Guest Post: Learning Feminism in High School Led to My College Choice

27 August 2010

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Alexandra Garza

My name is Alexandra Garza and I was a student of Ileana Jiménez’s at Elisabeth Irwin High School (LREI). Before I was a student and now friend of Ileana’s, I had only known her contagious laugh heard frequently throughout the hallways. As time passed, I saw her at school assemblies encouraging students to get involved in various panels, lectures, and discussions on race, class, and gender. For some time, I’d been interested in joining these discussions Ileana so passionately advocated. I took my curiosity into consideration when selecting courses for my junior year. I was definitely lured in by Ileana’s passion. I decided to jump into the conversation head first by signing up for Ileana’s literature course, Fierce and Fabulous: Feminist Women Writers, Artists, and Activists. Aside from the fantastic title, I had a feeling this class could change my entire life. Continue reading →

Guest Post: Sex+Gender: Reading Dangerous Language in High School

26 August 2010

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“My name is Lola Lorber, I’m a freshman, and my preferred gender pronouns are she, her, and hers.”

Lola Lorber

This is how we introduce ourselves on the first few days of classes at Oberlin College. To some it may sound weird, funny, or redundant; but at Oberlin, it is the norm.

I am proud to say I believe in sex positivity and freedom of speech. I’m a vegan, and I like to laugh. I’ve recently gotten into stand-up comedy because I like being able to say things into a microphone and make myself loud and heard. I am proud to make people laugh. I am proud to be an LREI alum (Little Red School House & Elisabeth Irwin High School).

The first elective course I ever took in high school was a memoir writing class my junior year. In this class, I discovered my voice, my identity, and my love for telling stories. In the fall of 2007, we were an intimate class of ten students consisting of a mix of juniors and seniors, and one teacher, Ileana Jiménez (also known as Feminist Teacher). We met almost every day in a hidden corner of the library–and it was here where our lives were shared and merged with each other’s. My peers would read aloud their pieces to the class revealing their true selves. With assigned readings from published memoirs and writing prompts given to us by Ileana, we were all immersed on a journey of our own words. I quickly became familiar with my humorous and sincere voice and I knew that I would continue to embrace it in my future. Continue reading →

Guest Post: From Little Red to Big Red: Becoming a Feminist in High School, Creating Change in College

25 August 2010

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Jenilssa Holguin

After being at LREI for four years, speaking about diversity and feminism became second nature to me. The classes that I took–such as Fierce and Fabulous: Feminist Women Writers, Artists, and Activists; Queer Identities: LGBT Literature and Film; and Memoir Writing–paired with the student diversity conferences that I attended, as well as the series of speakers that we were lucky to have at my school, all made issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality prevalent in my mind. During my years at Little Red, one of my teachers, Ileana Jiménez, helped me find myself, develop my feminist identity, and be proud of who I am. I learned to do diversity work in my everyday life.

When I got accepted to Cornell University I was ecstatic. It was my first choice, and I was going to be the first in my family to go to college. I thought,“It’s a huge school, so I am sure that I can find people who share my views on diversity, since Cornell is pretty diverse.” Boy, was I wrong! During my first weeks there, I noticed how racially segregated my field of hospitality management was as well as the University as a whole. I was taken by surprise when I saw that two clubs that I was interested in were completely segregated. One was all white, and the other was made up of all students of color. Naturally, I joined both, not only because I was interested in both clubs but also because I wanted to get at the root of the problem. Continue reading →

New Series on the Impact of Teaching and Learning Feminism(s) in High School

24 August 2010

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This week I am launching an ongoing series of guest posts from former students reflecting on their experience of learning feminism(s) in high school. The inspiration for this series came from my students, who each day teach me that they too want to be a part of feminism as activists, artists, and academics.

When I founded this blog at the close of 2009, I wanted to begin a conversation with feminist educators in K-12 schools about the work they do in their classrooms as feminists. Within a month of starting the blog, I posted a letter that a student of mine had written to President Obama calling for implementing a feminist curriculum in our K-12 classrooms.

My student’s letter created a response from a variety of bloggers, including a post at Feministing by Courtney Martin and one from Anna North at Jezebel. Needless to say, I was honored by this affirmation of my student’s call to action and my work as a feminist educator.

But even with that wonderful response, I still wondered: Am I making a difference in my students’ lives? Is learning feminism in high school making an impact? And if so, would the voices of my students inspire other educators to make change in their classroom and in their schools? Continue reading →

A Task Force of Her Own: Interview with Refuse the Silence’s Morgane Richardson

19 July 2010

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Morgane Richardson

Morgane Richardson has a mission to change higher education for women of color as we know it.

A 2008 graduate of Middlebury College, Richardson started her work supporting women of color as an activist and mentor on campus. Throughout her college years, she made herself available to women of color as they navigated issues of race, class, and gender. Determined to change the campus climate, she also sat on Middlebury’s Task Force on the Status of Women, which continued the work of earlier task forces on issues of gender at the college from 1990 and 1997 respectively. The original 1990 report, which came to be called the “Gender Report,” was “undertaken in the aftermath of an incident in which a mutilated female mannequin was hanged from the front of a fraternity house during a party at the close of the 1987-88 school year.”

Upon graduating, Richardson became inspired to change the climate for women of color at elite liberal arts colleges, institutions whose histories of tradition and privilege generate cultures of racism, sexism, and homophobia, leaving women of color erased from the conversation, both academically and socially.  Today, Richardson is collecting the stories of women of color at elite liberal arts colleges to create an anthology made up of narratives, letters, essays and videos, which will be titled Refuse the Silence. These stories will be used to design a set of actions that will be sent to leading college presidents and administrators to create the kind of change we’ve long been waiting for. Continue reading →

What My School is Reading This Summer

5 July 2010

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The faculty at my school recommend book circle selections as part of our annual summer reading tradition (photo courtesy: Laura Hahn, LREI).

At the school where I teach, there are two summer reading requirements: one for English class and one for our school-wide book circles.

The first requirement is for our ninth and tenth grade yearlong courses. For students entering our ninth grade World Voices course, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, is required.  For sophomores entering our American Dreams, American Experiences course, students read Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.

The second requirement is my favorite. All of our high school students select another book based on faculty recommendations. Each fall, the entire faculty—yes, that includes science, math, history, English, foreign language, art, music dance, theatre, technology and media teachers—leads a book circle discussion with students who selected the book that teacher recommended. Selections are presented during an assembly in the late spring just before students head off for the summer. Continue reading →

Summer Reading Picks Criticized by Conservative “Watchdogs”

4 July 2010

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In an effort to engage students in a shared reading experience on today's most pressing issues, colleges across the country are assigning summer reading.

I recently wrote a summer reading post for Care2 listing ten must-read books on issues of education and diversity.  One of the comments I received was not typical of all the responses, but certainly echoed the current national backlash against addressing diversity and inclusion in schools and colleges:

Sounds like the bs from the far left progressives, esp. when I hear the prefix ‘trans’ . . . lets [sic] stick to teaching the kids solid basics. This country is becoming more stupid each year and the teachers are to blame.

Sadly, myopic attitudes—whether they be racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, or transphobic, like the one above—about diversity in our schools have become the norm when attacking inclusive education. From Arizona’s banning of ethnic studies to Texas textbooks eliminating the word “slavery” for the term “Triangle Trade,” education is suffering from hateful slings and arrows.

To add further insult to our work as educators, a new study, “Beach Books: What Do Colleges Want Students to Read Outside of Class?,” from the National Association of Scholars “found that 70 percent of the summer reading books assigned to incoming college freshmen in the U.S. show a liberal bias and are not academically challenging.” Continue reading →

More on Maddow’s Smith Commencement Speech: What I Didn’t Get to Include

22 May 2010

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I’m still pretty ecstatic about having interviewed Rachel Maddow just minutes before she delivered

Rachel Maddow at Smith Commencement 2010 (photo: Jim Gipe/pivotmedia.com).

this year’s Commencement speech at Smith College to the class of 2010 on May 16.  As a Smith alum from 1997, I was thrilled to cover the event for the Women’s Media Center in New York, which was co-founded by fellow Smith alum Gloria Steinem ’56.  Here’s the piece I wrote for them last week, which includes an exclusive quote from Maddow on feminism.

But there were some moments that I didn’t get to talk about in my WMC post, namely the covert lesbian joke that Maddow made to a knowing crowd, the lively live tweets from swooning alumnae; and photos of Maddow that will knock you out.

Continue reading →

Students Enthralled By Morrison at PEN World Voices Festival

2 May 2010

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My Toni Morrison seminar students (photo by Cecelia Martin).

This weekend I took the junior and senior students in my Toni Morrison elective to hear her speak alongside South African writer Marlene van Niekerk and Kwame Anthony Appiah, President of the PEN American Center. The event took place at Cooper Union’s Great Hall as part of the annual PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature.

During the talk, Morrison declared Niekerk’s novel Agaat, “exactly the most extraordinary book that I’ve ever read in a long time . . . you must read it.” Agaat won the prestigious Hertzog Prize in 2007; the prize recognizes the very best in Afrikaans literature. Continue reading →

Exposing the “Master Narrative”: Teaching Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

13 April 2010

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The following post is second in a series on teaching paired texts in high school classrooms.  It is cross-posted at Equality 101.

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye lends itself to rich conversations with students about race, class, gender, and sexuality.  Throughout our teaching of this text, my colleagues and I have used a variety of additional texts, images, and videos that help students understand the novel from both personal and analytical perspectives. The following post provides ideas for sources to pair with the novel including teaching the term “master narrative,” discussing images of Shirley Temple and American girlhood, as well as analyzing media images and their connection to self and body image. Continue reading →