Families and teachers co-writing classroom culture and content: A protocol for culturally sustaining bilingual inclusive curriculum

Families should be valued, heard, and honored as both co-learners and co-instructors in the educational process. When families use a language(s) other than standardized English, there is an additional layer of superiority and inferiority that is coded within educational interactions; both language and culture become subtexts in the discussion. Most curricula that districts and schools adopt are designed and decided upon without the input of children or their families. This dynamic is particularly pronounced in bilingual special education, wherein children and their families are often viewed as doubly deficient due to their multiply marginalized identities. Drawing on examples with children in a self-contained bilingual special education class and their families, this conceptual paper offers a Culturally Sustaining Bilingual Inclusive Curriculum (CSBIC) protocol for teachers to co-create curriculum with children and families at the intersections of disability and multilingualism.