Cal Jordan Powers
WEAVER • WONDERER • WORDSMITH
Educator • Researcher • Leader • Advocate • Organizer
Publishing & Presentation Portfolio
Cal has extensive experience in composition, journalism, and other editorial work, having worked as an author, editor, editorial assistant, project manager, auditor and indexer, proofreader, translator and transcriber, and conference co-chair, and having published in international education research volumes, teacher education textbooks and world language education textbooks, peer-reviewed journals, newsletters and newspapers, international conference presentations and webinars, and guest speaking at universities and on podcasts.
Cal’s Publication Work
Through Professionall
Founder of
Professionall, Public Benefit Corporation
2020–Present • Remote
As a public benefit corporation, the specific purpose of Professionall is to advocate for the wellbeing of all educators in the world, to reduce teacher burnout and attrition, and to inspire and nourish the future generations of educational leaders. Through this work, Cal publishes research on the World Language Education profession, teacher professional development, teacher leadership, teacher burnout and teacher wellbeing, and the broader education profession.
Social Professional Learning
The ultimate goal for Professionall is to build a social learning management platform to centralize professional development the entire education profession. Not only will this platform be innovating on best practices, but it will also allow for other educators’ innovative contributions to have a more effective and lasting impact on the profession, reducing teacher burnout and attrition and inspiring the future generations of teachers.
Professional Development Advising
Professionall takes a different approach to professional development, offering one-on-one advising for educators seeking to make the next step in their careers as well as offering PD planning and faculty advising for schools and departments, leading action research, or compiling case studies, as well as offering one-on-one advising for educators seeking to make the next step in their careers.
Entertainingly Educational Content
To make professional development entertaining and accessible in diverse formats, Professionall shares educational content on social media, on our blog, through videos, and with comics. Segments from the Pathways Podcast and other current events are shared on themed days to create bite-size learning opportunities for educators.
Cal hosts the Pathways Podcast, an interview podcast that explores fascinating career paths from all sectors of the education profession to better understand what makes a quality educator. We navigate each stage of our guest’s career to explore their motivations, experiences, and beliefs throughout their professional pathways to encourage and prepare other educators.
Exploring the Profession Through Podcasts
LWLE Project Publications
Ouroboros of Professional Challenges in WLE
2025 • SLTE
Published in a special edition of the Second Language Teacher Education Journal, this report explores the professional challenges experienced by 60 teacher leaders in world language education. The interviewees provided rich accounts of these challenges, detailing how they were interlinked, complex, related, cumulative, and ouroboric in nature.
Within a textbook on language teacher leadership, this chapter defines a framework through which we can analyze the careers of leaders working in World Language Education (WLE), analyzing their experiences and beliefs throughout their careers. The framework introduced in this chapter presents a career as a pathway with six characteristics.
Presented at the University of New Mexico’s Mentoring Institute Conference, this report synthesizes our respondents’ remarks on mentorship, identifying seven shared sentiments on mentorship. The findings showed that almost 40% of our leaders reported a scarcity of and an urgent need for leadership mentoring opportunities.
Leaders’ Unsolicited Sentiments on Mentorship
2024 • Mentoring Institute
Diverse Pathways into Leadership in WLE
2023 • Springer International
Cal’s Publication Work
Before Professionall
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. To accomplish this, Cal built and managed a global team to develop a portfolio of captivating and authentic Spanish curricular materials and multimedia content that embrace the methods of comprehensible input language education. 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.
Curricula Management & Comprehensible Input
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 the process. Cal also spearheaded the creation of each textbook’s cover, story and interview videos, native-speaker audio files, commercial announcement, coloring pages, and other forms of media. Throughout Cal’s artistic direction, the content at Voces was elevated to be more engaging and entertaining for learners.
As Curriculum Manager, Cal built a team of educators to develop authentic Spanish curricular materials and portfolios of captivating multimedia content that embrace the methods of comprehensible input language education. Cal created custom administrative tools and trackers to simultaneously manage and budget for these complex curricular projects to ensure they meet both company standards but also ACTFL and state-specific alignments. While at Voces, Cal architected innovations to improve educational content, project tracking, and program management. Along with content for students, Cal prepared the guiding materials for educators, such as the Scope and Sequence, Pacing Guide, and Can-Do Statements for each unit.
Artistic Direction & Storyboarding
DEI Audit & Advocacy Work
Cal pioneered innovation in the company’s DEI efforts, architecting a DEI Audit of the company’s catalogue of content to identify and replace problematic stereotypes with authentic diversity, integrated DEI and social emotional learning into the curricula, and trained other curriculum managers with custom resources to audit each language program’s textbooks. Through this work, Cal was able to feature engaging stories that subtly teach learners about diverse peoples and cultures. For example, Cal created a story about young school children using math to build an entrance ramp to the school for a young wheelchair user in their class, or the story of Marcel el Murciélago, a bat who––like real bats––is colorblind, but finds magical glasses that let him see color. Story themes include being prepared for class, sharing with others, asking for help, making friends, curiosity of other cultures, responsibility with pets, expressing emotions, following directions, and being a good sport.
Global Team & Authenticity Management
To ensure the textbooks aligned with comprehensible input methods and age-appropriate curricula, Cal collaborated with Erica Peplinski-Burge, a renowned Elementary Spanish CI educator, to create entertaining and educational content. Aside from the illustrators, Cal built a diverse and international team to compile the necessary elements of the textbooks, recruiting, training, and supervising freelance voice-over artists, educators, and native Spanish speakers, providing feedback and motivating the team to reach the company’s goals and tight deadlines. Cal collaborated with company partners to generate supplemental video series that both integrated the elementary curricula, but also mimicked the Voces style. Conducted in Spanish, Cal designed and led a new interview series with seven native-speaking children from Argentina, Mexico, Spain, and Venezuela across the age range of the target audience of the textbooks, answering questions related to each unit.
Researcher & Presenter
“Understanding Teacher Burnout During a Global Pandemic”
2019–2022 • IGI Global
This presentation explores a mobile phone scavenger hunt that asks French learners to explore their cities to discover prominent French figures and their stories. This chapter began as a class project for Cal’s graduate course in mobile-assisted language learning which Cal then adapted into a presentation for a WLE teacher education conference.
Researcher & Author
This study analyzed the coping strategies of 165 WLE educators to reduce the symptoms of teacher burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic. This chapter began as several graduate course projects that Cal adapted into a chapter that was published within a teacher education textbook focusing on adapting to online teaching contexts.
“Midnight in Monterey: A Geolocated Game For Adventurous French Learners”
2019–2020 • ACTFL
Graduate School Work
Putting theory into practice, Cal gained valuable and career-changing experience in academic research publishing while studying at MIIS. Cal organized a virtual professional development organization, served in an editorial capacity for two research volumes and a teacher education textbook, served as Editor of the department’s annual newsletter and weekly bulletin, and created a series of alumni panels.
Graduate Research Assistant
to the TFL/TESOL Department Chair
2019–2021 • MIIS, Remote
Cal worked under Dr. Kathi Bailey, the Department Chair & Academic and Career Advisor for the WLE Programs, assisting with tasks related to departmental functions, faculty management, students interactions, and research responsibilities. In this role, Cal organized a series of Alumni Advice Panels, wrote and broadcast weekly bulletins of current events, and published the department’s annual report on students, alumni, and faculty.
Alumni Advice Panels
2019-2021 • MIIS
While working as the Graduate Research Assistant to the Department Chair at MIIS, Cal organized a series of Alumni Advice Panels to connect students with professionals who want to share their expertise. Panel topics included job search and interview advice and lesser known pathways after graduation.
WLE Program Weekly Bulletin
2019-2021 • MIIS
While working as the Graduate Research Assistant to the Department Chair at MIIS, Cal organized and edited a weekly bulletin for the WLE Program at MIIS, sharing information on upcoming events and opportunities at the Institute and linking relevant events or resources from outside the program.
Editorial Assistant
& Project Manager
2020–2021 • MIIS, Routledge, TIRF, Bloomsbury
While working as Graduate Research Assistant at MIIS, Cal served as Editorial Assistant on two research volumes published with TIRF and Routledge explored critical and emerging research topics in WLE such as teaching in under-resourced contexts and working with internationally diverse students. Cal also worked on a teacher education textbook published with Bloomsbury that prepares educators for the planning and teaching of activities that promote the development of speaking and listening skills at all levels of target language proficiency, for teachers of any modern language. As Editorial Assistant, Cal performed tasks such as proofreading, indexing, key word compilation, fact-checking, and providing feedback throughout the publishing process to ensure that formatting met standards and content was understandable.
“Research on Teaching and Learning English in Under-Resourced Contexts”
2021 • Routledge
The eighth volume in the Global Research on Teaching and Learning English series, this book brings together the latest research on teaching English in under-resourced contexts across the world, offering a window into the complex challenges that these communities face. Recommendations from research and experience in well-resourced contexts are frequently not relevant or feasible in different circumstances. Cal served as Project Manager on this volume from conception through to publication.
“Chinese-Speaking Learners of English: Research, Theory, and Practice”
2019 • Routledge
A compendium of the latest developments in research regarding English language education for Chinese-speaking learners, this volume combines cutting-edge research from multiple internationally-known scholars. The chapters offer unique insights into some of the most salient issues related to this broad topic. Cal completed the indexing, key word compilation, and final proofreading for this volume of research.
“Teaching Listening and Speaking in Second and Foreign Language Contexts"
2020 • Bloomsbury
This book guides language teachers in planning and teaching activities that promote the development of speaking and listening skills at all levels of target language proficiency, for teachers of any modern language. Cal completed the indexing, key word compilation, and final proofreading for this volume of research. Cal also helped pilot the first graduate course taught at MIIS using this volume.
Discourse & Repartée
April 2020 Volume
2020 • MIIS
While working as the Graduate Research Assistant to the Department Chair at MIIS, Cal had the honor of serving as Editor of Discourse & Repartée, the department’s annual report on current events related to the program’s current students, alumni, and faculty. Cal used the role of Editor to update the marketing efforts of the report and to redesign the logo to reflect the mission of the publication and its role with the institute.
WLE Program Ambassador
2020-2021 • MIIS Admissions
Cal campaigned for prospective and newly admitted graduate students of the WLE programs at Preview Day presentations and via email and phone to provide clarification to questions about the programs, sharing the student perspective at MIIS, life in Monterey, and discussing professional growth opportunities, organizing virtual social events to foster community building between returning and incoming students.
The theme of the symposium to Language Education in 2020: Tackling Racial Inequities in WLE. The opening day keynote was given by Dr. Uju Anya, a leading researcher in critical race pedagogy in language education, who explained the critical role of WLE educators in reframing our students’ views on culture and race. Many of the symposium sessions provided educators simple and clear frameworks for understanding complex issues like systemic racism and sexism, while others offered strategies to alter our curricula to integrate these anti-racist themes.
Cal’s Responsibilities as Chair
While serving as Co-Chair, Cal had the responsibilities of building the organizing team, writing and disseminated the Call for Proposals, spearheading the proposal rating and inter-rater agreement processes, finding and negotiating contracts with keynote speakers, meeting with the Faculty Advisor and seeking feedback from program faculty, drafting team meeting agendas, setting up the registration processes and pricing, planning and leading the technical dress rehearsal, compiling resources and recordings to build the website, and more.
While studying at MIIS, Cal volunteered as Co-Chair for SOWLE 2020, the Symposium on World Language Education, a virtual student-led professional development conference for educators working in WLE.
Theme: Tackling Racial Inequities in WLE
Co-Chair of the Virtual Conference
2020 Symposium on World Language Education
2020 • Remote
Undergraduate Experience
University of North Texas
2015–2018 • Denton, TX
Composition
Many of the courses Cal took had a focus on literature, composition, and the arts, such as Honors English Composition I & II, Advanced Poetry in French, Advanced French Composition, Advanced Spanish Composition, and Honors Art Appreciation. Cal learned the ins and outs of the composition planning, copyediting, and proofing processes as well as advanced studies in diverse writing styles and languages. This experience allowed Cal to turn passion into profession.
Honors Thesis
As a member of the Honors College at UNT and seeking to make the most of faculty expertise to prepare for graduate school, Cal volunteered to complete an honors thesis. While mentoring with Dr. Lawrence Williams, Cal researched the value of using language learning apps like Duolingo or Rosetta Stone as support to their in-class learning. This thesis project began Cal’s love for survey-driven research to voice the opinions of a community for their own benefit.
English-French Translator
& File System Auditor
2016 • Intel Security
At Intel, Cal audited and transferred the Headquarters’ sales training database to a new file system. To prepare for an upcoming expansion of the Sales Department in France, Cal translated the sales training materials and presentations from English into French to globalize the trainings.
Editor & Author
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, working as a photographer at community events, and developing skills in Photoshop and other media editing processes.
Cal’s Portfolios
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