Overview and key findings: Texting for Rapid Youth Support
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Written by Mica Pollock (2009-11 work), Uche Amaechi, Maureen Robichaux, and Ted O'Brien for the texting project, with input from students piloting texting at Full Circle/Next Wave
Click here for the Summary on this project; click here for the Expanded story on this project.
Communication we hoped to improve
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?
- (Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish?)
In the texting pilot, Somerville students, teachers, and local researchers all set forth to learn how texting might enable youth and supporters to communicate rapidly, to support students' personal and academic progress and enable student success.
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 particular 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. But 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.)
They were on to something: 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 we thought that as a channel for anytime sharing of basic information and typically informal, individualized information about life and school experiences, texting might be able to support the sort of ongoing personalized attention we know is necessary for supporting young people in schools (http://studentsatthecenter.org/papers/personalization-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. To many adults, texting feels like a “youth”-owned medium. Texting also extends the boundaries of potential communication with students outside the school day and into teachers’ own afterschool lives. 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 even more “alone” -- texting records actually record interactions between youth and teachers, for review and safety).
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. As we describe in more detail [Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|[here,]] although 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.
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. And to Ted and Mo, texting seemed like a possible way to supplement that student support effort.
In 2010-11 and again in 2011-12, 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’ve used Google Voice, a free service that records all of the texts in teachers’ inboxes. This setup allowed two researchers in the group (Uche and Mica) to review the texts along with teachers Mo and Ted, 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.
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? At this point, what are our main ¡Ahas! about improving communications in public education? What communication and implementation ¡Ahas! and turning points did we have over time?
Design based research is usually about proceeding in very clear “stages” to test something. As stated earlier, we originally wanted to test rapid support communications among a “team” of youths’ chosen supporters (see the full story for details. 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 Somerville 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, personalized 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 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. (We felt it was important not to pay students or teachers TO text, because then we would have had no idea if texting was a natural thing to do. Instead, we stipended participants as researchers of texting data.) 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 focus group conversations with students and teachers to analyze how the texting was going for them. Eight HGSE students also 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 on a “team” of students as a texting partner. Everyone was invited to analyze anonymized transcripts of the texting conversations together in two Research Day events, the first held at Harvard and the second held at the FC/NW building.
Our main ¡Ahas! over time have been these:
- ¡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.
- ¡Aha! Texting is a “common-denominator” tool that allows more students to communicate with teachers. People can use regular phones, smart phones, and computers to communicate via text message.
- ¡Aha! Texting also supports personalized, two-way communication between youth and their supporters, about a range of school-related and life topics.
- Main ¡Aha! To students, texts demonstrated caring because they demonstrated effort by both students and teachers to respond to the other. And as texting partners actively "cared" about the person on the other end of the line, texts could also make people care more about student success. As students and teachers both noted, texting allowed students and teachers to support each other as well as "bond," in ways crucial for solidifying students' commitment to both teachers and school.
- ¡Aha! All texts sent between school personnel and students are school "records," meaning they can be reviewed for safety and accountability as needed. At the same time, we're seeing that the feeling of quiet privacy that texting affords can jumpstart personalized support for students less likely to articulate their needs publicly in school. We have tried texting between teachers and individual students; we’ll next try using mobile messaging to support communication among a “team” of supporters of students’ choice.
- ¡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. Starting with Mo and Ted in 2010-11 as teachers excited to try texting was crucial; other teachers later saw the potential for texting to reach students and joined in for 2011-12.
Most of the actual texts that prove these points can be found here, but we wanted to tempt you by showing you a few more 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
Want to see more texts? Click here!
In discussions throughout the year and in 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 began to see that afterschool supporters can also use texting to build stronger relationships with students and to communicate regularly about careers, jobs, and school persistence.
Overall, in Research Days and throughout the pilot, students and teachers argued that the main thing possible via texting was increased caring for the person on the other end of the line. Students and teachers pointed out that each flurry of texts between teacher and student was already evidence of “caring,” because each partner was taking the time to respond to the other. In their commentary on the teacher-student "bond" created through texting, they noted that texting also made the texters care more about one another.
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? What if these small efforts improve the student-teacher interactions that then occur during the school day? While one-to-one communications seem particularly time-consuming in an era of limited resources, counterintuitively, the speed at which relationships can be built over this channel could counteract the “extra” time utilized to text. Three: appropriate student-teacher relationships. If good teaching requires strengthening relationships between students and teachers, how can students and teachers communicate via today’s most “friendly” media but still within age- and role-appropriate bounds of partnership? Might the relationships made possible via the extended communications of texting, enable the true holy grail of successful relationships inside the classroom? 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,” but Mo noted that “the relationship” could also then snap back almost like a “rubber band” to teacher-student hierarchy in the classroom. Still, texting was definitely a “youth medium” when we started, but it may not be for long!
Communication and 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.
¡Aha! Texting works when you can’t reach young people any other way for time-sensitive information.
¡Aha! Texting helps when students don’t have home phones or literally aren’t in school.
¡Aha! Texting can support communication about a wide variety of school issues.
¡Aha! Texting can provide a conduit for private or sensitive conversations that could not be had in a more public sphere such as a classroom.
¡Aha! We began to see that students and teachers can build personal relationships via text that then support more successful school-based interactions.
¡Aha! Fundamental academic support, personal support, and light banter can occur in the same texting conversation.
¡Aha! Texting can build a relationship for school even if you are not talking about school.
¡Aha! Texting didn’t supplant face to face conversation. Often, the text was really just a portal to more informed face to face conversation.
¡Aha! As relationships grow, they are documented in texts!
¡Aha! Normalizing texting as something students and teachers can do makes it easier to strike up a relationship with a young person, jumping over barriers of limited time.
¡Aha! The style of texts can put students and teachers “on the same level,” even as teachers remain teachers.
¡Aha! The many emotions possible via text can give students and teachers a range of ways to share their feelings.
¡Aha! Texting can provide students with more control over how they manage their emotions in conversations.
¡Aha! Concerns about students being “inappropriate” with the channel may be overblown.
¡Aha! Over and over, students noted that texts demonstrated caring because they demonstrated effort by both students and teachers to respond to the other. Texts also made both partners care more!
¡Aha! According to students texting’s time commitment (for teachers) shows caring and builds relationship. But it also -- takes time.
¡Aha! Of course, if your support network uses your phone to reach you, you need a phone.
¡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.
¡Aha! Finally, face to face mentoring meetings can be really hard to schedule, making texting even more sensible.
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 now engaged in the work. The principal has been interested in expanding uses 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 in fall 2011, some newly started to text. We joked a year ago that maybe the principal himself would start using our texting “blast” to message his entire staff, but now the idea actually seems pretty sensible.
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 student, 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.” In fall 2011, Uche and teachers have continued teacher-student texting with additional teachers and youth and have started teacher-full class texting. The group discussed how to best incorporate parents into the texting discussions. However because of student resistance and a general disagreement to agree on a how to decide which adults in the students' lives to incorporate, we were not able to successfully add parents to the conversation. As we discussed how to add parents we approached with the following questions: 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 (even while texts were reviewable by teachers and admnistrators, or by request, by parents)-- which was, perhaps, why so much relationship-building was possible over it. So, could a “team” use texting to communicate rapidly about student support, or would the “group” communication make texting less desirable? Which communications should be private, which public to a “team”? And who should be on 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?”
In the media class we offered during the spring of the 2011/12 school year students were quite clear that they would find it particularly weird if their teachers texted their parents. Texting was something that kids do, they argued at first. But beyond the "weirdness", students voiced several practical reasons why they felt teachers should focus on phone calls with their parents (although they expressed personal misgivings about this channel also, indicating that the ultimate issue may have been that for many of these students, parents simply were not optimal “support team” members). Most of the students felt that their parents were not tech savvy enough to use texting and would not read or engage deeply via texting. They also suggested that parents "wouldn't have enough time to text back". Students argued that voice communication could provide more flexibility for teacher-parent communication. Once the call is started, parents and teachers are engaged in the conversation and "parents can just get to the point" faster through voice communication, one student argued. We did not speak to parents this year, but will begin talking to parents about their general tech use, as well as how they might envision interacting with teachers and school beyond the typical occasional phone conversations or automated voice mails (and robocalls). However, it must be noted that there was one minority report: one High School student suggested that texting could potentially be preferable to some parents because they would be left with a written record of their conversations with teachers about their children. This last point is identical to a strength identified by teachers.
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 privately and/or rapidly reach their supporters?
- ➢ How do teachers supplement their often-limited interactions with students during the school day?
- ➢ How much do teachers communicate with students and families outside of the classroom?
- ➢ What type of relationships and interactions do teachers have with their students, both in and outside of the classroom?
- ➢ What policies, structures, and norms do teachers and students have for interacting outside of class?
- ➢ Could texting help with rapid and/or more personalized/private 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!
Google Voice
Google Voice provides a virtual phone number that can be used for texting and calling. All texts received at this number can be forwarded to any phone or viewed on a computer or through a smartphone app. When viewed on a computer or a smart phone, no texting charges apply. Unless they’re using a smartphone app the person receiving your texts from Google Voice will be charged based on their regular texting plan.
Teachers can sign up for the service by going to voice.google.com and following the instructions. There are tutorial videos to explain the various features. The web interface pictured below is very similar to any web email interface. Instead of entering students’ email addresses into your contacts, you create contacts with students’ phone numbers.
Like any email program, Google Voice allows users to easily send text messages to multiple students (now limited to 5 at a time). Conversations with individual students will be seen in threads as shown above. Each individual text message is time and date stamped and this information will show up on the web and smartphone app interfaces. Unlike regular text messages which are typically linked to specific phones, text messages received through Google Voice are tied to an account and are consequently stored indefinitely. They are also accessible by anybody with the account information. This share-ability allows administrators, parents/guardians (if they actively request this) by students’ permission, other teachers to have access to the communications, providing a level of transparency that is essential for liability and safety purposes. At the same time that it provides transparency, the account interface also lends a level of privacy to the teacher by allowing her to separate her personal communication from her school based communications. School and district policy may also determine which administrators appropriately can view these private texts. Students need never see or know of the teacher’s real phone number, and she has full access to blocking any unwanted communication. Furthermore since all communication is recorded and shareable if necessary (and this information is communicated to the students ahead of time), students will likely limit any untoward behavior. Indeed the teachers we worked with in this two-year pilot reported that there were no major misbehavior from the students, and the students also remarked often on how polite everyone was via text!
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 at the time, 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.
Click here for the Summary on this project; click here for the Expanded story on this project.