We also spend time reviewing the curriculum and the resources that we use in our teaching and learning environment and we again ask you to re-approve the curriculum itself and we will re-approve all of that social studies. Tonight it will be social studies all of that curriculum. During the first year of the self-study each department presents to the teaching and learning Advisory Council to gain input so you saw in the report the information that we solicited from that subset of parents and then oftentimes the team there is a little bit of choice here of what that work looks like but sometimes it includes site visits and input and then data analysis. Particularly some of the departments when they're coming like English you're going to see a whole lot of data. When they come forward. Social studies we don't have as much of that data. What we're going to ask tonight for the approval is there are long range goals so they'll have four years to implement those long range goals. The financials that are attached to those goals and then like I said a reapproval of the curriculum. I'm going to hand it over to Paul. Thank you. I have three quick thank yous starting with my partner to the right. Milena has been so supportive in this role and great about communication. She works so many long hours. I can prove it because I get lots of texts at night. I want to thank the committee that I work with.

I can prove it because I get lots of texts at night. I want to thank the committee that I work with. My K-12 committee is representative from each grade level and we meet on a monthly basis to go through the board review but consistently assess! So without naming all of them just an amazing group of teachers that make it happen and lastly sincerely and not the timing tonight but I want to thank all of you. Whenever I teach government this is my 25th year in Clayton 31 overall I taught government 20 times. We use Board of Education as an example of getting involved in your community. Not everyone is going to run for a senator but you can do things in your local community and the board has always been super supportive of me in social studies. Somebody mentioned eras. I have been through many of those eras. This is my 18th year in this position. It's my third board report and so thank you very much for what appears to be a very friendly environment to go through that. Sincerely thank you for your time and energy that you put into this. I have two kids in college and they are doing it for the right reasons. We will start with our enduring understandings. We wrote these in the last board report and came back to revisit them. In my mind it's like what do we believe? What are our main ideas? What are our overarching directions?

What are our main ideas? What are our overarching directions? As you read through these they are wordy. There are five aspects of social studies so when you go through each of them the first one is culture, the second one is history, geography, civics and economics except for the first three or four words. We have chosen those very carefully after much deliberation so engaged, there was discussion should this go around it changed to empowered and engaged and global citizen and in the 21st century we are preparing kids for an international world and the word citizen was used there as a huge part of public education to get kids involved in citizenship in so many different ways. So I am going to walk you through and paint a picture here. Six years ago, five years ago coming off of COVID I did not intend my last go around to be a major revision. A group of elementary teachers are meeting with me over the summer which frequently happens. We had great representation from a large group of teachers, diverse group of teachers and the goal at the time was to revise grades one and two. We saw a lot of overlap. The teachers were not challenged and there were specific economic units that repeated itself the way the Missouri standards were set up and once we got into this conversation and got deep into it we went way beyond first and second grade. There were four things we were thinking.

The teachers were not challenged and there were specific economic units that repeated itself the way the Missouri standards were set up and once we got into this conversation and got deep into it we went way beyond first and second grade. There were four things we were thinking. One a greater alignment to the Missouri standards. We teach the Missouri learning standards but ours were askew in terms of how we had done things and since the 1990s we found teachers coming in and out of the classroom Secondly there was consistent feedback from teachers that we wanted more meat. We wanted content. We wanted social studies to not just be a superficial feel good community but push in terms of our thinking. 25 years ago people said the research said kids in first grade can't abstractly think about history. We're now teaching a history unit in first grade. We want to teach a concept of thinking about things from the past. Number one we wanted to align with the Missouri standards. Number two we wanted to challenge our students a little bit more. Number three we had overlap but the heart of this is 2020, 2021, 22 the time period of George Floyd and the district had lots of initiatives and conversations structurally hiring black teachers and reducing barriers to students in dive in? Why don't we embrace it?

Number three we had overlap but the heart of this is 2020, 2021, 22 the time period of George Floyd and the district had lots of initiatives and conversations structurally hiring black teachers and reducing barriers to students in dive in? Why don't we embrace it? Why don't we teach some of that hard history that maybe at times I know when I was growing up wasn't necessarily taught so when we think about those four elements that's where we started making changes. Kindergarten celebrations is the same. The teachers are responsive to the kids in front of them. The celebrations year to year may look different if they're students from China or Mexico very big shift, that expanding horizons model but as an anecdotal example not to take too much time. We said we were going to do St. Louis. Let's do St. Louis. We took on a small piece of Mill Creek Valley where we had an African American thriving population that was displaced. We were able to collaborate. I'm a big soccer fan and a soccer coach. We were able to collaborate with St. Louis. We integrated into second grade. Second graders like myself love soccer. We started going through these changes and we realized we didn't want Missouri history in third grade to be a typical history. When you look at the Missouri learning standards they suggest things like Dred Scott and teachers say we're supposed to teach Dred Scott but we haven't taught enslavement.