December 17 – Jeff Borland came to one of his students with an idea in January 2021. The Deering High School computer science and statistics teacher wanted to create a better way for Portland teachers to communicate with multilingual families.
“Deering is a very diverse school; about 50 languages are spoken. There were platforms that allowed us to connect with families with translations, but it seemed like they all had limitations,” Borland said. “It seemed like it could be better.”
He got his computer whiz student Aidan Blum Levine on board and together they created ReachMyTeach, a website that allows teachers to write messages in English that are automatically translated into parents’ preferred language and delivered via email, text or WhatsApp. Any responses will be translated into English.
The program supports more than 200 languages, but is also a convenient hub for communicating with English-speaking families.
It is now universal in Portland Public Schools, for both teachers and the district office.
Over the past four years, ReachMyTeach has experienced enormous growth. More than two million posts were shared on the platform in November and it is now in use in 40 Maine school districts, nine states and one international school.
LOCAL ORIGIN
Borland enjoyed programming on the side and knew that his student Blum Levine, now a senior at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, had largely exhausted his college options and had some free time. They wanted to create a better, more consolidated platform for teachers and parents to communicate in different languages.
As a teacher, Borland was aware of the district’s growing multilingual population. In 2021, there were 1,484 English learners in Portland schools, and by 2024 that number had grown to 2,002, more than a quarter of all students.
Borland and Blum Levine coded the site during the February holidays and presented it to Deering administrators in March. An early version was put into use that spring in high school.
In the summer of 2021, Borland and Blum Levine received an investment from the education company Faria Education Group. Borland took six months off from teaching to develop the program.
Borland said ReachMyTeach’s local origins were integral to its early development. An early change was adding a WhatsApp option, as Deering teachers said it was necessary to reach all parents. WhatsApp is a free app that does not require cell phone data and is widely used outside the United States and by immigrants in the country.
“We were constantly adding and adding that spring until it was more robust. It literally all came from comments and feedback from teachers, and from families,” he said.
‘GAME CHANGER’
Kailen Kennedy is a kindergarten teacher at Presumpscot Elementary School and previously taught elementary school English Language Learners. Kennedy has been using ReachMyTeach since the fall of 2022 and describes it as a “game changer.” She said she previously had to rely on interpreters, which sometimes took days.
“I think it affected the kind of relationships I had with families,” she said. “I feel like I can now reach everyone at once.”
ReachMyTeach is connected to the school’s attendance software, making mass emails from parents much smoother.
Kennedy said there were some growing pains, but the product has improved dramatically over time and the makers are very open to feedback.
Now Kennedy uses it for everything from organizing conferences to telling parents to send their kids to school wearing snow pants. She said just under half of her 21 students come from families that rely on translations, and ReachMyTeach improves equity and access.
“It has leveled the playing field with who we communicate with and how we communicate with them,” she said.
It also saves time.
“Before ReachMyTeach, reaching families was a more difficult task because there were so many more steps involved,” said Chris Pirkl, English teacher at King Middle School.
Pirkl said the software has revolutionized multilingual parent communications. Previously, he said, before sending a mass email to parents, he had to manually run it through Google Translate six or seven times to get different translations.
Pirkl was part of the beta testing for the new ReachMyTeach phone app and has been using a new feature that allows teachers to send bulk emails that are auto-completed with student names. The new version also suggests better word choices that will translate better.
Kennedy and Pirkl both said they are proud that the product was created by fellow Portland teachers.
“They built this thing that is not only popular and successful, but ultimately just useful and practical and meets an existing need,” Pirkl said.
EXPANSION
Helen Cohen was a fellow teacher at Deering High who taught history and English language students before joining the ReachMyTeach team as CEO in June 2022. Borland returned to the classroom, Blum Levine continued his studies at university and Cohen took over.
While ReachMyTeach has become ubiquitous in Portland schools, it is also available in dozens of other school districts. The company also works with a number of non-profit organizations that have similar translation needs for schools.
“What works well for multilingual families works very well for English-speaking families,” says Cohen. “And if you can have everything in one place, no one slips through the cracks.”
The platform is still growing. The company recently hired its first full-time salesperson and continues to make major product improvements, such as partnering with the company Lexikeet Language Services to provide live interpreters for districts that do not have translators on staff.
ReachMyTeach uses Google Translate for many of its translations, as well as other machine translation services. But the company is now working with native speakers to improve the smoothness of translation, especially for languages like Lingala and Somali, which aren’t well suited to my machine translation.
Blum Levine said it’s cool to observe from a distance how his younger sister and parents use the product now.
“We really just made this to do something, and we thought maybe a few people would use it. And the feedback we got, and how quickly it grew, was amazing,” Blum Levine said.
Borland only teaches part-time these days so he can stay involved with the company. Blum Levine is graduating from MIT a semester early and said he will be working on the platform “pretty full-time” for the next six months. Although he is now focused on ReachMyTeach, Blum Levine says the experience has prepared him for future endeavors.
“I learned a lot, not just focusing on the coding skills side, but also looking at how to create a successful startup in a more holistic way,” he said. “If I had an idea in the future that I was excited about, I feel like it has been an invaluable experience, learning skills that are useful for that.”
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