I am a teacher at an afterschool program in Boston, and as I get ready to start the new school year I'm struggling to think of ways to work my strong feminist values into the afterschool curriculum. I'm hoping some of you can help me!
I am fortunate to work in a very progressive and relatively well off program, so the options available to me are pretty open ended; we have lots of art supplies, we're able to take field trips, and we have a fully stocked kitchen (the kids loove to bake). I was thinking about trying to start some kind of self esteem building club with a group of girls - the kids I work with are generally in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade - but exactly what form the club would take is where I get lost. If this were to take the form of a club, it would meet once a week for an hour and a half at a time. I also have a strong background in art, so if that played in somehow that would be great.
This will be my second year with the program, and throughout the last school year I watched these young girls take on more and more of the negative vaules of our society, and I worry about how it affects them. I'd see them play into the stereotype of catty, self absorbed girls, and it worried me. I want to give them some of the self awareness and confidence they need to be able to sort through the bullshit, so to speak.
If anyone has any suggestions, or if you have experience with these sorts of things, I'd love to hear it!!
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It sounds like a fantastic idea. Maybe you can check out the Girls Inc website- there's a link to it from a frontpage story here- for ideas about what kind of workshops they do. Or you can read up on Reviving Ophelia type books and see what they suggest. Your art background might be really useful- you could do things with beauty culture, maybe have the girls do self-portraits or collages of commercial images of beauty, both in the context of critiquing the messages that pop culture etc. is sending to girls. There must be other stuff, but that's the first thing that comes to mind because it's such a visual aspect of feminism. Ooh, maybe you could do some kind of basic construction, like making a birdhouse or something, and teach the girls how to use basic household tools. That can teach practical skills, plus applied math (measuring and planning), and then they can be artistic in decorating the outside. Good luck!
I would really recommend getting information from the kids about their interests. I.e., if they express an interest in history, get supplemental information about often-glossed over males and females in history. For women, see this book, which I love. http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Women-Drudges-Helpmates-Heroines/dp/0061227226/ref=sr_1_17?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1218742696&sr=8-17
If they're interested in technology, Hedy Lamarr was co-inventor of a pretty cool type of sonar.
Art is a great way to open things up--having them do art, and go to museums, or watch slideshows, or do reports on artists.
And I love, love, love non-traditional princess stories like tatterhood, or books where the focus is on the heroine DOING things, i.e., the Illyrian Adventure books with Vesper Holly by Lloyd Alexander (which may be age-appropriate). I've also heard the golden compass series by Phillip Pullman is really good, although some consider those books controversial because of their not-so-thinly veiled criticism of the Catholic/Anglican church. (I've read some of his other stuff, which is not age appropriate.)
If you get them fired up about the things they can DO, and insist that everyone behave with respect, this will distract from the petty power plays and the focus on appearance.
I'm not big on the whole self-esteem movement, BTW, and could post an article explaining why, but that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish.