Maxine Greene states that the aesthetic experience is "brought into being by encounters with works of art" and "a conscious participation in a work, a going-out energy, an ability to notice what is there to be noticed". One of the goals of the aesthetic educational process is to engage teachers in a work of art, linking it and other human experiences, including social, historical, and cultural contexts. "Aesthetic Education" guides teachers to create these encounters with works of art for their students within a standards-based curriculum design. Connecting to a work of art through an aesthetic experience enhances the capacity of the young learner to construct meaning, resulting in expanding the zone of proximal development. This process allows the teacher, and subsequently the young language learner, to explore ideas through multiple points of view, expect unknowns and be flexible to them, and then transfer this understanding to performance tasks and activities that support the work of art and deepen inquiry into cultural practices and perspectives. In this article, the author describes how the model, Uncovering Content: Assessment Design Aligning Performance and Transfer (UC ADAPT), aligns standards to the backward design framework so that language instructors can unpack the standards and shift focus from textbook coverage to performance. The stages in the model are: assessment, design, alignment, performance and transfer.