Cal Jordan Powers
WEAVER • WONDERER • WORDSMITH
Educator • Researcher • Leader • Advocate • Organizer
Creative Portfolio
Cal is a lifelong artist with a vivid imagination, always integrating creativity in life and pursuing this passion throughout school and work. Cal creates in a breadth of visual media, working in fiber arts, watercolor, pencil and ink, photography, animation and digital illustration, video and audio editing, as well as having an extensive background in music. Cal combines these talents with professional responsibilities to generate enriching educational entertainment, guiding the creative direction on various types of projects.
Cal’s Creative Work
Through Professionall
PD Comics & Animated Announcement
To announce the launch of the Professionall website and to share the inspiration for this Public Benefit Corporation, Cal animated and edited an illustrated video to introduce the mission of the company and its ultimate goals of building the future of professional development. As a comic lover, Cal created Professionall Comics, a series of snapshots of the everyday lives of educators, exploring the good, bad, and the funny to make professional development both bite-sized and creative.
Logos & Project Graphics
In designing the branding of Professionall, Cal was intent on creating a symbol that would serve both as the company’s logo but also a complex visual metaphor for its mission related to the education profession. After designing the main logo and several others intended for future projects, Cal worked with Elijah Shenko, a former ESL student and Kazakhstani digital artist, to finalize the graphic files. Cal continues to create graphics and other animations for the Professionall website.
To make professional development entertaining and accessible in diverse formats, Cal combines artistic vision with educational practices to create content through various art forms such as graphic design, animations, videos, podcasts, and comics.
Creative Director
Professionall, Public Benefit Corporation
2020–Present • Remote
2021–Present • Remote
Alongside Dr. Kathleen Bailey, Cal has been working on an independent mixed-methods research project designed to fill a research gap on leadership in world language education. As Lead Author, Cal heads the wordsmithing of manuscripts to use clear and deliberate language to creatively communicate the results and significance of this research while integrating metaphors and visual imagery to impact readers.
Lead Author & Research Manager
The Leadership in World Language Education (LWLE) Project
Cal’s Creative Work
Before Professionall
at Immerse, Virtual Reality Language Learning
Exploring Educational Technology
Virtual Reality Teacher of
English as a Second Language
2023–2025 • Remote
Creativity in the Classroom
As an artist and a visual learner, Cal often uses drawings, costumes, and other creative measures in class to connect learners to the content they are engaging with, to explore cultural norms and references (like Wilson, the volleyball), and to advocating for creative learning in a virtual classroom.
While teaching at Immerse, Cal nurtured adult learners of English from dozens of countries across six continents to develop communicative proficiency for purposes including professional development, immigration, and public transactions. Cal also contributed several creative innovations to the program.
at Teacher’s Discovery
Curriculum Manager & Creative Director
2021–2022 • Remote
As Curriculum Developer, Cal produced two online Spanish textbooks of comprehensible-input stories to foster communicative proficiency for K-5th grade novice learners. In this role, Cal ensured the needs and interests of the target audience were achieved, while making further efforts to innovate the company’s catalogue, to manage the cultural authenticity and inclusivity of resources, and ultimately to produce creatively rich and engaging curricula.
Creative Curricula & Marketing
As Creative Director, Cal synthesized every aspect of these textbooks by weaving together learning objectives with artistry to capture the attention of a younger audience. After guiding the creation of story scripts, Cal produced descriptive storyboard sketches directing the composition of original illustrations to convey plot points, meet curricular needs, and represent diverse and authentic characters, proving feedback throughout.
Throughout Cal’s artistic direction, the content at Voces was elevated to be more engaging and entertaining for learners. contributed elements such as story videos, native-speaker interview series, pre-launch product commercials, and materials tailored to each sub-market. Cal spearheaded the creation of each textbook’s cover, story and interview videos, commercial announcement, coloring pages, and other forms of media.
Artistic Direction & Storyboarding
2018–Present • Various
Creativity in Research
Publications & Presentations
A passionate love for creativity, visual art, and language show up in each of Cal’s projects. Cal enjoys editorial work such as proofreading, copyediting, and providing creative input. When framing the subject of a project, Cal integrates pop culture and classic art to make the content more engaging, such as taking inspiration for an activity from the film “Midnight in Paris.”
Private French Tutoring
& Creative Virtual Learning
2020-2023 • Remote
While privately tutoring adult learners of French, developed custom digital activities to develop students’ grasp of French grammar and culture using storytelling to explore the language. For example, Cal created the “Randonnée en Normandie” activity to practice object pronouns while using personal photos and stories of Cal’s hike with friends in northern France.
Graduate School Work
In graduate school, Cal gained valuable professional experience while using an artistic lens and integrating creativity into class projects, job duties, and extracurriculars to enrich this graduate experience and career preparation.
From FLEDS to SOWLE
Prior to 2020, the in-person conference was called the Foreign Language Education Symposium, or FLEDS and did not have an official or unique logo. While respecting tradition and with the blessing of faculty, Cal and Xinxin Liu collaborated to create a logo to express the symposium’s themes.
2020 • Remote
Departmental Artist
2020 • MIIS
While working as Editor of Discourse & Repartée, Cal updated the marketing efforts of the report by designing a logo for the publication to reflect its mission and role with the institute. While working as Graduate Assistant to the Career Advisor, Cal designed a graduation invitation to celebrate our 2020 grads.
Cal’s Art
Since childhood, Cal has always known art would be a lifelong passion, making a bucket list devotion to explore every art medium at least once. So far, Cal has created art in various media, but favors painting and fiber arts. Cal took AP Art as an elective in High School and then studied Honors Art History in college.
Cal’s Work in Watercolor, Ink, & Acrylic
Cal’s Work in Fiber Arts
Cal’s Work in Pencil, Charcole, & Pastels
Cal’s Work in Photography
Cal’s Work in Digital Art
Cal’s Youth Experience
Theater & Tech
Since childhood, Cal has been involved in theater. In high school, Cal was a leader in many clubs including in theater, acting in several roles before moving into technical roles, such as Assistant Director, Stage Manager, Special Effects Lighting Operator, and Costumer, and was given several awards for this technical work at UIL competitions. This experience combined with additional training at summer theater camps equipped Cal with vast knowledge related to preparing artistic productions by serving in various leadership roles.
Musical Performance
Since childhood, Cal has loved music, learning to play clarinet, piano, flute, trumpet, and guitar and joining the school band in the fifth grade. In high school, Cal was first chair clarinet in Wind Ensemble, earning several UIL awards, and was an officer, serving as Clarinet Section Leader and Music Librarian. In 2012, Cal filled in last minute as Lead Clarinetist in the pit orchestra of the Beaumont Community Players’ musical production of Something Funny Happened on the Way to the Forum, fulfilling a lifelong dream.
Editor, Author, & Photographer
Journalism, Newspaper, & Yearbook
2009-2012 • BHHS
As electives from middle school through high school, Cal enrolled in classes on AP English, journalism, newspaper, and yearbook, gaining experience in editing, interviewing people about current events, working as a photographer at community events, and developing skills in media editing processes.
NHS, PALs, Band, French Club
2014–2015 • BHHS
While serving as an officer in several student leadership clubs in grade school, Cal offered artistic services to design club materials, develop t-shirt designs, and many other creative projects around school and the community, such as designing and painting the 2014-2015 PALS ceiling tile and t-shirt.
AP Art & Club Artist
Cal’s Portfolios
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