Our take
Teachers have a complicated relationship with purchased curriculum. High-quality materials are helpful in some ways, but seldom flexible enough to meet the needs of today's classrooms. And they weren't designed to center our students' lived experiences.
If teachers have curriculum that was designed with their students in mind, and that invites them into co-creating learning experiences for their students, they will be more emboldened and effective at meeting their students’ learning needs.
Our approach
Your vision leads
Evidence-Based Design
Dynamic Enactment
Through our processes, education and community leaders work together to establish a vision for a curriculum that reflects their priorities and unique characteristics.
We ground our co-design process in scholarship and research-backed practices. Participants become knowledgeable of learning designs that have proven effective in communities like theirs. Participants build clear definitions and shared language for what their designs should do. Supported by professional learning designers, these collaborations produce high-quality, customized designs, efficiently.
We are curious about how new designs are working in classrooms. We know that to meet students' needs teachers adjust, supplement, and refine their curricular materials. We support teams by staying engaged with teachers as their enactment of the curriculum surfaces new insights. We believe that by understanding what is working, and for whom, everyone's practices improve.
Our team
Meet the brave people of CommonGood
Founder
Carly Muetterties
Carly Muetterties, Ph.D., has a passion for emboldening educators as they construct and enact inquiry-based learning. A former high school social studies teacher and Managing Editor for C3Teachers, Carly collaborates with teachers, schools/districts, and educational organizations in designing inquiry learning experiences to create a culture of inquiry in their classrooms. She has led diverse, cross-disciplinary teams in designing materials that support teachers in providing authentic and meaningful learning to their students. Her work has also included designing and developing civic learning programming, working to connect students to authentic opportunities for civic engagement.
Carly has led teams and/or collaborated with organizations including: C3Teachers, iCivics, the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, the Southern Poverty Law Center, National Boards for Professional Teaching Standards, the Korean War Legacy Project, the Frazier History Museum, ThinkCERCA, National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, Gradient Learning, and Newsela.
Learning Designer
Stephanie Fitch
As a former English teacher, Stephanie is passionate about ensuring that students are heard and feel seen. She believes that Humanities courses are where students are able to find their voice and use it. As an academy lead and department head, Stephanie led teachers in professional development in cross-content writing and discussion skills. She has since worked on developing curriculum that is project-based, skills-based, incorporates social-emotional learning, and includes diverse perspectives. Stephanie has written and consulted on English Language Arts curriculum for schools all over the country. Simultaneously, she led the charge in foundational DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) practices in a non-profit organization. Previously, Stephanie worked as a leader in the community she grew up in as a member of the Ravenswood City School Board. In that position, she had a focus on supporting and listening to teachers as experts on their students, and invested in collaborating directly with the diverse community to develop solutions for students’ needs.
Founder
Kyle Morton
Kyle Morton is a proven tech entrepreneur. He founded HapYak Interactive Video, leading it to a successful acquisition by Newsela in 2021. Before HapYak, Kyle led product strategy at RAMP, launching the first scalable video search solution for media companies. His earlier career includes serving as a software architect at Third Screen Media, where he co-developed one of the first mobile advertising solutions, later acquired by AOL. Kyle leads product development and engineering for CommonGood.
Founder
Evan Gutiérrez
Evan Gutiérrez has led curriculum and instruction programs for high-performing school systems, non-profit and ed-tech organizations serving schools nationwide. His leadership has included oversight of math, ELA, social studies, science and SEL content teams, design partnerships with prominent curriculum providers, and consultation with district leaders. Gutiérrez is author of A New Canon: Designing Culturally Sustaining Curriculum (Harvard, ’21), the first book to provide a framework for designing and utilizing rigorous, standards-aligned curriculum to address the lack of representation for marginalized communities in the formal curriculum. He regularly speaks and writes on practices to advance equity and asset based pedagogies.
Evan has led curriculum, assessment & instruction for high performing charter networks and unicorn edtech providers Gradient Learning & Newsela. He has driven collaborations with Illustrative Mathematics, Expeditionary Learning, C3Teachers, Odell Education, National Geographic, SCALE (Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity) and others.