Study Skill 14.12 Teaching Women's and Gender Studies - Classroom Activites for Women's History Month and Beyond

Kathryn Fishman-Weaver and Jill Clingan

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This Women’s History Month, we are featuring resources from Kathryn Fishman-Weaver and Jill Clingan’s new book series on teaching Women’s and Gender Studies in the middle and high school classroom.

As a recent Mizzou Academy article confirms, “(WGST) is not often taught in the middle and high school classroom. Mizzou Academy faculty and coauthors Dr. Kathryn Fishman-Weaver and Jill Clingan hope to help fill this important gap with a new book series published with Routledge Press.”

Their two-book series includes a collection of free downloadable resources that teachers can implement in their classrooms. The following teaching guide overviews some of these resources and connects them to the 2023 Women’s History Month theme: Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories.

Women’s History Month is a time to honor and celebrate the contributions women have made to history. In the United States in 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed the first presidential proclamation for National Women’s History Week, and in 1987, Congress passed a resolution designating March as Women’s History Month. Women’s History Month celebrations and recognitions have expanded globally including International Women’s Day, which is observed annually on March 8.

The 2023 theme of Women’s History Month is “Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories.” This theme is especially compelling because, as Fishman-Weaver and Clingan note in their book Teaching Women’s and Gender Studies: Classroom Resources on Resistance, Representation, and Radical Hope (Grades 9-12), “History is a story of the past, and since the narrative of the past shapes the present and our future, how that story is told—and who tells it—is critical” (p. 114). The term history comes from the Greek meaning both to ask and to offer a story or account. Although the etymology of the term “history” is not gendered, we know that too often the practice of telling history has left out women, girls, and non-binary people.

Through the following activities, we hope to draw “attention to and center the telling of women’s stories. It is essential to tell herstory so that the collective narrative [we] read, learn, and know contains the depth, breadth, layers, and stories of those who worked [and are still working] toward justice” (p. 114). The activities in this resource will help you celebrate women who tell our stories as you explore artivists, youth activists, and changemakers and as you invite your students to narrate their own stories that impact change.

What is Women’s and Gender Studies?

Women’s and Gender Studies (WGST)—An interdisciplinary study of the ways gender is constructed and how it affects our lived experiences and opportunities; a commitment to work toward greater justice; and the intentional centering of stories, histories, and contributions of women and girls that are too often missing from curricula and media.

How might you and your class communities begin your study of Women’s and Gender Studies? Clingan and Fishman-Weaver recommend beginning with class norms (e.g., we practice courage, we assume positive intent, we recognize that all experiences are valid), personal story (as the 2023 theme teaches us, personal stories matter), and clear definitions (having common language to make complicated conversations more effective).

This first handout offers an accessible definition of Women’s and Gender Studies for your class to consider.

What Is WGST (PDF)

What Is WGST.pdf

Recognizing that there are many perceptions about feminism, this next handout breaks down the authors’ working definition of feminism into its parts. Fishman-Weaver and Clingan assert that feminism is an affirmation of humanity that seeks freedom from oppression and commits to the full access of social, health, economic, and political rights and opportunities for all people. In this activity, student groups brainstorm what topics and concepts fall under each of these broad categories.

Start Where You Are—Feminism (PDF)

Start Where You Are--Feminism.pdf

Through this early brainstorming, students will see the wide array of important local and global issues that fall under this umbrella term. This leads purposefully into the next activities on exploring the United Nations Fifth Sustainable Development Goal.

The United Nations SDG 5 is “to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.” This is a multifaceted goal with implications for healthcare, education, leadership, and representation. In the two activities linked below, students explore the United Nations SDG 5 and consider what priorities they want to focus on as they engaging in creating a culture of belonging and community.

Exploring the UN's SDGs (PDF) and Focus Priorities (PDF)

Exploring the UN's SDGs.pdf

Focus Priorities.pdf

This next activity introduces important new concepts and vocabulary, including:

gender as a social construct
colonization and its impact on gender identities and expression

This chart helps students organize their thoughts and research on colonization and gender-expansive identities. It draws on several cultures including the two-spirit identities in Indigenous cultures in the United States, the kathoey of Thailand, and the hijra in India.

Beyond the Binary (PDF)

Beyond the Binary.pdf

Jill Clingan says, “We connect with our world through story. We discover who we are as we navigate our own stories, and, equally as important, we connect to others through their stories. The exploration of Women’s and Gender Studies is an exploration of connection through story. We move beyond a linear definition of feminism and Women’s and Gender Studies and into a lateral connection to new ideas and a new understanding of people. These living, lateral connections inspire both us as educators and our students to connect to those stories and then work to launch those connections into action. As activists, we can work to make the world a more just, welcoming place where people can freely live their story outside of the artificial, restrictive construct of gender.”

Artivism

Artivism is art + activism. Artivists use their creative work as a form of resistance to injustices such as racism, sexism, discrimination, and other social inequalities. Through their work, they both expose injustices and imagine new stories. The activities linked in this section encourage students to study artivists and to become artivists themselves. Three art pieces that the authors recommend in their book series are:

Emma Amos—Preparing for a Facelift
Miriam Schapiro—Costume for Mother Earth
MaestraPeace—San Francisco Women’s Mural (Juana Alicia, Miranda Bergman, Edythe Boone, Susan Kelk Cervantes, Meera Desai, Yvonne Littleton, and Irene Perez)

“The Close Reading for Images—A Viewing Protocol” handout linked below gives students a framework for exploring and reading art images including theme, context, and story. Educators can use this protocol for approaching reading images across the content area.

Close Reading for Images (PDF)

Close Reading for Images.pdf

Both books include an additional proseminar for study. The middle school book includes a proseminar on intersectionality, and the high school book includes a proseminar on artivism. Across these units is a reverence for art as a tool for both resistance and sensemaking. You and your students are invited to explore one or both of the projects linked below.

Proseminar Project Artivism (PDF) and Proseminar Project Intersectionality (PDF)

Proseminar Project.pdf

Proseminar Project Intersectionality.pdf

Kathryn Fishman-Weaver says, “The arts call us to pay attention and to tell more complete stories. In my own work in schools, the arts have been essential in helping me think more deeply and more effectively about teaching, learning, and pedagogy. The arts invite learning on both process and product and offer powerful strategies for cultivating resistance, representation, and radical hope.”

Youth Leadership

Clingan and Fishman-Weaver contend that, “One of the most important lessons we can offer our students is an affirmation that their stories, their leadership, and their lives matter.” The first activity in this section invites students to research the stories of youth activists who are at the forefront of climate change. Next, students research how climate change is affecting their own community and create a plan for advancing intersectional climate justice on a local level.

The second handout guides students to become catalysts for climate justice by creating a policy proposal outline that they can finalize and present to key stakeholders in their community. The policy proposal outline can also be used for other challenges that students identify, including those that spoke to them from their earlier research on the United Nations SDG 5.

Youth Activists (PDF) and Policy Proposal (PDF)

Youth Activists.pdf

Policy Proposal Outline.pdf

Fishman-Weaver and Clingan are both quick to share that the young people they work with are already enacting change in important ways. The books include examples of student leadership from their own work in schools as well as examples of youth advocates from around the world. The middle school book also includes an essay by a Mizzou Academy high school senior named Matheus Nucci Mascarenhas. The essay is a collaboration with his grandmother, Marilia Mascarenha.

In a recent Mizzou Academy article, Matheus is quoted as lighting up when he talks about learning with his grandmother: “My grandmother’s voice is strong. This interview showed me the perspective of a progressive woman who intended to propel practical changes to further the cause of gender equality.”

Changemaking

Teaching a More Complete U.S History

As noted earlier in this resource, how the stories of history are told and who tells them have both historical and contemporary implications. The book series encourages students and teachers to study gender justice movements from history as well as the ways many of those movements are still impacting change today.

The following handout is a timeline of key historical figures who helped expand gender representation in the United States government. You can assign individual students or groups to research a key figure from the timeline and prepare a Google Slides presentation that explains who the key figure is and how their work advanced gender justice, equality, and representation.

Historical Figures Timeline (PDF 29KB)

Historical Figures Timeline.pdf

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s story made a powerful and lasting impact on United States history. This activity provides background on seven of Justice Ginsburg’s landmark cases and then invites students to create a storybook page with text and illustrations describing these key issues.

Seven Landmark Cases (PDF 40KB)

Seven Landmark Cases.pdf

Global Perspectives, Local Actions

Feminism is at the heart of global justice work. In the book series, Fishman-Weaver and Clingan connect Women’s and Gender Studies to justice work happening around the world. Leah Namugerwa is a youth climate activist from Uganda. Isra Hirsi co-founded US Youth Climate Strike. Rigoberta Menchú was the first Indigenous woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her social justice work. Autumn Peltier is an Anishinaabe Indigenous water rights activist from Canada. Rukumani (Ruku) Tripathi is a midwife making a profound difference in health outcomes for women in Nepal. Your students can also tap into the heartbeat of justice work.

According to the United Nations World Food Program, “Of the 811 million people who are food insecure in the world right now, nearly 60% are women and girls.” LaTeX: ^1 In the United States, 11.1% of households are food insecure, but that number jumps dramatically for single mothers and for women who live alone. LaTeX: ^2 Using the first handout below as a guide, students can research local food insecurity and develop an action plan to reduce food insecurity in their local community.

LaTeX: ^1 https://www.wfpusa.org/women-are-hungrier-infographic/
LaTeX: ^2 https://frac.org/blog/impact-food-insecurity-womens-health

Food Insecurity Praxis Project (PDF)

Food Insecurity Praxis Project.pdf

In this next activity, students organize a group research project on a mental or physical health topic to present as a research paper, visual presentation, or video. This project also asks students to consider the relationship between mental health, social justice, and feminism. Throughout this and all projects in these resources, the authors encourage humanizing research methods including working with communities, seeking wisdom from the communities we are studying, identifying strengths, and working collaboratively.

Intersectional Protocol (PDF)

Intersectional Protocol.pdf

Conclusion

We hope this teaching guide offers specific and powerful activities for celebrating Women’s History Month in your own classrooms. We also hope that this work continues well beyond March.

As the authors write, this book series is a starting place. “On their own, these units do not correct for all the missing voices and histories; they do not solve global challenges.… The book you are holding comes to life in what happens off the page, in the discussions, projects, and initiatives of you and your scholars.… May these units be powerful first steps, conceptual catalysts, and inspirational sources that drive your classroom spaces forward to greater action and representation” (Fishman-Weaver and Clingan, 2023, pp. 8-9).

Teaching Women’s and Gender Studies: Classroom Resources on Resistance, Representation, and Radical Hope (Grades 6-8) and Teaching Women’s and Gender Studies: Classroom Resources on Resistance, Representation, and Radical Hope (Grades 9-12) are both available at Routledge Press and everywhere books are sold.