School communicators are sending more messages than ever. But new research from Apptegy suggests that volume isn't the problem — and neither is the channel. The real issue is what's inside the message itself.
Drawing on SchoolCEO's ongoing work studying how districts communicate with families — including what parents say they actually want from their schools — this webinar takes a data-driven look at what separates messages that resonate from the ones that get ignored. Spoiler: the gaps aren't where most communicators expect them to be.
We'll walk through what the research reveals about the qualities of effective school messaging, where districts most commonly fall short, and how small, targeted improvements can make a meaningful difference in whether your community actually reads — and acts on — what you send.
Whether you're a one-person shop or leading a full communications team, you'll walk away with a clearer picture of what "good" looks like and a practical approach to getting there.
Webinar Transcript
Brittany Keil: All right, let's go ahead and get into things. So welcome to the Science of Resonance. We are Brittany Keil, and I'll introduce you to Emily in just a second. Before we get started, I'm going to introduce myself, and Emily's going to introduce herself, and then we'd like to hear a little bit about who all is in the room with us.
Brittany Keil: So, first, my name is Brittany Kyle, and I'm the Senior Manager of Research and Media for SchoolCEO Magazine, published by Apptegy. I've had the…
Brittany Keil: immense, immense, and I can't really tell you how awesome it is. Pleasure of working for Apptegy for 5 years now, working on our incredible SchoolCEO magazine. A new issue is on the way, so, man, if you get it, like, or when it lands, let me know. We're always so excited whenever our issues land, on folks' desks.
Brittany Keil: A little bit about me. So I love research and education. I have a, education research degree from Johns Hopkins.
Brittany Keil: But before working for Apptegy, I actually was a classroom teacher for 8 years. A career that I actually started in Malaysia, so you can see down here at the bottom of my slide, I am dancing with my students a dance called the Zappan.
Brittany Keil: And a fun little fact for this, session is that I'm actually returning to Malaysia for the first time, in 15 years in 2 weeks.
Brittany Keil: So, in two weeks, I'm flying with my 7-year-old and my one and a half year old to Malaysia. Is it crazy? Is it wild? Absolutely yes, but my village would not hear of me coming without my sweet little girls.
They are here. This is Beatrice and Rosemary. Bea is one and a half, obviously a huge Steve Hawks fan.
Brittany Keil: She loves balls of all kind, and fun fact, today she learned the word no.
Brittany Keil: And then, Rosemary just turned 7. For her birthday, she did a pet food drive. She's very passionate about animals, she wants to be an animal rescuer, and is so dedicated and hardcore about it that I find myself just keeping up.
Emily Simon: Hi everyone, I'm Emily. Like Brittany, I am a former educator turned marketer, so I grew up in a family of educators.
Emily Simon: Started my own career in education, spent some time at the West Virginia State Department of Education, and then as an elementary school teacher in Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia.
Emily Simon: I am a parent of a school-aged child, Ellie, who is about to turn 7, and an upcoming pre-K child, Molly, who will be 4 next week.
Emily Simon: I think what's interesting when I think about today and today's topic, and the pair of Brittany and myself, is we both bring forward kind of that educator and communication perspective, as well as kind of the science and the art of marketing. As a role
Emily Simon: as a product marketer, my role is really designed around how do I create awareness and engagement of the communications and promotions that Apptegy puts forward around our products and solutions.
Emily Simon: to drive that outcome. And I think at the end of the day, when we think about school and district communications, that's the same goal you share as well. How can you share stories that get people to act and engage? So really excited to dig into the session today with all of you.
Brittany Keil: And… oh, sorry, go ahead.
Emily Simon: All good! Would love to hear who we have joining us. I was just looking at the attendee list and recognized some familiar names. So thanks for coming.
In the chat, go ahead and drop in your name, where you're joining us from, and your favorite summer activity.
Brittany Keil: Yeah, so please, read these as they are, you know, we'll read these as they come in. Don't be shy. I meant to say at the beginning, this is the second part of our Extra Credit Summer Series, so this is what we think of as our more lightweight, like, community-focused webinar, so we'd love to see some connections get made.
Brittany Keil: Alright, I see a couple of comments coming in… My, wonderful,
Brittany Keil: colleague, Barrett is going to be monitoring the chat today, because for some reason, I, like, sharing the screen and doing the chat on Zoom is so difficult for me, so there's something I can get better at.
Emily Simon: So far, Brittany, we have, Washington, Kentucky, and Kansas joining us, South Dakota, a lot of people are really into hiking, which I love to see that. Texas as well. I know Brittany's now in the Pacific Northwest.
Emily Simon: You doing some hiking too, Britt?
Brittany Keil: Yeah, absolutely. So we're a big hiking family. We're not as intense as a lot of people are in Washington.
Brittany Keil: So, I try to say we like walking, because I don't want people to get the wrong idea. They're like, oh, are you gonna go summit? And I'm like, probably not. I'm wearing my one-year-old on a backpack, and my seven-year-old collects rocks the entire time and is so slow.
So yeah, we've been spending lots of time outside, like, there's so much to do, and so much to see. But we've actually been getting on the water lately, which is really special.
Brittany Keil: My husband…
Brittany Keil: He's a man of many hobbies, and he recently got his Hobie Cat sailing certification, so he can bail… or so he can sail, like, the most basic sailboat. It's, like, nice for children. And he's… he is so gung-ho. He's trying to get his hours so he can get his next certification, and he takes our, older daughter with him, and yeah, super fun.
Emily Simon: Incredible.
Brittany Keil: What about you, Emily?
Emily Simon: The pool, a lot of pool time, so I'm on the East Coast, DC area, which is very hot and humid.
Emily Simon: So very much try to find the reprieve with the pool time. I saw someone say gardening. I also like to say I garden, but by garden, I just plant pretty flowers and try to keep them alive, through these really hot and humid days.
Emily Simon: Hi Teresa and Amber, those were two names that I recognized on the list. Thanks for joining us.
Emily Simon: They're joining us from West Virginia and looking into vacations with family. Yes, that's also a favorite summer activity.
Emily Simon: Awesome, if you're just joining us, please continue to share, where you're coming from, we'd love to know, and we'll keep moving along, though.
Brittany Keil: I feel so proud of my garden until I look around and see what other people's gardens look like. I planted dahlias for the first time this year.
Brittany Keil: And I was like, they're doing so good! They're getting so big! And I was walking by, and I saw, like, people-sized dahlias in my neighbor's yard, and I was like, oh, well, I guess maybe next year.
Brittany Keil: Alright, so let's go ahead and get it, get kicking off. So I have a story for you all. So you already know that I was a teacher, but what I didn't share is that before working in the classroom, I actually worked in nonprofit communications for 3 years in Washington, DC.
Brittany Keil: So when I became a teacher and learned that, sending newsletters and communication was a part of my role, I was like, oh, easy, I've got this.
Brittany Keil: So a few days before school started, in my very first classroom in Washington, D.C, so this was after Malaysia, I created this ginormous, beautiful PDF newsletter.
Brittany Keil: It was almost, like, templated to, to look like the nonprofit newsletter that I had sent as an associate, and I was like, hey, that worked there, so it must be good for parents, too.
Brittany Keil: So it had multiple sections, I had this idea of, like, having recurring themes, like, it was very ambitious, very first-year teacher-y. And then I blasted it out to all of the emails on my list, with a subject line and nothing in the body.
Brittany Keil: To be clear, I did not know the families, they did not know me, school had not even started yet.
Brittany Keil: And as part of this, newsletter, I asked my families to do an assignment. And you've probably heard of this before, it's called a hopes and dreams letter. So families, write, you know, their hopes and dreams for their child, and I was so excited to, like, do an activity with those on the first day of school.
Brittany Keil: such first-year behavior, first-year teacher behavior. So, first day of school, what percent of my students do you think arrived with their hopes and dreams letters?
Brittany Keil: Zero.
Brittany Keil: And a couple of weeks later, when I had open house and meet the teacher, what percent of my families do you think remembered my newsletter? And that answer was almost zero too, even though I had some really active, engaged parents.
Brittany Keil: For a lot of them, it went straight to their spam filter. They didn't know their teachers at the time, so they didn't know why I was emailing them. And it was a total mess when it came to communication.
Brittany Keil: So my story is kind of extreme, but in this webinar, we're going to be talking about the communication that doesn't land, and how to change things so that it does.
Brittany Keil: So why does a text about a bus delay, get read instantly, and open instantly, but a beautifully designed newsletter that you spent 3 hours over the weekend.
Brittany Keil: just sits there. It's not bad luck, it's actually something called resonance, and there's a pattern that you can study and design for, which means that you can fix things and adjust to better make things resonate. So, this is where we're headed today. We are going to be looking into the science of resonance, based both on SchoolCEO research, external research, and also some internal research as well.
Brittany Keil: So we have 6 areas of resonance that we're going to be talking about. Trust, the channels, language, content, relationship, and then we're going to close out with a checklist, that's going to help you walk right away from this webinar, able to run your communications through this checklist, and then get going from there.
Brittany Keil: My big thing, and if you've been on my webinars before, is I want to hand you resources that you can just, like, head out the door with. I do think AI makes this easier than ever, and we will be sharing these resources after.
Emily Simon: Alright, Britt, so part one of that puzzle.
Emily Simon: Trust.
Emily Simon: Tell us more. Let's dig in.
Brittany Keil: So, here's the thing about, trust. Districts that communicate get trusted more. And this seems, on the surface, a little bit obvious, but I think that this is actually, like, a hugely impactful statistic, and, you know, data point for any school communicator to know.
Brittany Keil: Trust is the name, you know, the main game in education right now. Families who trust a district are willing to send their students there, and are willing to stay with that district. Communities that trust a district are willing to vote for millages. All of this impacts your ability to stay afloat and healthy as a school district.
Brittany Keil: But, there's some really, interesting things that we found that we think are especially helpful for communicators.
Brittany Keil: First, families who rate their district's communication highly are more likely to trust the district overall. And more communication actually helps, not hurts, but only if it's two things, relevant and positive.
Brittany Keil: So, this isn't a situation of, like, email less, but rather email smarter, and communicate smarter. And I think that that's really helpful, too, because a lot of communication, or sorry, a lot of comments I've heard from communicators or superintendents, is a fear that they communicate too much, and that it gets lost.
Brittany Keil: But the thing is, it's not about the frequency, it's about the irrelevance, and it's about the, you know.
Brittany Keil: Sort of wiring for this idea of resonance.
Brittany Keil: So, 70% of families say that communication from their child's district is mostly positive. And this is good when you think back to that data point that I shared. Families actually like when communication is positive and relevant, because this, and this…
Brittany Keil: helps boost their satisfaction with the general district altogether. So we want you to keep doing that, we want you to keep things positive, we want you to keep things relevant, but we also need to make sure it lands.
Emily Simon: So we're gonna do a little bit of an honesty time. I will go first.
Emily Simon: This is my personal email inbox.
Emily Simon: And in case you can't see it, that number of unread messages is over 100,000.
Emily Simon: Drop a thumbs up reaction or in the chat if this feels familiar to you personally.
Emily Simon: As a communicator yourself.
Emily Simon: Does this resonate with anyone?
Brittany Keil: And apparently…
Emily Simon: giving me a thumbs up. She's like, yeah.
Emily Simon: Been there, done that, says Yvonne, yep,
Emily Simon: like, it's to the point where I have a separate personal email address, but that one's becoming just as clunky.
Emily Simon: And, Sabrina, if you advance one slide, I think…
Emily Simon: when I think about what Brittany just said in terms of frequency is not the enemy, irrelevance is.
Emily Simon: I think about this example, right? Because what's true about what we're seeing here? I'm getting frequent communication. All of this came in yesterday, the day before.
Emily Simon: I'm also getting it from brands that I like, that I know, that I've purchased from, that I have engaged with, that I trust. So, this is not my quote-unquote spam, these are brands that I want to interact and engage with.
Emily Simon: But what's also true is, as you can see, 99% of what I'm receiving, even though I care about that brand, I'm not opening.
Emily Simon: The 1% that I do open, it's only because it's relevant or very timely.
Emily Simon: You can see the one that's red there was a GoFundMe. It's relevant, it's personal, it's something timely. I had just donated to a GoFundMe, and now I'm getting kind of that receipt and that snapshot and that appreciation. I opened that.
It was relevant and very timely. It hit my inbox immediately after that transaction.
Emily Simon: And so when we're clicked, Britt, you'll see that
Emily Simon: for me, when I think about
Emily Simon: building trust and creating the foundation for resonance, it's really anchoring on that idea that Brittany already shared of it's not frequency.
Emily Simon: It's the irrelevance. And so, how can we…
Emily Simon: as we apply, kind of, the principles moving forward in our communications, how can we ensure that the content, the messages that we're sending, the question to ask yourself, is this relevant and timely for the specific audience that I'm sending it to?
Brittany Keil: And I think there are a couple of challenges that are unique to school districts. First of all, it can be hard to know what all communication is going out from a school district. I think you've probably… you may have heard me tell this anecdote before, but I once had a parent get really frustrated with me for communicating too much. I was like, I send a monthly newsletter!
But what she was actually, talking about was she was getting, updates from our SIS every time a grade was entered.
Brittany Keil: And she assumed that was me. I entered a lot of grades, I'm like a, you know, I was a bell ringer, exit slip kind of teacher, and so she was like, leave me alone, I don't care if they got 2 out of 3 points every single day.
Brittany Keil: And then the second thing is, I don't think this is just an email problem. We're seeing a lot of different, channels
Brittany Keil: you know, replicate this same idea. I've noticed lately that every time I try to sign up for a promo code from a website, which I know I'm not the only one, they all… they require me to add my phone number. Text messages are, you know, becoming just as cluttered and just as difficult.
Brittany Keil: Sorry, guys.
Emily Simon: So, Brittany, I think that tees up this next section perfectly. The science behind
Emily Simon: the channels that we're actually using, because to your point.
Emily Simon: That's my inbox illustration for the purpose of relevance, but…
Emily Simon: My text message inbox looks just as similar.
Brittany Keil: Yeah, I get the same, the same promos, about shoes from Dick's, too. I've gotta buy some school shoes for my kid, though, so I've been appreciating them.
Brittany Keil: Alright, so when we talk about channels, I first want to acknowledge, like, the clear king of channels, in my opinion, which is the website. And I think that the website, the school district website, especially your homepage, is like you're the unsung hero of school communication.
Brittany Keil: So it's not just, and this is, you know, echoing research that SchoolCEO was done, hearing from families directly.
Brittany Keil: It's not just where families go first to find new information, it's actually one of the places that they actively prefer to return to. So if you are a hard-working communicator, and I know you are, and you've put a lot of good time and resources into your website, it is paying off. This is where your families want to spend time.
Brittany Keil: The real question is whether or not you're keeping it updated with what families want and actually need at that time. Again, timeliness and relevance. So you need to keep it easy to navigate and also keep it current.
Brittany Keil: I talked to a really, incredible school district a couple of weeks ago, who gave me a really good mental framework for, analyzing this.
Brittany Keil: They said that early on, they thought of their website as sort of a Yellow Pages of their school district, a place to get all of the links, or all of the people that you needed to know to reach out to to find out what you needed.
Brittany Keil: But, after they realized how families were actually using their website as a one-stop shop for information, they realized they needed to change their approach entirely, and so they did. This was, this was…
Brittany Keil: Helped along by a chatbot that was able to, you know, pull all those resources that may not be something they want to link to from their homepage or from their, from their…
Brittany Keil: Top nav.
Brittany Keil: So, when we at SchoolCEO asked families directly what they wish districts would do differently, a couple of patterns emerged, and I think these are really helpful for communicators. First, families said that text messages were for anything urgent or time-sensitive.
Brittany Keil: So one parent commented on this really well. They said anything major should be a text, the rest can be a newsletter or something else. So closures, early dismissals, anything urgent, that's a good time to send a text or an alert. But for everything else, most parents told us that emails and apps were their preference.
Brittany Keil: At the same time, more and more families want some control over how much they're receiving and where. And I admit, like, this is a really tall, you know, ask of a lot of school districts, where the communications department is one or two people. But private brands have taught us that we should have a say over how much communication that we get to receive.
Brittany Keil: So, you know, families are… one parent noted that every time they got a flurry of texts about the same update, it felt to them like spam.
Brittany Keil: And I will say 90% of my texts from my school district are about my daughter's, lunch account balance, because she's not supposed to eat hot lunch. I pack her lunch. She is just sneaky. And so I'm always getting, like, a negative balance one, and it comes from the same district number that the rest of the communication, so it totally gets lost.
Brittany Keil: Second, it's not,
Brittany Keil: Another parent wished that the newsletter would let them skip down to sections that didn't apply for their child. And I think this is a good question about how to make newsletters that are, you know, that resonate most with the smallest, most specific audience that you can't. So it's not just about choosing the right channel, it's being thoughtful about how much you're sending through it.
Brittany Keil: And I think this is probably my favorite finding. Parents largely prefer the channels that their districts already use, and this presents an awesome opportunity to me. You can coach your families on how to receive communication from their district.
Brittany Keil: This coaching can be really, you know, direct. You can tell them how they are going to be… how they can expect to receive communication from the district.
Brittany Keil: Or, this can be something, I guess it's more of an AND rather than an or, this is something that you can reinforce throughout the school district. If they should expect to communicate with their teachers always through the app, this is something that you can reinforce by, you know, making sure that this expectation is held across your different campuses.
Brittany Keil: You can build trust and habit around the tools that you already have. My daughter has been attending a thousand different camps this summer, and I will say the Girl Scouts of Western Washington have totally, totally mastered this ability to explain expectations when it comes to communication.
Brittany Keil: I was told outright that any text coming to me, or a phone call would come from a nurse or director, and it needed addressing immediately. That anything else would be an email. This was helpful to me, because I know if I got a text from, you know, the Girl Scouts, it's not just the lost and found, or an opportunity to buy pictures, it's something serious, and I was able to, alter my behavior if that happened. Thankfully, no text from the Girl Scouts, everything's been great.
Brittany Keil: Second, there's an underlying theme that you can look across this data, and it's that no single channel wins across the board.
Brittany Keil: This is something that I was surprised to see in some ways, but also really, you know, isn't surprising on another level. And the reason for that is this. We serve very diverse groups of stakeholders with very diverse groups of needs.
Brittany Keil: And families, don't just lean into one single, channel when it comes to communication. You can see that, beyond the school district web… school or district website, there's a lot of different ways that families like to receive communication. And we're gonna double down on that a little bit more in our next slide, which is about your district's app.
Brittany Keil: 50%,
Brittany Keil: Around 50% of families reported that they downloaded their school or district app and use it regularly. And this second part of the statistic is huge for me. So only 15% said that their school or district had no app, or that they haven't downloaded it.
Brittany Keil: I'll admit, I was super resistant to apps, for specific purposes. Every time a restaurant would ask me to create an app, every time something else would ask me to create an app, my first question was, why?
Brittany Keil: But, over time, and I think schools have definitely become better at this, when I realized it really was a one-stop shop, to connect directly with a brand in a space that I, you know, didn't feel was invasive, didn't, you know, I permitted, it became a space that I actually prefer.
Brittany Keil: But what do families look like, look for when it comes to the app? This is… these are the top things that they wanted. First, they want to know about upcoming events. Second, they want educational updates.
They want to know what their child is learning. And then third, update on their… updates on their child's grades. These are pretty basic. These are things that you are probably already doing in your app.
Brittany Keil: But, you know, I do think this is a really good, you know, a really good thing to reflect on as you think about practices for the next year.
Emily Simon: Yeah, and we haven't no…
Brittany Keil: Alright, so now social media. This is something that I know a lot of communicators like to talk about, and the reason for it is that social media is a total…
Brittany Keil: time sink.
Brittany Keil: So this is the channel that everybody spends the most time and energy on, and that's not just an opinion, we have data to back that up.
Brittany Keil: So, here's the thing, though. Only 2% of parents said that social media is their preferred way to hear from their school or district.
Brittany Keil: It was actually one of the least preferred channels of all, and we had a lot of niche options, okay? But social media is not it for folks.
Brittany Keil: And second, this is one of the most time-consuming things for a lot of school communicators. And while, AI, I think, has improved this, it's still a total time sink. It requires a lot of activity and a lot of manpower.
Brittany Keil: So if comms folks, you know, spend a lot of time with this, and also don't rate this as being hugely important to their jobs, families don't want to see it there either. What is the purpose of social media?
Brittany Keil: First, I'm not saying you should totally ditch your social media accounts, I don't think that that's actually a best practice, and the reason is because a lot of your community members who don't have kids in the school view social media as a way to connect with your district.
Brittany Keil: But I don't think it should be a space where you spend a lot of your comms time and energy. I think instead you can take all of that wonderful energy and put it into places where families actually want to receive and engage with your district.
Emily Simon: Yeah, Brittany, in the chat, Lucy just shared that she views school social media as the tool for recruitment and retention, so more so for, like, staff and families, for that non-essential information, I couldn't agree more there.
Emily Simon: Alright, another honesty take.
Emily Simon: you guys are getting the real glimpse into my life, right? So we already saw my email, over 100,000 unread. Here's a picture of my text inbox.
Emily Simon: my voice calls look just as messy. Didn't include a screenshot there, because I don't need you calling my friends and family. But when we look at my text message, I think what Brittany, you know, started to share is.
Emily Simon: What I highlighted there is actually a text from my school-age district, child's district.
Emily Simon: So, starting to share the summer need-to-knows.
Emily Simon: It's buried in between, my neighbor asking me if I wanted his slushy machine that he got for Hanukkah that he's not going to use, and a group chat with 3 of my girlfriends. It is competing for my attention and noise within my text inbox. What's even more, Brittany, if you click play on that video.
Emily Simon: This is my Facebook feed, you guys, and as we watch.
Emily Simon: you'll see that I have a group post, an ad, a reel that's not relevant to me, another ad.
Emily Simon: Another group post, more stories that aren't super relevant, another ad.
Emily Simon: And then a post from a friend.
Emily Simon: I do follow my district and other, you know, education-type companies on Facebook. None of them showed up in that feed. The majority of that feed was…
Emily Simon: And on top of the ads, it was my personal friends, because social media was initially created to establish and create relationships with the people that you already know.
Emily Simon: And so I… when we think about…
Emily Simon: The state of communication today, and all of the channels that we have at our fingertips.
Emily Simon: There's a couple things that I want you to think about as being true. Your messages are important.
Emily Simon: That district message about summer for Montgomery County Public Schools, that is important to me.
Emily Simon: I didn't see it because it was competing for my attention. I'm a working mother, right? I have a lot going on. I'm barely keeping up with my personal threads, let alone the threads in my text inbox from my school district.
Emily Simon: And so what's also true here is even if your audience wants that message, right, I want to stay connected to my child's school. I'm an educator, for goodness sakes. I know the value of that. I want to be engaged.
Emily Simon: That is… that barrier is still very difficult for me, even as an engaged parent, because it's getting buried, and it's competing for noise across everything else that I have going on within my life.
Emily Simon: And so when I think about what Brittany was sharing in terms of the research of, like, the district app or website, or the mobile app, like.
Emily Simon: That is so true for me. If I could have just a single app, one place to go for my information, then the idea of relevance and timing is less important, because I already have one place to go when I'm ready to consume that information, right? And so it's almost removing some of those barriers.
Emily Simon: So before we move on to the third part of what makes resonance work, I want you to take away that
Emily Simon: Just because you know it's a channel that your audience is on, be it your families, your prospective families, or your staff.
Emily Simon: Doesn't mean that they're going to see it.
Emily Simon: And so really ask yourself when you're sending information and selecting the channels, will the audience who you're intending that message for, are they going to be able to find it?
Emily Simon: Are they going to be able to see it, or is it going to get sandwiched and buried across their day-to-day to-do list?
Emily Simon: emails, Facebook ads, etc.
Brittany Keil: Absolutely. I, you know, I'm a millennial, and so I remember the early days of social media when we had Instagram and Facebook, and they were fun places where you engage with people you knew, but these days, it's not that. They exist, I'm pretty sure, just to sell me things, or, you know, make money for influencers who are trying to sell me ideas or concepts. I'm pretty sure Instagram, at this point, only exists
Brittany Keil: To make me feel bad about the crafts I don't do with my children. Just not a crafty mom, okay? I try, but yeah. And so I don't get on it a lot, to be honest.
Brittany Keil: Alright, let's keep going.
Emily Simon: So we've talked so far about how to make our content relevant.
Emily Simon: We've talked about the importance of selecting the right channel for the right audience. The third puzzle piece in making our messages land is language. So, Britt, what do we know about the science behind language?
Brittany Keil: So, this is one of my absolute favorite topics. I've got to admit, like, I was not a linguistics major, because I didn't know what linguistics was when I applied for college, honestly, but had I, had I known, this might be my career. It is just that fascinating.
Brittany Keil: So to kick us off, I want to introduce you to some research about EduSpeak, and if you're not familiar with the term, which is in itself jargon, it's the language that educators use amongst each other, and sometimes with external stakeholders as well.
Brittany Keil: So this research is from Dr. Hilary Schulman of Ohio State, and I think it explains a lot about what we just talked about. So she found that when people read jargon-heavy text, they report less interest in the topic.
Brittany Keil: And not just confusion, but general disengagement. And that holds true even when a definition is available, just to hover away. So she put it… she puts it like this. People hear stuff they don't understand, and rather than ask for clarification, they say, nope, not for me.
And that's really the heart of it.
Brittany Keil: So, I think this is really critical, because in schools, especially, we are really bad at falling into buzzwords. I did this as an educator, I think that every single school message almost I've ever read includes some sort of edges speak that were I not an educator or somebody who has a lot of teacher friends, I might not know about.
Brittany Keil: And yet, still. I taught at the high school level, and when I enrolled my daughter in kindergarten, there was a whole slew of new words and languages and concepts that I had never heard of that were dropped in casual conversations, so that I was like, what? Is this something I'm missing? Is this something Washington-specific?
I swear, every single person in my entire community seemed to know what Higgerty was.
Brittany Keil: If you don't know what it is, apparently it's a reading curriculum, but even my kid came home and was like, I'm a Hagerty hero! And I was like, okay, what is this? I don't know. It's especially confusing because, there's a teacher whose last name is Haggerty, and so I was like, oh, maybe this is some program she's doing.
Nope, I totally missed it.
Brittany Keil: And even though I'm somebody who's a researcher, who's education-adjacent, when I heard these, when I hear these kinds of concepts, I just kind of glaze over. I'm busy, I have two kids, I feel like I'm always a hot mess express. When I was a teacher, I always wondered, like, why can't these parents get it together? They always seem so confused.
Brittany Keil: Nope, I'm that parent now. It's a lot to do, and I'm always short on time and short on attention.
Brittany Keil: So related to that, there's this concept called the curse of knowledge, which is maybe one of my favorite terms, and I hope you carry it forward. So it's the idea that once you know a term, it becomes almost impossible to know what it was like to not know it.
Brittany Keil: For example, like, if you look at this example, so students receiving Tier 2 MTSS supports will have progress monitored bi-weekly.
Brittany Keil: This is so full of jargon, and yet, if you are in education, if you are somebody who's dealt with this before, it's totally readable, it makes so much sense.
Brittany Keil: However, families who have not, or, you know, don't pay as much attention, including myself, get way more from the plain language explanation, which is students will be getting extra reading help, or sorry, students getting extra reading help will be checked on every two weeks.
Brittany Keil: Remember, you are not, going against families who are not interested. This is science of disengagement. When we see things we don't understand, we glaze over it, we don't ask for help. So you want to remove that barrier as much as possible.
Brittany Keil: So, what can you actually do? I've got 4 things, and these is an actual, you know, an excellent screenshot to put into any sort of AI that you use for communication, because it can be really helpful. First, you need to name the jargon before you say it. And I think acknowledging that it's jargon is a great way to go.
Brittany Keil: Something like, here's a term you'll see often this year, and then define the term. Second, you need to define the terms inline, rather than relying on a hover over, or everybody's favorite, a glossary somewhere on the website.
Brittany Keil: Most readers don't click. If you look at your website analytics for your glossary, I think it'll tell you a story there.
Brittany Keil: And then third, it's a great idea to test… sorry, test your messages on someone outside of education entirely. I think a teenager is perfect for this. I've got a 14-year-old nephew, his name is Aiden.
Brittany Keil: He… if I were to test a message on him, he would be like… he would tell me so quickly, I don't know what this is about. If it were full of jargon, if it were full of something that just elevated language that was inaccessible to him.
Brittany Keil: And if, you know, your person outside of education stumbles or has questions for you, know that they're asking those questions because they trust you and they're giving you feedback. Your families won't bother, they'll just glaze over it.
Brittany Keil: And then fourth, when some terms are generally unavoidable, this happens a lot in special education, which was my, you know, wonderful vocation, IEPs, 504s, all of those things, explain them plainly the first time they appear, and don't be afraid to repeat that every time you, surface the term in a new kind of communication. Your families aren't going to remember that you defined IEP in…
Brittany Keil: You know, a newsletter two months ago.
Emily Simon: Alright, so let's put what we, just heard to practice. I'm laughing now at this…
Emily Simon: example that I pulled together after Brittany shared her story of her text, spam around lunch balances. Ironically, this example is around lunch.
Emily Simon: So, here's a typical message, that might be sending out, maybe automatically from some of the systems that your district uses, but you likely have the settings available to make adjustments.
Emily Simon: So, the message as is, lunch accounts should be funded through the district portal prior to meal service. In the chat.
Emily Simon: share how you would improve it. Apply some of those principles that Brittany just talked about, and let's see what we can come up with for an improved
Emily Simon: message.
Emily Simon: And in the chat, I don't know if you all have the same settings as we have on the side, but we can select to change to send it to everyone versus just hosts and panelists. So if you have that option, go ahead and send it to everyone so we can all see, each other's responses.
Emily Simon: And if it just says host and panelists, no worries. We'll dig into those settings after for next time.
Emily Simon: Brittany, I'm curious how this example lands in terms of the ones that you get.
Brittany Keil: Rosemary ate breakfast again because she wanted to get a granola bar. That's what I should say.
Emily Simon: Amazing.
Brittany Keil: They have a, like, grab-and-go option, which I really appreciate, but it, for the longest time, she thought it was free.
Brittany Keil: And… I don't know. I mean, she said… I don't know, she might have… she might have been pulling my leg, I'm not so sure. It came with, like, a granola bar, a yogurt, and trail mix with chocolate in it.
Brittany Keil: And an orange, and what could be better for a kindergarten?
Emily Simon: Exactly, I was like, how do you expect a kindergartner to walk past that? I would take it as an adult.
Brittany Keil: Alright, should we go ahead and go on?
Emily Simon: Let's go ahead and see how we can improve this. So here's an example of a way to improve it, right? To buy lunch, please add money to your child's account in, and then name the system, right? Your parents, again, are busy.
They might not remember exactly, where do I go to add lunch balance to?
Emily Simon: And then define when it needs to be done. So in this case, I imagine this was, you know, a…
Emily Simon: back-to-school message that was being sent. So, hey, remember to do this by August 25th, which is the first day of school. And then, to learn more, click here. And then providing a way to get additional support, directions, or step-by-step, for how to do so.
Emily Simon: Oh, I love this. Teresa in, Montegalia County in West Virginia says they have free lunches at this time, so this is not something that they have to even worry about. Incredible. But I appreciate you taking a stab there, Teresa, at how you would rewrite it.
Brittany Keil: Absolutely. I am a big fan of free lunch, absolutely.
Emily Simon: The key takeaway, and this is a mantra that I live by in so many ways, and I think is really applicable when we think about the science of language in terms of getting a message to land, is clear is kind.
Emily Simon: Clear is kind. And so the ways that you can kind of analyze your message to see, is it clear, is by asking, how will this message translate?
Emily Simon: Right? When we think about the English language, we know it's not the easiest, it's not the most clear-cut. A lot of things don't translate in a perfect world across all of the other languages that might be present in your district, so that's a good filter, and we'll talk about translation in just a second. And then the second is, is it on a 5th grade reading level?
Emily Simon: And again, that allows for if English is a second language, it's accessible. Also allows for those families who might not have higher education.
Emily Simon: And it also just ensures that it's clear. If your 10-year-old cannot understand how to action on that message, it's very likely you'll have parents and some families who can't as well.
Brittany Keil: Yes. Can it be action, you know, taken action on by a, you know, postpartum family who's getting 3 hours of sleep a night? Which was totally me last year at the beginning of kindergarten.
Brittany Keil: So, let's talk about translations, because we can't talk about the science of language without acknowledging that we are almost all multilingual districts at this point. So I want to be very clear that this isn't about something that any district is doing wrong, but rather a way that we can do things better together.
Brittany Keil: So a lot of districts handle multilingual communication really well, but there's one common pattern that we see a lot, and that's that, especially in informal or smaller communications.
Brittany Keil: A family member, often a bilingual kid, is used to translate school messages for their parents. And I will say, I feel like this has gotten a lot better at the district level, but there are still things that fall through the cracks.
Brittany Keil: And this isn't usually a decision that anyone makes on purpose, it just happens naturally because someone in the house is comfortable with English, but there's actual research about this, from the… from the government, and this is called language brokering, and it shows that kids who take on translation,
Brittany Keil: Are more likely to report more stress, and a shift in the normal parent-student relationship.
Brittany Keil: So a lot of what the kids are translating is about themselves, so grades, behavior, things that they don't really want to talk about with their parents, and conversations they shouldn't necessarily be the leader on.
Brittany Keil: So, when we think about this, we also want to, you know.
Brittany Keil: caution districts away from using untrained staff as informal interpreters. Not only is this unfair to them, this also puts them in a spot where they are in a different relationship, than they might necessarily have to be.
Brittany Keil: So, what is the best practice here? Automatic translation. So, when you have
Brittany Keil: a message that is not automatically translated. First, it is going to have to be translated by someone who may not be qualified, and second, that means there's going to be a time gap with the translation. If you have something that's urgent but needs to be translated, they're not going to read it until they can have somebody translate it for them.
Brittany Keil: Automatic translation solves both the problems at once, it shows up in their inbox in their native language, in a language that they're comfortable with, and no kid ends up in the middle.
Brittany Keil: Alright, and now to Part 4, the science of content.
Brittany Keil: So, I want to look at a couple of messages side by side. Check out our newsletter on updates happening this month, versus bus routes changes begin Monday. Check your email tonight for your child's new pickup time.
Brittany Keil: Which of these would you actually open as a parent? And the same thing with celebrating our amazing staff. This month versus report cards are coming home on Friday. Notice there's a pattern between the ones that are more likely to be opened.
First, they are specific, they have a date, an action, and a consequence if you don't do it.
Brittany Keil: So that makes something feel like it should be read now and not later.
Brittany Keil: And this pattern holds up in our external relationships, or sorry, research, too. So when we examined how families prioritize message they receive, specific, action-oriented, time-anchored content consistently rose to the top ahead of general or celebratory updates.
Brittany Keil: And it doesn't mean that families don't enjoy your celebratory updates, it just means that they don't prioritize them above other messages, and you don't want to crowd out time-sensitive messages with celebration.
Brittany Keil: So, this is a useful filter to apply before sending anything. What does the family actually need to know, decide, or do, and why and by when do they need to do it? If you can't answer that in a single sentence, the message likely needs to be more specific.
Emily Simon: Alright, so another honesty time. We have 3 different messages here on the screen.
Emily Simon: Which message would you be most willing to engage with?
Emily Simon: I feel like I need some Jeopardy! music.
Brittany Keil: I know! I was thinking, like, I need to get…
Emily Simon: 2…
Brittany Keil: I need to get better… oh, Barrett, are you, Barrett, you got the poll going?
Emily Simon: Door number 3, we have some coming in the chat, so until the poll launches… oh, there we go. So, right now, we're just on question number one. We'll get to 2 here in a little bit. So for question number one, which message would you engage with?
Emily Simon: If you want to, jump ahead, Britt, with those that have already come in through the chat, I feel that the poll likely is similar.
Emily Simon: It is 3, right? Right. And I think what's true when we look at all of these messages, all of these are sharing the same update.
Emily Simon: Two, keep it short and focused, which we know is kind of king here in content, but only one, which is number three, drives that clarity, specificity, and that so what play. And that's really what's going to drive that action.
Emily Simon: These are the body of the message, Kevin. So he asked, were these subject lines, or were these the body of the message? We're on the content pillar, so we're very much thinking about the core messages itself. And so option 3 here is going to best
Emily Simon: prompt and encourage engagement with those recipients. And so when you think about, as you analyze and start applying these principles.
Emily Simon: The filter that I like to use is…
Emily Simon: Does my update require an action?
Emily Simon: And if it does, have I made that very clear with those specifics? Have I kind of given the how, the by when, and that so what, or that consequence, right? To ensure that we are driving action quickly upon that message.
Brittany Keil: So, this takes us to the final part of our, series, or sorry, of our series, which is the relationship side of things. I'm gonna quickly go through some research, because we're running a little short on time, which is kind of impressive to me. I'm a fast talker, and so usually at the end of a webinar, I'm like, oh, dang it, I should have slowed down. But things are… yeah, it's going great today.
Brittany Keil: So, this may surprise you, it may not, it depends. So traditional research has shown that principals have the highest levels of trust within a district, and while this doesn't negate that, our research found that teachers were, the people that
Brittany Keil: that families trusted most to serve valuable information. So this doesn't mean that the rest of these personas, don't and shouldn't share valuable information, but it does mean that any strategy you have around communication shouldn't leave out your teachers.
Brittany Keil: So, usually the pushback I hear, whenever I present this is, like, oh, I don't want to add another thing to teachers' plate. And while that's valid, we actually have accompanying research that shows that this isn't anything extra to their plate. This is actually part of what teachers view to be their jobs. Just like I viewed, even as a very novice, naive teacher, communication as part of my job, your teachers already see themselves as a brand ambassador for
Brittany Keil: for your district.
Brittany Keil: What they don't have, often, is the training to make sure that they are staying on brand and communicating within your priorities and within your best practices. As you can see here, a quarter of teachers receive, report receiving no training whatsoever.
Brittany Keil: So, a couple of best practices here to integrate into your strategy when it comes to relationships. First, your communication should be, as much as possible, two-way. Who is a good person to engage in this two-way relationship? Teachers.
Teachers want to build relationships with their families.
Brittany Keil: And, this is another way for them to, you know, naturally build these relationships in a way that is good for student outcomes.
Brittany Keil: Second, your communication should always be inclusive.
Brittany Keil: By this point, I think we all know that most families use smartphones as their primary communication devices. And yet, I still run into communication all the time that is not optimized for cell phones. PDFs is something that, like, man, talk about lingering and district websites. It's been a best practice, I feel like, for a while to not use PDFs, and yet they're so hard to let go.
And I will say, like, I just saw
Brittany Keil: post in my neighborhood Facebook group of a mom who's taking it upon herself to make PDFs of all the lunch menus this year, for people to print on their, refrigerators. I don't even know what to think about that. I don't know. We have a lunch shop.
I'm pretty happy with it.
Brittany Keil: And then third, your communication, when possible, should be consolidated. This is another point in favor of having a two-way app that you're able to use, but families report juggling six to seven different teachers' apps, and they admit that they lose track of different communication. So if you can build your communication into one platform, this is doing huge, help for your families, so that they don't have to juggle between different platforms, looking
Brittany Keil: For a message that they should be able to easily find.
Brittany Keil: So, application time. Oh, yeah, go ahead.
Emily Simon: Application time. So, Barrett, if you want to relaunch the poll, this is part two.
Emily Simon: So, I think an important part of putting all of the pieces of what makes the message resonate together is the idea of who is the sender? Who is that message coming from? And so, when we think about these different messages, they kind of go in order, one at the top, two in the middle, three at the bottom.
Emily Simon: Who do you think should be the author, or the sender of that message? You can go ahead and play that little matching game there, test your…
Emily Simon: your knowledge here a little bit, make sure your summer brains are still triggering on all cylinders. And so, while we wait for those to come in, I think
Emily Simon: the takeaways here is the messenger has to match the moment, right? All of these messages are clear and specific. They follow, kind of, all of those other principles that Brittany has already laid out for us. The last puzzle piece is
Emily Simon: These are likely only going to really land or be acted upon in the way that we need if that sender also aligns to that message and expectation.
Emily Simon: And so, if you click one more, Brittany will go ahead and tell you where and who these messages should have come from.
Emily Simon: So that first one, it's very personal. It's specific to a grade level. It's specific to something that's happening tomorrow, but it's very personable and a little urgent. And so that is best going to come from your child… from the child's teacher, right?
I am a parent. If I see a note that
Emily Simon: sitting in my inbox, or a message coming from my child's teacher, I'm opening it, because I'm like, either my child is in trouble.
Emily Simon: Or something is needed from me immediately for… to support her learning.
Emily Simon: The second one is going to best come from a district leader, either the communications director or a superintendent, depending on how your district is structured, but that's a more formal message, and so that sender needs to align to that message type.
Emily Simon: And then the last one is going to be best suited to come from a principal, right? It's talking about the strong first half of the year, when to expect report cards, and we want that to feel personable, but still formal enough to acknowledge the successes of the year that we might not have as if that same message came from the individual teacher.
Brittany Keil: Alright, so to wrap things up, I wanted to give a, like, 5-point, you know, checklist that you can go through with any communication. First, you want to check if something is in the right channel. Second, you want to make sure that you've got the right language, the right specificity, voice, and then balance.
Brittany Keil: I've actually built, a good script that you can upload into an AI if you would like. Feel free to email me, and I'm happy to share that. But all of these things together help you build resonance.
Brittany Keil: These are the science, and the best practices that will help you make sure that families, A, open their messages and take the actions that you need them to.
Brittany Keil: For me, it's super, affirming that, you know, this type of communication is science-backed, because that makes it so easy for school districts to share, I shouldn't say easy, I should say actionable, for school districts to share and move forward with best practices.
Brittany Keil: So, that is what Emily and I have today. This was a lot of fun. I feel like this is a little bit of an intense summer school course, but that's alright.
Brittany Keil: We probably don't have time for questions today, but I encourage you to please reach out, brittany@schoolceo.com, and, Emily at… or emily.simon@apptegy.com. I'll include our email addresses and the follow-up information so you can reach out for more.
Brittany Keil: And then, last, we'd love to see you, at SchoolCEO Conference. So, this and more, or content just like this, and content that's a little bit deeper, we're going to be going into all of that, this fall in Dallas. It's going to be fantastic. Almost every city has a direct flight into Dallas, and nothing would make us happier than to see you there.
Brittany Keil: So thank you, this was fantastic. I can't wait to, hear, your results as you play with some of these best practices. And man, if you're not back in school yet, have a great rest of your summer.
Emily Simon: Yeah, and we hope to see you in September. Thanks, everyone!
