Interactive Curriculum Crosswalk

The Interactive Curriculum Crosswalk is an alignment tool created to support a multi-site PreK-12 adoption of out of school time experiences for positive youth development within the YMCA. My responsibility as Director of Curriculum and Evaluation was to create a standards-aligned digital crosswalk tool of developmental experiences that support Ohio Learning Standards aligned with the YMCA's out-of-school-time initiatives in a well-rounded curriculum to serve as a strategic planning tool for educators, instructional leads, and leadership teams, aimed to align learning goals while supporting scalable, consistent curriculum deliver to foster holistic growth in children and teens integrating academic, social, emotional, and physical development. The vision was to empower educators with a user-friendly planning resource that bridged curricular gaps and encouraged instructional clarity across a diverse network of programs.

Disparate site curricula lacked consistent alignment to state and national standards causing inconsistent quality across sites. These disparities also created challenges for staff training, progress monitoring, and measuring impact. Site directors and educators needed a cohesive framework that could unify curriculum planning while maintaining flexibility for program-specific adaptations. This challenge mirrors the kind of instructional variability that many districts navigate.

To launch this initiative, I began with a comprehensive needs assessment across over 40 YMCA education sites, conducting stakeholder interviews and document reviews to understand how curriculum was currently being implemented at various age levels. I identified significant misalignments between actual activities, available materials, and minimal understanding of Ohio Learning Standards within the out-of-school-time programming. Drawing on this insight, I developed a user-friendly crosswalk using Google Sheets to help educators track and align outcomes by grade level, subject area, and learning objective. I facilitated collaborative design sessions with program leads and piloted the tool with select sites to gather iterative feedback. Once finalized, I led a series of virtual and in-person training sessions to onboard educators, guiding them in integrating the crosswalk into their lesson planning and curriculum adoption workflows. The entire body of work was part of an internal SharePoint site created to house all Curriculum and Evaluation programming.

The final product was a living, editable curriculum crosswalk that clearly mapped instructional goals across subjects and grade levels. Designed for ease of use, it included embedded guidance and flexible structures that allowed for adaptation across site contexts. It functioned not just as a curriculum planning tool, but also as a means of enhancing instructional transparency and alignment with evaluation measures. It has since been adopted as a foundational planning and evaluation resource across the network, scaled across Ohio.

The implementation of this tool led to a 45% increase in instructional consistency across YMCA programs, as reported in internal observations and compliance audits. Educators noted a 30% reduction in lesson planning time due to the clarity and accessibility of the tool. It also served as a central onboarding resource during professional development, training over 100 educators and instructional leaders in the Southern Ohio and Northern Kentucky YMCA ecosystem alone. This measurable impact underscores my ability to deliver curriculum resources that drive educator success and program fidelity at scale.

This project strengthened my ability to blend curriculum expertise, systems thinking, and instructional design into a scalable tool that delivers impact. However, during the early rollout, I underestimated how much hands-on modeling educators would need to feel confident using the crosswalk independently. Initially, the training sessions were heavily focused on technical navigation rather than instructional application. After receiving feedback, I revised the onboarding approach to include real-life lesson planning demonstrations, which significantly increased adoption and understanding. That experience taught me the importance of balancing tool introduction with authentic instructional context—especially when facilitating change at scale. It sharpened my facilitation skills and reinforced the need to anticipate adult learning needs more proactively. This insight has made me a stronger curriculum leader, more equipped to support districts in making meaningful, sustainable shifts in practice.