Published on Show Me Mizzou Dec. 17, 2025
What better time than the 250th anniversary of the country’s birth to remind Missouri schoolchildren what the nation’s foundational document means? That’s the thinking behind the A250 Grant, a three-year, $2.6 million award from the U.S. Department of Education to help the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy bolster constitutional education throughout the state.
“It’s about engaging with Missouri teachers and helping them promote historical awareness of the Constitution and the country’s founding,” says Jay Sexton, professor of history and Kinder Institute director. “We have experts at Kinder who have worked on this their whole career. We’ll make them available to help teachers improve their lesson plans and improve our country’s civic health.”
Kinder also will use the grant to host in-person teacher professional development seminars, develop a virtual learning module to aid civics education and expand Civil Dialogues, a road-show panel of academics and other politically engaged people discussing an issue in a public forum in partnership with Mizzou alumnae Linda Lorelle, MA ’87, and Jean Becker, BJ ’78, of Houston. Previous topics have included the history of bipartisanship, immigration, election results and presidential powers. “All controversial issues, to be sure,” Sexton says. “But when you step back and think about it historically, it diffuses the tension. These are not debates that are unique to our times.”
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