2020 · Project Light + CRD Impact · Sarasota–Manatee, Florida
In 2020, I worked with CRD Impact owner Cassandra Decker and Project Light to design an adult ESOL curriculum for immigrant and non-native-English-speaking parents and caregivers. The project extended well beyond a set of lesson plans: it included student textbook materials, teacher guidance, intake and assessment tools, administrator-facing progress structures, digital-literacy instruction, and planning for in-person, virtual, and partially self-directed delivery during COVID-19.
The project documentation is unusually detailed. The original project plan called for ten ELL/platform modules with supplementary materials. Teacher materials preserve a 23-activity sequence through eleven lessons, while student packets show how the same instructional architecture was translated into participant-facing practice.
Built on a compressed development timeline
An August 23, 2020 project plan gives the work unusually clear scope and cadence. It calls for ten ELL/platform modules developed in collaboration with Cassandra Decker, with the first five targeted for completion by September 14 and the remaining five before October 2. The same plan documents rolling drafting, revision, and review: initial structural work, lesson-one drafting and revision, first-week/module-one completion, then successive development and refinement of modules two through five.
The plan also makes the operating constraints visible. The initial curriculum was shaped by stakeholder feedback and the needs assessments underlying grant funding; it had to support teacher materials, student materials, and administrator progress guidance while also anticipating virtual, remote, asynchronous, mixed-level, and COVID-disrupted delivery. That combination of deadline, pedagogy, access, and program requirements is central to the case study.
At a glance
- Audience: adult English learners who were also parents and caregivers navigating schools, healthcare, community resources, and public systems.
- Curriculum architecture: student textbook materials, teacher materials, intake/assessment tools, and administrator progress guidance.
- Level design: a mixed-level environment centered primarily on beginning NRS ESL bands, with scaffolds and extensions for learners working above that range.
- Content: introductions and self-advocacy, the school system, school and medical resources, food and shopping, science and sources, health and math, movement and mental health, reading strategies, college navigation, and digital literacy.
- Delivery: designed for synchronous on-site instruction while also anticipating virtual, asynchronous, and disrupted-learning conditions.
Designing English instruction around real decisions
The organizing question was not simply, “What English should students learn?” It was, “What do students need to be able to do?” Parents receive report cards, school notices, enrollment forms, links, email, portals, appointment information, and other materials that can remain inaccessible even when translated. The curriculum treated those interactions as learning contexts.
Students practiced the language and digital behaviors needed to complete forms, create and use email, navigate a browser or map, make appointments, ask for clarification, communicate with schools, identify resources, set goals, and advocate for themselves and their families. Language learning therefore sat alongside digital literacy and institutional navigation rather than apart from them.
One curriculum, designed for three users
The project required separate but connected views of the same learning experience. Student materials needed to be clear enough to support practice without an instructor narrating every step. Teacher materials needed to explain not only what to do, but why an activity was structured a particular way, what to observe, how to check comprehension, and how to adjust for mixed levels. Administrative tools needed to connect enrollment, assessment, goals, progress, and required documentation.
That layered architecture is important to my later learning-design work. A curriculum is more durable when the learner-facing experience, facilitator enablement, and operating system are designed together.
Pedagogy for mixed-level adult learners
The teacher guidance emphasizes active language use, scaffolded comprehension checks, partner practice, practical communication, and movement from recognition toward explanation and independent production. First-language support was used strategically rather than mechanically: bilingual notes could clarify concepts or preserve access while classroom practice still encouraged English-language production.
The materials also use what I described as a “yet” approach to reinforcement: learners distinguish what they know, what they may know, and what they do not know yet. That framing made progress visible without treating incomplete knowledge as failure—especially important in a program where confidence, prior educational experience, language proficiency, and digital fluency varied substantially.
Designing for disruption
The curriculum was built in 2020, so delivery assumptions could not be static. Activities include breakout structures, remote-use considerations, digital-literacy checks, and materials that could support learners outside a traditional classroom. The aim was not to recreate a classroom online; it was to identify which learning objectives, interactions, and supports had to survive when the format changed.
What the project demonstrates
This project is a useful early record of how I approach curriculum as a system: begin with what learners need to accomplish, map those needs into teachable skills, create materials for both learners and facilitators, embed assessment into the experience, and make the design flexible enough to work under real operating constraints.
It also connects several strands that continue through my later work—adult learning, curriculum architecture, facilitator enablement, assessment, digital literacy, accessibility, and practical learning design.
Reusable toolkit
To protect participant privacy and third-party rights, I do not reproduce the original curriculum in full. Instead, I distilled its reusable design logic into a Parent & Caregiver ELL Program Architecture Checklist. The checklist covers learner needs, real-world actions, three-user curriculum architecture, digital literacy, mixed-level scaffolding, modality shifts, assessment versus compliance evidence, instructor handoff, maintenance, privacy, and IP boundaries.
Explore the full portfolio · Explore learning & curriculum tools · Read the GitHub case study