Effective student motivation is a neglected art. The Family & School Time Capsule Project is an 18-year-old system working to end such neglect. It uses ancient priceless components, family roots & goal setting, constantly improving student motivation, confidence, & self-image!
Part 1, The Family & School Time Capsule Mindset
Beginning in Pre-K, and for each grade thereafter through high school graduation, each parent, grandparent, or other adult involved in the life of a student, should be invited to write an annual letter to their student about their dreams for them, with a personal story from their life also in the letter to the student. This formula is the mindset: looking constantly forward to dreams and life goals while also looking backwards to constantly explore family stories and roots. This provides both a foundation and goals for each student to work on. (See Attachment #1 below for the first letter writing instructions.)
Each parent figure is invited to write their own individual letter to their student. Each of them represents a different family with a different history. Students are a combination of histories between 2 parents and 4 grandparents, at least 6 families and 6 family histories. Every student deserves a record of as many stories as possible about each of the 6 families, or more who went before them. Annual letters help create that priceless record.
When the letter is completed, it should immediately be read to the student by the person who wrote the letter, or read by the student themselves if they are old enough to read it. The goal is to always have time for a conversation between each letter writer and student. The student may have questions about the letter. This is the type of conversation every family wants to encourage. Phone calls are welcomed as many letter writers may live far away.
The child’s parents collect all these letters and place them into a self-addressed envelope to send to school. That envelope should have the date, the parent’s name, including phone number and email address, the child’s name, grade, the teachers name as well as the school’s name, all on the envelope, along with the family address. As older students secure their own email address and cell phone number, that information should also be on the envelope. This is the same set of information placed on every envelope to be eventually returned to a student. We do not want any letters lost.
As the letters collect, a pattern may evolve and change for each writer as parents and grandparents reflect in their letters how the students themselves are growing and changing. Students change dramatically every year from Pk through 12th grade. Those changes will now be more frequently recorded in writing with evolving goals for the student. Hopefully these observations will be documented by as many as all 6 people whose history merged to bring this student into existence. Even if only one person writes, they will be creating a powerful annual record!
Remember, before bringing any envelopes with original letters to school, you have the choice of copying every original letter so that original copy can be kept in a safe place at home. You can also make copies for each letter writer. Only the copy is necessary to send to school, but originals are welcomed as well. It is the family’s choice.
On the envelope that goes to school please put the date, the parent’s name, including phone number and email address, the child’s name, grade, the teachers name as well as the school’s name. The original letters, if you chose to keep them at home, should be placed into one envelope for each year in a very secure place in the home, hopefully even in a fire-resistant vault, like the fire-resistant Time Capsule Vault the school uses to protect these valuable documents.
The sealed envelope with the valuable copies of these letters is delivered to the school where parent or grandparent volunteers called Time Capsule Postmasters for their child’s grade, will collect, store, and retrieve these envelopes annually. They will be using the 500 to 700-pound vault in the school lobby that serves as the School Time Capsule Vault for secure storage. If you become one of the two or more Grade Time Capsule Postmaster volunteers for your child’s grade, you may be working about three days a year. Two Time Capsule Postmasters per grade are needed. One Postmaster for each 70 students in a grade is recommended if the classes are over 150 students.
As the Time Capsule Postmaster for your child’s grade, you follow them year to year through to graduation! You will have priceless time learning more about your child’s school and progress.
All students know that copies of the letters that were read to them, or that they read themselves, are stored in the School Time Capsule Vault year to year. They hopefully see the vault several times daily. It should be in a school high traffic area, maybe the school lobby. Students are hopefully reminded when they see the School Time Capsule Vault of what their parents, grandparents, and they themselves wrote. They may make new plans for their life as they think of these letters.
This mindset builds the most productive atmosphere for achieving the highest student motivation in all three types of schools serving different ages.
Part 2 Elementary School, Pre-K - 2
As you approach the school to enroll your pre-K age child you should be presented with a enough copies of Attachment #1 below to give one to each parent and grandparent, each person the family wants to write a letter to their student. See the “Invitation to write a letter to your student” page which is Attachment 1 below. This invitation extends to each of the child’s grandparents as well as other close relatives. Grandparents will quickly realize the heritage they could leave by responding to this invitation to write such a letter to their grandchild. Do you think grandparents would want to be left out of this process once they find out what is being shared?
After writing their letter to the student, each letter writer is asked to sit down with the student, or call them by phone as needed, to read to the child the letter they have written, or to listen to the student read it. Immediately after reading the letter the adult asks the child questions to know the child understands what was written. Hopefully encouraging such a discussion about family roots and life goals and dreams will make such family discussions more common.
If you are a School Time Capsule Postmaster, each year you return the year-old envelopes in the School Time Capsule Vault to each student along with copies of that year’s letter writing instructions. (See Attachment 1 below.) You also need to be certain all new parents are introduced to the project and receive the same letter writing instructions. You can have an annual event at the school where parents pick up the year-old envelopes in person along with Attachment #1. These directions with the year-old letters will remind parents of the Time Capsule Project, explaining that these are for each parent figure to first read again to their child, and then have each parent and grandparent write a new annual letter to their student. They write new letters with updated dreams and another family history story, which are also read to the student by each writer asking if the student has any questions.
The goal is for parents and grandparents to always be thinking of how their child is changing and how their dreams for them may have changed. Also, as parents focus on writing a new story from family history in each year’s letter, they will be documenting their valuable family history. Their children will grow up with a wealth of documented stories, not word-of-mouth variations that change over time in too many families. In many families too many family stories are never recorded and simply forgotten.
This annual pattern of service by a parent volunteering as their child’s Class Time Capsule Postmaster connects a parent to their child’s class, from grade to grade. It helps them know the other students in their child’s grade. Encourage parents to be Postmaster volunteers.
Part 3 – Grades 3 to 11
By third grade students themselves begin the annual process of writing their own letter to each parent and grandparent asking for a letter back. Students will ask to know the dreams the person they are writing to has for them. They will also ask for another story from family history. Attachment #2 below is suggested wording for a letter to use from 3rd grade on up through 11th grade.
Again, when students receive back letters from parents, grandparents, or anyone they have asked for a letter, they immediately read each one and talk with the letter writer about any questions they have about what was written. Such conversations around dreams for the student, and family history stories in these letters will hopefully lead to an increasingly common set of topics in family conversations. How valuable would that be for our students? In the 3rd grade is also when students begin writing an annual letter to themselves about their thoughts on each letter they have received and their own plans for their future. This priceless letter also goes into the envelope.
Letters are written annually year to year through 11th grade. The grade Time Capsule Postmasters will have to secure letters from grade schools to return to students entering middle schools, and then must secure 8th grade letters (from middle schools not doing 8th grade 10-year reunions) to return them to students entering 9th grade and high school.
Part 4 High School, 12th Grade
& Graduation
In high school for the 12th grade the focus is dreams and plans for 10 years into the future for all letters. A family history story continues to be part of every letter written to a student but now the focus is dreams for them for 10 years into the future. (See Attachment #3 below.) As these older students write an annual letter to each parent and grandparent, they can include more specific requests such as for specific family history stories to be repeated, maybe with more detail.
The 12th grade letters will remain in the High School Time Capsule Vault until the 10-year class reunion. At their 10-year reunions these young adults will present their identification to be certain letters are returned to the right students. We do not want anyone to somehow lose their letters. Identification is required to reclaim an envelope at all reunions.
The 10-year reunions can be assisted by the Postmaster volunteers for each class, but staff may need to volunteer to help reunions be consistent. The Class Postmaster Volunteers would only see one such reunion for each grade they volunteer for. As an Alumni group grows, they will be able to put on the annual 10-year reunions which the Grade Postmasters only need to attend with the box of alphabetized envelopes to return to former students for that graduation class. They could also have boxes of envelopes for older classes who had not yet picked up their letters.
At all reunions the school can ask for volunteers from the alumni attending, such as for Career Day speakers to return to the school to speak to current students when Career Day events happen at school. Imagine the power a person who was sitting in your child’s seat just 10 years earlier may have. The value of Career Day events will improve.
Part 5 The Future
Imagine if you had 14 sets of letters from each parent and grandparent for your 14 years in school. It would be rare to have all those letters, but any letters you receive would be a priceless family record! Someday you may share them with your children and grandchildren, to possibly be copied and passed on to future generations.
Sadly, it is possible some of the older letter writers may have passed away by the 10-year reunions making their letters truly priceless. While the death of an older adult may be more common, we have also had two students who passed away from accident and illness among the 1,700 students invited to the first 5 Quintanilla 8th grade reunions from 2015 until 2019. (The Covid Pandemic shut down the Project in Dallas ISD, including all reunions, starting in 2020.) Parents of the children who had died responded to the reunion invitation postcards sent out with their tragic news. They asked for, and were very thankful to be able to receive, the valuable letters that they and their child had written 10 years earlier.
(Due to the difficulty in contacting former students for 8th grade 10 year reunions, the lack of any established 8th grade 10-year reunion tradition, and the expansion of the Time Capsule Project to all grades Pre-K through 12th grade, it is recommended 8th grade 10 year reunions be optional. It is a decision to be made by each middle school. Our focus will remain on the 10-year planning letters in the 12th grade and the return of those letters at the first high school class reunion.)
Imagine how students will change during these years due to such letter writing exchanges every year. In the schools with active Time Capsule Project letter writing, we have had a firm drop in teen pregnancies, truancies, dropouts, and related behavioral issues. Family bonds strengthen. Gangs have less value for students. Student achievement has risen constantly as students plan for their futures with more self-confidence from a better knowledge of family roots and stories, and their own life goals.
The SEI, or School Effectiveness Indices, scores each year for all schools are used to verify the value of the Time Capsule Project. The SEI is described in the DISD Data Portal as “Dallas ISD's value-added measure of the academic performance of a school's students. The SEI model is an alternative to evaluating school performance with absolute measures such as passing rates. SEIs are a fairer method for determining a school's effect on student performance because they take into consideration known factors over which school personnel have no control, such as socio-economic status, language proficiency, and gender.” You can read about the SEI measure at https://mydata.dallasisd.org/SL/SD/SEI/Default.jsp. You will quickly understand why the SEI is used to measure Time Capsule Project progress in the spreadsheets documenting such progress. Study the document titled; “SEI Data 2006-2023 for 32 DISD Middle Schools, the School Time Capsule Project”, to see data proving school improvements with the Time Capsule Project, and declines in achievement when letter writing stops.
This open-source School Time Capsule Project needs formal research. Please share this with anyone planning a PhD in human behavior or education to help research happen. It will certainly lead to the publication of at least one book!
4/29/24
Bill Betzen, LMSW (Emeritus), 12-year-retired Dallas ISD middle school teacher
bbetzen@aol.com
See Attachments 1, 2, & 3 below
=========== Attachment #1 ==============
Dear Parent, Grandparent, and anyone involved with a child in pre-k through second grade.
We are writing to you to begin a tradition we hope will be followed until your child graduates from high school.
Imagine if for every year you attended school, possibly from Pre-K through graduating high school, you received letters from each parent and grandparents, as well as other involved relatives, to you about their dreams for you. Each letter also included another story from their family history. Would your life have changed?
Every human comes from a minimum of six families: 2 parents and 4 grandparents. For many reasons one or more of those 6 individuals may be missing, and/or other relatives and family friends involved. The more stories a child can collect, and the more stories other family members and friends can fill in, the better.
Obviously, the letters you write will have to be simple for the younger child and will gain details and facts as your child grows. The goal is to get the process started so your child knows more each year about the family histories they are part of, and about the dreams in your family for their future.
Once completed each letter writer will read their letter with the child and be ready for any questions they may have. Hopefully this will become a valuable annual process as your child and you each learn more about each other with each annual letter.
A parent should collect the letters to place them into an envelope that is sent to school. That envelope should have the date, grade, school, teacher, and student’s name on the outside along with the parent’s name, including phone number and email and home address, all on the envelope. We must have it well documented how to get this valuable envelope back to the family.
Think of these letters during the year as to what you can write next year. Explore family history to add more such priceless stories each year.
Ask the Family & School Time Capsule Postmaster for your child’s class, or the teacher, any questions you may have.
=========== Attachment # 2 ============
Attachment #2 for 3rd through 11th grade (Suggested wording to be edited as needed)
Invitation for each parent, grandparent, or other involved adult, to respond to the letter now written by your student asking for a letter back.
Dear Parent, Grandparent, and anyone with a child in 3rd through 11th grade.
We are beginning, or continuing, a tradition hopefully you were able to be involved with for your student in earlier grades. Starting in the 3rd grade we are taking advantage of your students’ writing ability. With these instructions you should also receive a letter from your student asking for a letter from you to them about your dreams for them. They will also be asking for a story from your family history.
Imagine if you had received such letters every year you attended school. Every human comes from a minimum of six families: 2 parents and 4 grandparents. For many reasons one or more of those 6 individuals may be missing, and other adults may be important in a child’s family. The more stories a child can collect, and the more stories other family members can fill in for the missing branches of the family, the better.
With each passing year the letters you write can be more detailed with more facts as your student grows. The goal is to constantly improve the process. Your child should know more each year about the families they are part of, and about the dreams in their family for them.
Once completed your student will immediately read your letter and hopefully do it with you present (either in person or by phone) so they can ask you any questions they may have. Hopefully this will become a valuable annual process as your child and you each learn more about each other.
In the 12th grade there will be one major change. All letters will focus on dreams 10 years into the future. What are your dreams for your student 10 years from now? These 12th grade letters will remain in the Family & School Time Capsule Vault in the school for 10 years.
Each year the previous year’s envelope will be brought home by your child to be stored in a safe place. Think of these letters during the year as to what you can write next year. Explore family history to add more such priceless stories each year.
Ask the Family & School Time Capsule Postmaster for your child’s class, or the teacher, any questions you may have.
=========== Attachment # 3 ============
Attachment #3 for 12th grade (Suggested wording to be edited as needed)
Invitation for each parent, grandparent, or other involved adult, to respond to the letter from their high school student asking for a letter back. The focus changes for you to plan dreams for the student 10-years into the future
Dear Parent, Grandparent, and anyone with a 12th grade student in our school,
We are continuing, a tradition hopefully you were are able to be involved with for your student in earlier grades. With these instructions you should receive a letter from your student asking for a letter from you to them about your dreams for them 10 years from now. They will also be asking for a story from your family history.
Imagine if for every year you attended school you received letters from each parent and each of your grandparents about their dreams for you. Each letter also included another story from their family history. Every human comes from a minimum of six families: 2 parents and 4 grandparents. For many reasons one or more of those 6 individuals may be missing, and other adults may be important in a child’s family. The more stories a child can collect, and the more stories other family members can fill in, the better.
Once completed your student will immediately read your letter, and hopefully do it with you present (either in person or by phone) so they can ask any questions they may have. Hopefully this will become a valuable annual process as your child and you each learn more about each other.
Your child will again be bringing all letters received to school where they will prepare a self-addressed envelope. The return address used should be an address that hopefully will still be in the family in 10 years. It is strongly recommended you also include the address of a relative who is planning to be at their address over 10 years. Also, place email addresses and cell phone numbers on the envelope. We want to be certain we can find you in 10 years to return this priceless envelope!
Your child will again be writing a letter to themselves about the letters they have received and about their own goals for 10 years into the future. All these final letters with dreams 10 years into the future will go into this final self-addressed envelope.
The 12th grade envelopes will remain in the Family & School Time Capsule Vault for 10 years. At that time your adult child will have their first 10-year high school class reunion and receive back these 10-year-old letters from the vault.
Ask the Family & School Time Capsule Postmaster for your child’s class, or the teacher, any questions you may have.
