In the coming months, the Board of Education (BoE) will review six new noncore high school courses for pilot development and continue to monitor the three existing new course pilot programs. These new courses include the nation’s first-ever LGBTQ+ Studies course, several social justice-centered courses, and two courses in the new Mobile Application and Software Development Program of Study.
The county is set to review the following courses for pilot development approval: Fundamentals of App Development, Advanced App Development, Ethnic Studies, Introduction to Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources, Leadership, Equity, Inclusion, and Social Justice (LENS) Seminar, and Race, Gender, and STEM.
If existing pilot programs for the American History Through Film, Jazz Lab Band, LGBTQ+ Studies, and Political Psychology and Behavior course prove successful, they will be submitted to the BoE for full review and approval.
A memo released on Dec. 3, 2020, states that pilot courses are developed by “local schools, central services staff members, or external organizations.” However, students and relevant activism groups play keyed roles in the piloting and course development process. Students often had a direct influence on the pilot courses’ curriculum development.
“My [Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) sponsor] brought it up to our GSA and said, ‘Hey, the county is thinking of introducing an LGBTQ+ Studies course. What would you guys like to be on it?’” Albert Einstein High School sophomore Norah Lesperance said. “So we talked about [what] we wanted to see… and she brought our ideas to the county and then she … helped write a lot of a curriculum and the assignments.”
To get a pilot course on the course bulletin, students must present a list of students interested in the course and potential teachers for the course, who have expressed an interest in teaching the course, to their school administration. Potential teachers must also be certified in the course’s corresponding academic department if it is a department-specific course.
Lesperance, along with many other students, posted stories on Instagram asking for students’ names and ID numbers if they were interested in taking the LGBTQ+ Studies pilot course for the 2021-2022 school year. Then, they emailed a few teachers they thought would like to teach it.
The pilot course bulletin approval process is largely the same across high schools, and many of the pilot course approval campaigns are completely student-initiated and student-led.
However, schools with less resources may face more challenges.
“[My GSA sponsor] said she’s not sure how it’s going to go at schools with less resources,” Lesperance said. “The LGBTQ+ Studies course is going to be a Social Studies credit and so the teacher has to be Social Studies certified. Even if you have an interested teacher, if they’re not in the Social Studies Department already, they can’t teach it. Some schools may not have the resources.”
The LGBTQ+ Studies course is believed to be the first comprehensive LGBTQ+ history course in the region, according to an article from Bethesda Magazine. Community members hope the course will challenge people’s current perceptions about LGBTQ+ history and are excited about the representation.
“The voices that get amplified are often not the voices that need to be heard,” Lesperance said. “We’ve heard about the white gay people, we’ve heard about the white lesbians, now it’s time for the black non-binary people, the bisexual Hispanic people, all the other identities who aren’t being heard. I’m excited for that.”
Article by Avery Wang of Richard Montgomery High School