How GAB-on Helps Students Share Their Day with Family

A lot can happen during the average school day. Students take a variety of classes, they conduct science experiments, make friends, eat lunch, go on field trips and much more.

But whenever Jarrid and Sylvia Hall asked their two kids what they did at school, they often received the same empty response that most parents tend to get from young children.

Jarrid and Sylvia’s first son, Austin, who was 11 at the time, had trouble remembering his day, while their daughter Gracie, who was 10 at the time, had trouble describing her day because so much had happened.

So, Jarrid and Sylvia started having Austin and Gracie take down brief notes during the day of what they did. Then, when they got home, the two could open those notes, which would help them not only remember what they did at school, but also help organize their thoughts.

This basic concept is now the principal idea behind GAB-on, an online platform that allows students and teachers to record notes about what happened during the school day. Every time a note, or GAB, is recorded, parents are notified.

“We stumbled into this because I wanted to talk to my son and we struggled to do that,” Jarrid told Rhode Island Inno. “There is a lot of science-based evidence about communicating with your child ... In reality, the sooner kids start having conversations with their parents, the better off everyone is.”

GAB-on works in two main ways. There is the one-to-one function, where an individual student opens up a tab on the site, chooses a class and types in a GAB, which parents are then alerted about through the platform. During this scenario, the teacher of the class would also put in a GAB as well.

The other setting for GAB-on is in a one-to-many mode, which is best for an entire class. In this situation, the teacher might assign two or three students to take GABs for the entire class. The teacher then approves those and they would go out to all parents of students in the class.

In addition to notes, there are question GABs for students such as, “What made you proud during the day?” Or, “What challenged you during the day?” These have been extremely helpful for students with social challenges or other disorders that might get stressed out by having to come up with their own GABs everyday, said Jarrid and Sylvia.

The GABs have made a tremendous difference for Austin. According to Jarrid and Sylvia, Austin struggled during his first month of middle school, but by the end of the year he would go on to win a grit award, a large part of which Sylvia and Austin attribute to GAB-on.

A researcher from Harvard told the Halls that by using GABs as reminders, they are essentially helping Austin rewire his brain.

“We are impacting his executive function and working memory, and that to us was an ‘a-ha’ moment,” said Sylvia.

The move has also been hailed by teachers, who want students to go home and talk about their day, as parent engagement is key to learning and also helps with both attendance and the social and emotional aspect of learning.

"It allows what might otherwise be considered 'small moments' in school to be bigger conversations at home," said one teacher who has used the platform.

Jarrid and Sylvia launched GAB-on roughly two years ago and it currently has 150 families using the platform, spread out across schools in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

The company has participated in the Social Enterprise Greenhouse Impact Accelerator, MassChallenge Rhode Island and the Venture Mentoring Service.

Although GAB-on is being piloted for free right now, Jarrid and Sylvia down the line could see charging families between $2 and $5 per month to use the platform, depending on whether there is a premium service or not.

But right now, the duo is focused on building out a more scalable platform, getting 1,000 families to use GAB-on within the next six months and helping others achieve what they have with their own family.

“The difference in our son and daughter and family communications has been amazing,” said Jarrid. “We want to share that with as many families as possible.”