The StudentMotivation.org Project will dramatically improve a school to be one of the best in the district within one year if fully implemented. Only one Language Arts Class a year is needed for this change. Students use Letter Request Forms to do the homework needed to request the valuable letters from each parent, grandparent, or other close relative. These Letter Request Forms are for letters to students from the age of 4 through 2nd grade, another form for use by students from 3rd grade to 11th grade requesting letters, and the final form used by 12th graders to request their letters from each close adult in their family about their dreams for the student in 10 years. On the menu of the StudentMotivation.org website you will find a link to "Handouts" and the 5 forms needed, in both Spanish and English. They can easily be printed out, and changed if the school wants, to run this project from Pre-Kindergarten through graduation and even the 10-year Class Reunions.
The Project History from 2005 to January of 2025 helps anyone understand within 10 minutes why the Project works. It shows the increasingly rapid improvements in student achievement from the Project, especially since 2016. Project development lost 4 years due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, but the Pandemic helped document the power of the Project as the SEI scores dropped when letters were not being written. That is documented below.
This Pk-12, volunteer-driven, open-source, free-to-use, StudentMotivation.org Project can make any school better than the majority of current schools within just one year! Within Dallas ISD, as schools that begin full Project implimentation gather at the top of the SEI score listings, those schools not using the Project will be left behind, inside the group having the generally lower SEI scores.
The StudentMotivation.org Project started in 2005 as the Quintanilla School Time-Capsule Project. It started with 8th graders in this under performing, high poverty middle school, writing letters to themselves about their goals for 10-years into their future. They placed their letters into a large "Time-Capsule Vault" in the school lobby, on a shelf for their class. Their letters stayed there until their 10-year 8th grade class reunion. All the letters written 2005 through 2015 were 10-year into the future letters, not read again for 10-years. Slowly a goal-focused mentality expanded throughout the school. Within 10 years Quintanilla was the highest performing of the 32 middle schools in DISD based on their achieving the highest School Effectiveness Indices (SEI) score. Before the Covid-19 Pandemic shut down of the Project in 2020, Quintanilla was able to have five 8th-grade Class 10-year Reunions, from 2015 through 2019. They were wonderful events!The two Project goals were always to increase student academic achievement and to increase high school graduation rates. Both goals started to improve, but the improvements, unknown to us, were slow. (Prior to 2017 we did not understand how slow!) We still celebrated the improvements that were being documented at that time, not realizing until 2017 that much more rapid improvements were possible.In 2010 Sunset High School Principal Tony Tovar noticed that Quintanilla students were consistently achieving better than students from Greiner, the other middle school. He investigated, discovered the Time Capsule Project, and immediately had a Sunset Time Capsule Vault installed in the old 1920's circular large phone booth on the first floor at Sunset. Greiner Middle School also heard what Quintanilla was doing and started their own Time Capsule Project as well.Sunset Seniors & Greiner 8th graders began the annual letter writing tradition planning their 10-year goals in writing. The extra improvement at both schools began to happen, but still only slowly compared to what we now know is possible.We now know that with only 8th graders, & then 12th graders, writing letters, the intense benefit of focusing on roots and goals was not fully benefitting either school's full enrollment of students in all grades.Following recommendations from staff in 2010, hoping to accelerate academic improvements with more positive self images, the writing of letters by parents to students about their dreams for their child was started. The Quintanilla principal began writing a letter to all 8th grade parents asking them to write about their dreams for their child, and including a family history story in their letter. But never more than 30% of students received such valuable letters! The focus on family roots was starting in the Project, but again the progress was slow, especially as we now understand. In 2016 then Ms Niki Lincoln (now Mrs. Niki Lincoln Goff) was the Quintanilla Language Arts Coach. She came up with 2 brilliant ideas that dramatically accelerated all student achievement progress! First, she had students write their own letter to each parent, grandparent, and close relative, asking each for a letter back about their dreams for them, and a family history story. The letter writing to parents by the principal to ask for letters was stopped!
Second, she had this same letter writing done by all students in all grades!Immediately the percentage of students getting such valuable letters from the adults in their family increased from 30% to 80%! Teachers had tears of joy for their students! Family involvement increased for all students. With all grades exchanging letters with family members about dreams for their future, the roots and goals focus saturated all students and their families! Everyone became better grounded in their own family history in the process! Mrs. Niki Lincoln Goff is to be congratulated as bringing about the greatest imrovements in the 20-year history of the now more accurately renamed The StudentMotivation.org Project. It is no longer called the School Time Capsule Project as less than 10% of letters remain in the Time Capsule Vault more than a year! Only 12th graders write letters planning 10 years into their future. Due to the weight of the other 90% of students the Project is now much more accurately called the StudentMotivation.org Project. It is accelerating student motivation that transforms a school to the best in district in only one year! Now over 90% of letters written are returned to the student within 10 months to reread to prepare for the next year's letter writing process. Only 12th graders always receive and write letters about dreams and goals 10-years into the future. Only the envelopes holding these letters remain in the high school's Time Capsule Vault for a decade. (Middle schools are always free to establish an 8th grade 10-year reunion tradition, but experience has found this to be a tradition it was difficult to establish.)
In 2016, since Quintanilla was already the highest SEI (School Effectiveness Indices) scoring middle school, we did not notice any dramatic student achievment improvement in 2016! (See https://mydata.dallasisd.org/SL/SD/SEI/Default.jsp to better understand the SEI measurement history and SEI score records in every Dallas ISD school at all levels.)The next year, 2016-17, that changed! A 5th year failing middle school was transformed to the highest performing middle school in Dallas ISD in just one year! We saw how rapidly academic improvements can happen with all students writing to each parent, grandparent, and other close relative asking for a letter about dreams for them and another story from their family history! That, combined with every student then writing a letter to themselves about each letter they received, and their own plans for their own future, changed the students! With more details on their family history, and the goals for them in the family, they became different students!The expanded all-grade, all student StudentMotivation.org Project was tried at Browne Middle School, a 5th year failing school! Browne was already getting the extra resources all such 5th year failing schools, in danger of being closed by the state, receive in Dallas ISD. The StudentMotivation.org Project had not been planned for by DISD Central Office in their attempt to keep Browne open. That oversight allowed Browne to wonderfully OVERperform, exceeding all expectations, and setting a District wide middle school SEI score record that still stands today!In 2016-17 Browne became the HIGHEST achieving middle school in all of Dallas ISD in just one year! Browne went from being a 5th year failing school to being the best middle school in DISD! Browne earned a 61.7 SEI score, a 14.2 point improvement in one year! TO THIS DAY IN 2024 THE BROWNE 61.7 SEI SCORE FOR 2017 REMAINS THE HIGHEST MIDDLE SCHOOL SEI SCORE SINCE 2008 IN DISD! (See second chart below with 2006-2023 SEI scores for 32 middle schools.)But a new Browne principal did not continue the StudentMotivation.org Project in 2018. The achievement rates dropped dramatically. (See last spreadsheet below to verify all above facts.) Within 2 years the Browne SEI score dropped 13.3 points!Then in 2020 all letter writing in all schools stopped due to the Covid Pandemic. SEI scores began to drop in all Project schools.In 2021 only one school, Rosemont Upper School, resumed the 8th grade only Project model. Their School Effectiveness Indices (SEI) score continued the slow rise until they had one of the highest SEI scores of any middle school by 2023! (Only 8th grade Rosemont students were writing letters, and only to themselves. I did not know this was happening until I saw the letters produced when examining the Rosemont Time Capsule Vault in 2024, a very pleasant surprise! Then I studied SEI scores and saw the constantly higher SEI scores that had been achieved by Rosemont during 2021-2023! - Bill)Meanwhile, Quintanilla never resumed full letter writing after the Pandemic started in 2020. This original StudentMotivation.org Project middle school. After 10 years Quintanilla had the highest SEI by 2015. After that achievement, Quintanilla continued to have either the highest or second highest SEI scores through 2019. When the Pandemic stopped the Project letter writing Quintanilla dropped 16 points within 5 years to one of the lowest SEI scores of any of the 32 middle schools by 2024, only 42.6! Only 2 other middle schools had a lower 2024 SEI score! That is the result of the Pandemic stopping of all future and family roots focused letter writing for 5 years. The loss of a such student future and family history focus is fatal for student achievement! (See all the SEI data for 32 DISD middle schools, from 2006 to 2023, in the second spreadsheet below. The data can be verified in the Dallas ISD Data Portal at https://mydata.dallasisd.org/SL/SD/SEI/Default.jsp)
The Time Capsule Project was changing as elementary schools were added. Quickly 90% of all letters being written were being returned to students and their families within 10 months for the annual letter writing. A new Project model was being born. Student motivation for all students in all grades was the true focus! This new project model was partially tried for the first time in a high school in 2023-24, at South Oak Cliff High School, aka SOC. SOC had a 2015-2023 SEI average that was the 4th lowest of all 22 comprehensive high schools in Dallas ISD. But in 2024, after using only part of the StudentMotivation.org Project, the SOC SEI score was the 3rd HIGHEST of all 22 schools! The majority of all SOC students in all grades had written letters to themselves planning their futures. The 2015-2023 SEI average score for SOC rose 9.86 SEI points to 54.0 in 2024! Only 2 of 22 comprehensive high schools had higher scores. But both of those were just barely above SOC, within just half an SEI point above SOC!If all students had also written to each parent, grandparent, and favorite relative, asking for a letter back about their dreams for the student, and telling a family history story, the changes would have accelerated dramatically more! This will happen especially if all letter writers meet with their student to read and discuss the letter together. If this had happened in 2024, SOC would have had an SEI far above all other DISD high schools for 2024!Again, to achieve maximum benefit such improvements require students be able to read the letters from their family immediately. Then they have the meeting, in person, or by phone, or by Zoom, to discuss the letter with the writer of the letter to better understand it.Hopefully SOC is in the process of achieving such dramatically improved progress this year for their 2025 SEI score. Such valuable family letters are being added by SOC for all students in 2024-25. (The first spreadsheet below is the 2015-2024 history of SEI scores for all 22 Dallas ISD comprehensive high schools. The second spreadsheet is for the 32 middle school's SEI history from 2006 through 2023.) The third document below is a Letter Request Form developed at the end of 2024 to facilitate the students asking for a letter from each parent, grandparent, or other close relative. It was recommended 5 copies of this form, in Spanish or English as needed, be sent home (next year before the Thanksgiving Break) with each student with a cover letter for parents explaining the value of the StudentMotivation.org Project. It asks their help for their student to help them identify grandparents and other relatives they want to request a letter from. They guide the completing of the form, in Spanish or English as needed, to distribute to the people identified. This is in addition to each parent receiving one of the forms to write their own letters. This also starts the StudentMotivation.org Project in a schoolIt took 20 years for the new name for the Time Capsule Project, now the StudentMotivation.org Project, to be born. The Project has been proven to be overwhelmingly effective!
We continue to anticipate future improvement ideas for the StudentMotivation.org Project. Please share any Project improvements you discover with us so all schools and students can benefit.
