 Seesaw Messages enables ongoing, flexible communication that builds a positive environment to support student learning designed with student safety and privacy first. Even though the idea isn't needed, the term family engagement can mean a lot of different things to different people. What does family engagement mean to you? Family engagement is about seeing families as assets and leveraging the unique strengths that families bring to the table. Administrators have access to settings and controls that personalize the messages experienced for their school. Click the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner of your school admin dashboard to go to school settings. Under school settings, click messages settings. Administrators can decide who students and families can create conversations with. Administrators choose if students and families can create conversations with only teachers in their class or their child's class, any teachers or administrators, or no one. Administrators adjust teacher settings to determine which students, families, teachers and administrators teachers can create conversations with. For each audience, they can select in their classes, in the school, or not at all. There are also administrator settings. When changed, these settings apply to all administrators in the CESAW school. Here are the steps you can refer back to to personalize messages for your school and your school administrator dashboard. School administrators have visibility into the messaging at their school. Go to your school administrator dashboard and click the classes, teachers, students or families tab. Click the three dots to the right of a class, teacher, student, or family member and you will see the option to view messages that classes, teachers, students or family members have received or sent. Next choose a 30-day window in which they would like to view the messages. Please note that all messages are stored but you are limited to looking at a 30-day window at one time. And here is what you will see if they choose to see a particular teacher's messages over 30 days. You can scroll through and see all conversations threads no matter the message type. Click change date in the upper right-hand corner to adjust the time frame of the messages you would like to view. To begin messaging with your school, you will click on the messages icon at the top of your school administrator dashboard. There are two types of conversations you can create. An announcement is a one-way message, member names are hidden and members cannot reply in a conversation thread. Administrators use announcements to send school-wide reminders or information that teachers, students, and families do not need to reply to. For example, administrators may send a reminder about the book fair or another event taking place at school. A conversation is either a one-on-one message or a group message which shows member names and allows all members to reply in the same message thread. To create a message, click on the paper pencil icon and choose either new announcement or new conversation. To make your messages more engaging, click the green add button to add an attachment using any of CSAL's multimodal tools. Administrators, teachers, students, and family members can filter messages to make it easier to view announcements or conversations they sent or received or view messages associated with certain classes. It is now easier to keep your messages inbox-organized. Administrators, teachers, students, and family members can now hide message threads in their inbox that are no longer needed or relevant. To hide a message thread, just hover over a message thread in your inbox. A three-dot menu will appear, click on it, then select hide message thread. To view hidden message threads, just tap the filtering option and then tap hidden. All of your hidden message threads will appear. Go on hide a message thread and bring it back to your inbox, filter for hidden message. Then hover over the message you want to unhide and click the three dots menu that appears. Select show message thread and the message will reappear in your inbox. Note that any new messages sent to a hidden thread will bring the message thread back into the recipients inbox. Check the description for additional resources. See you again soon here at CSAL.