Curriculum design and families: centering family voices in a national non-profit literacy program

Educators, including those within national non-profit organizations, must analyze their equity minded practices to ensure that their solutions are centered on the communities they serve. It was necessary for teams to learn how to best meet the needs of a growing population of bilingual learners and families. This dissertation of practice aims to understand how to best center family voices and implement equity-minded practices within Waterford, a large non-profit literacy-focused organization. The Community of Inquiry workshop intervention brings teammates together to analyze feedback from families (with an intentional focus on including Spanish speaking family feedback) and to build a rubric to guide future content and services. The mixed-method analysis from survey and reflection responses demonstrates that the intervention supports a more comprehensive, shared understanding of the organization’s mission, and encourages teammates to think more critically about their work. The outcome was the creation of the Waterford CARES rubric, which will be used to guide future development and services. Educators across contexts will be interested in the process used within the intervention to build team learning best practices and center the voices of the families their organization serves.