First Amendment Plus engages immigrant learners to discuss how - when contemplating powerful vocabularies - learners are able to influence their individual lives and collective communities. With the help of First Amendment Plus, instructors are able to connect curriculum development of ESL and Citizenship programs to professional development. First Amendment Plus was developed in San Francisco by Gail Weinstein, with colleagues Nina Gibson and Anne Whiteside.  It employs the learner's experience as a framework for a

curriculum that speaks to the most pressing issues concrerning adult classrooms. Based on the belief that ESL and literacy classrooms are spaces for adults opportunities in developing language and literacy skills, as individuals and in collaboration with others on their changing lives, the framework is described in this way: Learners' Lives as Curriculum begins with intensive listening to what learners say and write through comments, stories, memories, interviews or poetry. With these learner texts as catalysts, the next step is to develop language and literacy lessons that start conversations about things that matter. The third and larger task is to create thematic units about issues that learners agree are key ones to address.

This project was developed in 2000 as an English Literacy and Civics Education Demonstration Project funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The English Literacy and Civics Education Demonstration Grants Program was designed to help states and communities provide limited English proficient adults with expanded access to high quality English literacy programs linked to civics education. Additional support was provided by the following partnering institutions: San Francisco State University, City College of San Francisco, and Temple University.