PROJECT Focus:

workshop design & FACILITATIOn

Client: Houston public charter school district with 3 PK-8th grade schools serving over 1,000 students.

Goal: Teachers faced unique challenges in trying to engage students’ families that did not speak proficient English, leading to limited access to school resources and conversations on how to support the students’ development. I decided to employ a user-centered research approach to understand how teachers were navigating the obligation to communicate information to parents when there was a language difference.

Role: I worked independently to design project strategy, research plan, facilitation, and analysis and collaborated with families and stakeholders to take action based on findings.

Questions explored:


❋ What does the teacher journey reveal about the challenges and workarounds educators use to engage linguistically diverse families over the course of the school year?

❋ How effective are the existing language access services in meeting the needs of both educators and families in non-English-speaking communities?

❋ Where are the opportunities to strengthen systems, resources, and practices that support teachers in communicating effectively with families in their preferred languages?

Project contributions:

STAKEHOLDER ALIGNMENT

Collaboration with stakeholders from across the district proved key in my work as others would be the implementers and end-users of anything I created. I engaged district and school leaders from kickoff to increase buy-in for solutions that were inspired from conversations with teachers and families.

DESK RESEARCH

Consulted with the district’s compliance and accountability team to understand enrollment data for 1000+ students and ground further conversations on available data on the family preferred languages, student attendance, and student achievement

USER INTERVIEWS

Facilitated two rounds of interviews; first, individual conversations with 2 school leaders, 2 administrative staff, 4 teachers, and 3 parents.

In a follow-up round of group interviews, I spoke with 4 teachers and 3 administrators to understand available resources and their experience communicating with families throughout the year.

In these group settings, we discussed common pain points and reimagined what a better service for teachers and families would look like.

CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY

Observed 3 parent workshops, 2 parent-teacher meetings, 3 document translation processes in virtual and in-person settings, and asked participants follow-up questions throughout and after events were finished.

Via observation, I noticed parent resources were offered consistently in English and Spanish, not meeting the need for the 12 different languages or at minimum, Pashto and Farsi, the dominant languages in our school

FINDINGS

  • With families that speak other languages, verbal and non-verbal communication is directed to child and about school logistics

  • Teachers toolkit varied teacher to teacher but all felt they weren’t adequate to provide parents a clear understanding of student needs.

  • District has several tools at their disposal but there is little to no awareness at the school level.

  • Teachers want clear expectations and consistency around translation requirements, resources, and processes.

  • District and teacher agreement that goals is to have systems in place that proactively provide language translation/interpretation services for families

  • Live interpretations were the most requested and most valuable.

  • Translations of website and flyers were not as desirable because it was not clear if parents used those materials and if they were literate in the translated languages

Impact 


After initial interviews with families at one school, I was asked to do the same research on a broader scale across the district and to create a budget for services for the next school year based on the research. To share knowledge between school staff and district administrators, I recruited and planned for a participatory research and design process for the evaluation and budget proposal.

* District-wide communication and increased awareness of available interpretation/translation services.

*School district began to include Farsi and Pashto in standard communication to students’ families

Teachers were able to utilize available services increasing quantity and quality of school to home communication with families who previously did not receive personalized information on supporting their children’s learning at home.

Teachers had data to support petition for a new communication platform that would provide multilingual translations. Leadership agreed and chose vendor that supported 12 languages spoken at school.

Why this work lights me up

Equal access to resources that are crucial to wellness and development is important to me, whether I am working as an embedded member of a team, or advising others on strategies for change. Knowing that this work made it so that all families could receive the resources and teacher-parent relationships they need to support their children still makes me very proud of this collaborative effort.