The Montgomery County Board of Education approved a new pilot course, Hip Hop Poetics and Rhetoric: Exploring the Golden Age of Hip Hop, at a Nov. 7 meeting.
Montgomery Blair High School will introduce the course during the 2025-2026 school year. The new class plans to explore the literary and cultural aspects of hip-hop from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s. Students will analyze lyrics, music videos, documentaries, album art and memoirs as part of the curriculum. Montgomery Blair also currently offers another pilot course, Jewish Peoplehood Throughout History.
Chief Academic Officer Dr. Peggy Pugh discussed the significance of pilot programs during the Nov. 7 Board meeting, emphasizing their role in addressing gaps in the traditional curriculum and empowering students to shape their education.
“The great thing about these pilot courses is that it allows students’ choice and voice,” Pugh said during the Board meeting. “It allows them to develop courses that may represent them in ways that existing our core courses do not.”
Whitman will offer the pilot course Social Justice Through Public Policy, part of the Leadership Academy of Social Justice (LASJ) program, in the second semester of this year. Both are in their second year of the pilot process and originated from student and staff proposals.
LASJ Teacher Kevin Oberdorfer piloted LGBTQ+ Studies at Churchill and Social Justice Through Public Policy at Whitman. Oberdorfer said he has seen a positive difference in student engagement in pilot courses.
“We have this opportunity to develop courses that no other school really is going to teach,” Oberdorfer said. “Students might be interested in topics that are a little bit more interdisciplinary and less consistent with this sort of traditional curriculum that high schools offer. So I think it’s great.”
The development process for pilot courses spans four years. In the first year, staff submit course proposals, design the curriculum, select materials and enroll students. The second year focuses on implementation, allowing students to take the course for the first time. By the third year, the course undergoes evaluation while remaining active. In the final year, the Board of Education decides whether to make the course permanent and possibly expand it to other schools.
LASJ student Emily Kenyon said she looks forward to taking the second-year pilot class Social Justice Through Public Policy and hopes to see the expansion of other pilot courses into Whitman.
“I think public policy is such an important topic that is really relevant to the current world,” Kenyon said. “It’s definitely very cool that a student has had an input on it because we know that it is geared towards student interest.”
