District recommends National Geographic materials for middle/high social studies adoption

Phoenix-Talent School District staff recommended adopting a new social-studies curriculum that district teachers piloted and evaluated over several months.

Kelly Soder, who led the presentation, told the board the elementary grades will continue using CKLA/Amplify with integrated social-studies content, while the district recommends National Geographic’s Sengage/MapGeo for middle-school world history and high-school U.S. and world history. For civics and economics — where bilingual materials are a priority — staff recommended iCivics (open source) and Nucleus to meet economics and financial-literacy needs.

High-school social-studies teacher Lee Larson, who participated in the pilot, described the adoption process as collaborative and said a comprehensive curriculum "saves time on lesson planning, makes things more equitable for my students" and enables teachers to focus on delivering instruction and giving individual feedback. Teachers also highlighted inquiry-based lessons and primary-source work that asks students to synthesize evidence rather than memorize facts.

Soder noted Oregon’s unique standards — including tribal history and ethnic-studies content — make finding complete curricular packages difficult and that teacher piloting and feedback were critical to the recommendation. Board members raised that some content can be "controversial" but acknowledged the materials’ relevance and the teacher-led vetting process.

The board did not record a formal adoption vote in this meeting; the presentation and teacher endorsements were presented for discussion and planned next steps include final adoption procedures and continued teacher piloting in classrooms.