Connecticut education leaders are expressing cautious optimism as the state Department of Education tries its hand at course development.
The department announced the release of its first-ever “Course in a Box,” An American History of Rock and Soul, in January. It’s a one-semester elective designed for teachers to deploy straight out of the box (metaphorically — the materials are stored in a digital library), using music as a primary source to explore key social movements and events.
The state designed the course in conjunction with the nonprofit TeachRock, which develops educational resources for schools throughout the U.S. The goal is to engage kids in learning about history and civic engagement while putting them on a path to potentially work in the music industry, said the department’s Chief Academic Officer Irene Parisi.
“Beginning with the 1950s all the way through, there are some pivotal moments with songwriters that we keep coming back to,” Parisi said. She pointed to the British Invasion, the civil rights and counterculture movements and the rise of pop culture as examples.
The course is available to the public through GoOpenCT, a state-run digital library of open educational resources. Parisi described it as part of a national movement to create high-quality, free-to-use educational materials. The site already contains a number of resources for teachers, but An American History of Rock and Soul will be the first fully fleshed out course.
The course didn’t cost Connecticut taxpayers much, either. TeachRock’s time and resources were free to the state — its parent organization, The Rock and Soul Forever Foundation, funds its work — and the department employees who worked on it were already on the payroll.
Parisi said if the course is a success, the department would like to develop more, potentially matching them with dual credit opportunities. Supporters say dual credit courses are a powerful tool to help first generation and low-income students access postsecondary education, but equity is an issue. Some schools don’t have many teachers who are certified for dual credit, for example.
Parisi said the impetus to design the course stemmed from teacher feedback.
“There’s been a theme with … the time it takes to plan through their lessons, time for all of the work that is required,” Parisi said. “So we really started to think, well, how can we give teachers back time?”
Not everyone is convinced that’s a goal the course can accomplish, however.
“As educators, there’s a lot we can do with curriculum that is ‘in a box,’ but this really doesn’t necessarily address the students in front of us,” said Connecticut Education Association President Kate Dias, who leads the state’s largest teacher union. So-called “canned curriculum” are nothing new to the profession; Dias said it’s often “designed to meet the needs of everyone and therefore, it meets the needs of no one.”
Ultimately, Dias said, it’s teachers’ responsibility to take material and ensure the students in front of them absorb and retain it. Different students learn differently, and teachers have to adapt.
“The part of teaching that most of us enjoy is the strategy around how to get students into and excited about learning,” Dias said. “That’s the part of the job that we’re excited to do.”
Nevertheless, Dias acknowledged that building a course from scratch is “absolutely a time suck” for teachers.
“Getting high-interest materials that we can leverage with our students is a tremendous asset. I would never say no to that,” she said. Having the state get more involved in cultivating those materials could be a big benefit.
University of Connecticut education policy professor Casey Cobb said his initial reaction to the course is positive.
“I’m very interested to see the other courses [that the department develops]. I’m impressed by this first course just because it’s an elective. It ties into music, which kids would be engaged in, ties into history and culture … I think it has real potential to be a good course,” Cobb said.
Cobb said that despite the “Course in a Box” name, the course doesn’t actually strike him as a canned or scripted curriculum.
“Like a lot of good history courses … they’ll provide primary sources that the kids can actually look at, see, touch, in this case, hear … And some blueprints about how you can work with these primary sources. That’s really, I think, a valuable, rich set of materials to conduct a course,” Cobb said.
Cobb said the state’s move toward curriculum development might suggest a shift away from a strictly compliance-oriented mindset toward a focus on providing more resources for districts. He said compliance — tracking districts’ performance through measures like standardized testing — has dominated education policy since the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act.
“I applaud a state Department of Education that can see past that, or at least build enough capacity so that they’re actually serving the public schools … particularly for the low-income districts in Connecticut,” Cobb said.