SCSD Newsletter

February STL Teacher Proud Feature

The City of St. Charles School District is excited to take part in the “STL Teacher Proud” campaign, an effort to highlight the amazing teachers who choose to serve the St. Louis community and inspire others to join the noble profession of teaching. On the second Tuesday of each month, we’ll highlight an SCSD teacher who chooses to make a difference every day.

Tucker Greer is a drama teacher at Hardin Middle School. While the 2022-23 school year is his first year as a teacher, he’s no stranger to the education profession. Greer comes from a family of educators. His mother is a high school theatre teacher and he has two sisters who work in education; one is a college professor and the other is a behavioral specialist at an elementary school.

“I have always been surrounded by (my family's) passion for education,” Greer said. “I guess it just rubbed off on me!“

While Greer’s passion for teaching is obvious to anyone who watches him work in the classroom, it’s his desire to be more than just a teacher that he finds most rewarding.

“The most satisfying thing about being a teacher is getting to be a role model to students who don't necessarily have one,” Greer said. “I enjoy being there for the students-- going to their games, being someone who can just listen to them, and just letting them know that I am in their corner and ready to help them in any way that I can.”

His advice to anyone considering taking up the noble profession?

“Just go for it!” Greer said. “It is the most rewarding profession out there. Invest your energy into the students and they will give trust and respect in return.”

Thank you to Tucker Greer and all of our SCSD teachers for making a difference in our community.

SCSD celebrates Valentines Day

On February 14th, SCSD students celebrated Valentines Day! Thank you to all our staff and parent volunteers who helped made it a special day for our students!

Null's Czajkowski wins new teacher award

On February 16th, representatives from Lindenwood University's College of Education and Human Services stopped by Null Elementary to celebrate 2nd-grade teacher Jordan Czajkowski. Ms. Czajkowski was announced as an OBT award winner by the Missouri Association for College of Educator Preparation, an award presented to outstanding new teachers!

As a Lindenwood alum, reps from the school wanted to congratulate Ms. Czajkowski on her success as a teacher and her upcoming recognition.

Congratulations Ms. Czajkowski and thank you to Lindenwood for your wonderful partnership and work in the SCSD community!

SCSD High School excel at DECA Districts

Congratulations to the SCHS and SCW DECA teams on both having amazing results in the DECA district 7 tournament. SCHS had 20 out of 23 participants qualify for state and SCW had 18 out of 20.

DECA District 7 held an in-person competition for the first time in three years. Advisors and students were very happy to be back in-person. The competition was held on Thursday, February 9, 2023, at UMSL's Millenium Student Center. Approximately 225 students competed that day from the 11 schools in attendance. We're very proud of the students from St. Charles High and St. Charles West and their success at competition. We look forward to great things happening at our state DECA career development conference in KC in March. See below for individual results.

SCHS:

1st Place Finishes:

Conner Bayliss & Felix Fernandez - Entrepreneurship Team Decision Making

Trent Beskoravany & Luc Bourgeade - Hospitality Team Decision Making

Mackenzie Bufford - Hospitality & Tourism Professional Selling

Caleb Elliott- Financial Consulting Professional Selling

Addi Kersting - Marketing Communications Series

2nd Place Finishes:

Ben Dietrich - 2nd Place - Hotel & Lodging Management

Marissa Horn - Sports & Entertainment Marketing

Tasha Johns - Principles of Business Management

Macy Jones - Human Resource Management

Taylor Nash - Principles of Marketing

3rd Place Finishes:

Bella Cruzado - Food Marketing Services

Riley Derrington - Business Services Marketing

Angelica Garcia-Chanocua - Retail Merchandising Series

Molly Hoffmann - Hotel & Lodging Management

Valeria Munoz - Principles of Business Management

Martin Murphy - Quick Service Restaurant Management

Brayden Pallardy - Marketing Communications Series

SCW:

1st Place Finishes:

Anna Kate Baumann and Megan Johnson - Buying and Merchandising Team Decision Making

Justin Caulk and Kyle Quinn - Sports and Entertainment Marketing Team Decision Making

Ryan Beer and Karson Quinn - Travel and Tourism Marketing Team Decision

Elliot Calvert - Human Resource Management

Carter Sullivan - Principles of Business Management and Administration

Liz Pellow - Principles of Hospitality and Tourism

Emilie Pellow - Restaurant and Food Services

2nd Place Finishes:

Matt Box - Entrepreneurship

Barrett Disselhorst and Jacob Kirt - Hospitality Services Team

Daniel Foust and Mitchell Riegerix - Sports and Entertainment Marketing Team

Addie Nichols - Quick Serve Restaurant Management

3rd Place Finishes:

Anwita Kudaravalli - Principles of Marketing

Ian Nixon - Sports and Entertainment Marketing

L&C ARBS students make history

On February 10, 2023, Lewis & Clark Career Center Applied Business and Retail Skills students Christian Estill-Lackey and Adora Hite competed in the Action Skills competition at Forest Park Community College. That day, Christian Estill-Lackey and Adora Hite received the second and third-place medals and will compete at the state competition to be held in March. This is the first time in ARBS history that students have made it past the district level. Great job Christian and Adora!

SCHS Student council showing leadership

The SCHS Student Council has been working hard this year to re-develop what it means to be a leader and how to have a voice in your school. The students started with the little things. They have voted on things ranging from updating the colors of the school mascot uniform to match our Pirate blue to changing the name of Winter Informal to Snowcoming (our February dance which is coming up on the 25th of this month. Tickets are on sale now!).

Not only have the students rebranded the group by rewriting their constitution to include new mission and vision statements that focus on student voice and involvement, but they have also listened to student concerns regarding other ways to make a more significant impact on the school. Caleb Elliot, a current senior at SCHS, brought the idea of a new course curriculum up to Student Council at a meeting back in January called "Let's Get F.I.T." which focuses on financial independence. Student Council voted to bring this to the district to get the curriculum added to the course booklet, and now Caleb is working with the Central Office to refine the class and get it started.

While there is still work to be done to continue building a cohesive culture and climate at SCHS, the Student Council has made huge steps forward this year and is continuing to serve with pride, lead with confidence, and inspire to impact lives.

Blackhurst Winter Title Night

The families at Blackhurst were invited to enjoy a “lovely” evening of activities during our winter Title I family night. During the “For the Love of Math” night, families enjoyed wearing pajamas, ate breakfast for dinner, played math games, interacted with technology, and entered a raffle to win board games. Students were able to take home a deck of cards and a list of different games that can be played with the cards. Everything “added up” to a wonderful evening!

Harris celebrates Great Kindness Challenge

Harris Elementary and The Kindness Club celebrated the Great Kindness Challenge, February 13-17th. The Great Kindness Challenge is a worldwide initiative to spread kindness at schools with over 19 million students in 115 countries participating!

A few of the student-led initiatives Harris participated in included a kindness assembly, student-created videos, a kindness tunnel clap-in, conversation stations in the cafeteria, RAK recess, and kindness lessons in kindergarten. Harris students also participated in a school-wide community service project, decorating stickers to be handed out at Mario’s Donuts. Way to go Harris Hawks and Kindness Club!

Hardin incentive trip to Main Event

Hardin students with 90% or higher attendance, no Ds or Fs, and no referrals for both first and second quarters were able to go on an incentive trip to the Main Event on February 6th. They enjoyed bowling, laser tag, arcade games, pizza, and more during their time there. Congratulations to the close to 250 students who earned this trip. Thank you to the amazing parents who volunteered to go with these students.

SCHS Orchestra students play at the Touhill

On February 7th, 2023, select SCHS orchestra students attended the E. Desmond Lee Fine Arts Collaborative at UMSL. They spent the day playing music with other high school students from the St. Louis area. After a long day of rehearsals, students performed in the beautiful Touhill Performing Arts Center to a packed house. The orchestra students represented SCHS well! Congrats to Chase Kluesner, Galen Kroeger, Kade Slayton, Serenity Lingua, Luc Bourgeade, and Reagan Schneider on a successful day at UMSL.

Jefferson Pizza Night

Jefferson Intermediate School held a Family Pizza Bingo Night on February 15th. It was a packed house and a huge success! Thank you Jaguar Families for coming and supporting our PTO event! It was so good to see so many families and hope they had fun. Thanks to our PTO, staff and volunteers for helping it make a great event. See you next year!

MU Alpha Theta decorates SCHS

For the past couple of weeks, Mu Alpha Theta has been meeting and finding ways to promote math in the building and came up with the idea of decorating the boards in the math hallways.

We all broke into groups and decorated boards in the math hallways using fun wording and bright colors to show how fun math is. Some of the math topics that are on the boards can vary from topics in algebra 1 to calculus and they all show a small portion of what you learn in that class such as the equations used, common graphs, and even common symbols used. Some of the wordings we used were “Spring into geometry” and “Algebra is quadRADic!”.