing data, paying kids back with food and $25/each for a formal “research day,” and supporting Uche to coordinate the pilot. For course credit, HGSE students checked in on the students and acted as anytime mentors for young people who wanted to share questions or thoughts via texts. We also agreed to line up tutors or mentors for anyone who wanted one and did for several students—though as we mention in the |full story, logistics and low interests later fizzled that plan.

We held regular conversations with students and teachers to analyze how the texting was going for them. Eight HGSE students informally interviewed the FC/NW students a few times a month, over donuts at the school. Uche and Mica talked with Ted and Mo, Uche texted regularly with Ted and Mo himself, and Mica took a “team” of students on as a texting partner. Everyone was invited to analyze the texting conversations together in two research events, the first held at Harvard and the second held at the FC/NW building.

Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!

We had many ahas in sequence on this project over two years. To read the full story of the efforts that gave us these ahas, click here!

Our ahas about texting included the following.

1 AHA: Texting works when you can’t reach young people any other way for time-sensitive information. 2 AHA: Texting helps when students don’t have home phones or literally aren’t in school. 3 AHA: Texting can support communication about a wide variety of school issues. 4 AHA: We began to see that students and teachers can build personal relationships via text. 5 AHA: Fundamental academic support, personal support, and light banter can occur in the same conversation. 6 AHA: Texting can build a relationship for school even if you are not talking about school. 7 AHA: Texting didn’t supplant face to face conversation. Often, the text was really just a portal to more informed face to face conversation. 8 AHA: As relationships grow, they are documented in texts! 9 AHA: Normalizing texting as something students and teachers can do makes it easier to strike up a relationship with a young person. 10 AHA: The style of texts can put students and teachers “on the same level.” 11 AHA: The many emotions possible via text can give students and teachers a range of ways to share their feelings. 12 AHA: Concerns about students being “inappropriate” with the channel may be overblown. 13 AHA: Over and over, students noted that texts demonstrated caring because they demonstrated effort by both students and teachers to respond to the other. 14 AHA: Texting’s time commitment shows caring and builds relationship. But it also -- takes time! 15 AHA: Of course, if your support network uses your phone to reach you, you need a phone. 16 AHA: In our brief test of texting between HGSE students and the FC/NW students, we began to see that texting can support ongoing career mentoring, too. 17 AHA: Finally, face to face mentoring meetings can be really hard to schedule, making texting even more sensible.

Students and teachers analyzing (anonymized) examples of student-teacher texts: Research Day at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, April 2011

Teachers and students analyzing texting again in June 2011.

Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps

We have successfully supported a pilot of student-teacher texting at Full Circle/Next Wave and have dozens of students and four new teachers excited about continuing. The principal is interested in expanding use of texting to include other current and former teachers within the school. While many teachers still didn’t know how to use a cell phone, some are newly starting to text. We joked that maybe the principal himself would start using our texting “blast” to message his entire staff!

Both students and teachers say that we’ve all demonstrated that texting is a possible tool for communication with young people that mixes personal support, academic support, and everyday banter. We have realized so far that texting is a very natural and important channel not only for check-ins and updates not possible during the school day, but for a key, perhaps ultimate support: building a relationship between student and teacher or adult mentor.

At our April Research Day at Harvard, Obens, one of the students, summed it up, arguing for “continuing” the texting the following year: “it shows connection. It’s really helpful --- it gets you like focused in school. It puts your mind on something and gets you focused. I’m passing (Ted’s) class – it gets you focused on this schoolwork. Like when Ted told me [via text] that I gotta come to school on time, get some reading credits – I started pushing myself, getting credits. That really helps.”

Later in the school year, Obens would point out that texting helped him focus overall on school, but couldn’t keep him focused during class – that was his next frontier for self-improvement. Many students also made clear that while improving student-teacher communication was key, linking in other people in their lives was crucial too. As Mica wrote to herself in February after a group conversation that followed texts with several individual girls, “note: several times in this conversation I felt the need to tell others in the school, things that I was texting about w/ an individual kid, so that others could be pulled in for the collective support.”

So, our next step is to see how texting works with new student and teacher users and also, to test texting “teams.”

As we test group texting among “teams” of students’ chosen supporters this fall, we’re going with youth-constructed teams of supporters and we’ll see where they take a group texting tool. We have lots of questions. Is the private and personal nature of communication via one-to-one text a key to its use for rapid student support? If so, can a group text together for youth support, or not? Throughout the pilot, one-to-one texting continued to feel particularly private -- which was, perhaps, why so much relationship-building was possible over it. So, can a “team” use texting to communicate rapidly about student support, or will the “group” communication make texting less desirable? Which communications should be private, which public to a “team”? And who should be in a texting “team”? As one student said, she was now up for texting teachers but not for having her mom aware of her school related “business.” As Ted put it, to “honor the kids’ sense of privacy,” “which communications should go to parents? Which to kids? which to both?”

This will remain our core inquiry in Phase 2 as we move forward to test “team” texting.

Again, we’ll offer youth and “team” the channel and learn together what they do with it!

Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live

What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!

Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

-In your school, when students have personal questions or needs, are there ways for them to rapidly reach their supporters?

-Could texting help with rapid youth support? What are your reservations about texting, and how might these be addressed?

Technological how-tos

Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!

Setting up Google Voice (screen shots, etc.!) IT'D BE COOLEST IF TED OR MO DESCRIBED THIS, FROM A TEACHER'S PERSPECTIVE. MAYBE THEY/UCHE COULD DO A POWERPOINT WITH A VOICEOVER?

Google Voice is a free web based phone and text messaging service provided by Google. Google Voice provides a separate phone number that teachers can give out to students. The use of a separate number helps preserve the privacy of teachers’ personal phone numbers. This separate number, coupled with some of the service’s advanced features, such as number blocking, provide the teacher with an added sense of privacy and security. Finally, we chose the Google Voice service because it allowed multiple people—teacher and researchers—access to the same account, providing a general transparency and accountability and allowing Uche and Mica as co-researchers to review the teachers’ text communications by agreement. Beyond the research, the teachers also found it useful to be able to review their own texting exchanges.

With Google Voice, teachers can view and send texts from a computer without texting charges. Teachers can also take advantage of a computer’s larger screen and familiar interface to view texts arranged by student or time, and easily search through their history of texts. Teachers can check received messages on their smart phones via specially designed apps, or they can choose to have the service forward any texts to their feature phones’ regular text messaging accounts. (A feature phone is a cell phone that does not have installable apps from an app store.)

The simplest add on to Google Voice so far was to create a one to many “blast” that the teachers could use to message their entire class. Seth, our developer, connected the teachers’ Google Voice accounts to group texting software made with the Twilio API, to afford teacher-whole class messaging. The setup created a proxy phone number for a new “group” of all of the teacher’s students. The teacher only had to send a message to that number and the associated students would all receive the message. (With regular Google Voice, you can only text 5 people at a time). However, because of the difficulty in maintaining and updating the custom designed software, we will be trying out commercial software such as GroupMe or Beluga for group and whole-class texting going forward. These application/services, like Google Voice, can operate through an app on a smart phone, or by forwarding messages to phone numbers on feature phones.

In fall 2011, we’ll continue teacher-student texting with additional teachers and youth, start teacher-full class texting, and test group texting between chosen “teams” of supporters around individual youth. We’ll see how and if multiple supporters take the opportunity for rapid communications about students’ personal needs.