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When Women Rose: Students in Willow Glen are being taught about heroic American figures like Anna LoPizzo, a "Bread and Roses" striker shot by police in Lawrence, Mass. in 1912.
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Local schools each find unique ways to celebrate Women's History Month Students and teachers uncover contributions of the often-forgotten females in our history
By Mary Spicuzza
Leaning his giant hands heavily on the wooden desk, the stocky professor had no qualms about making his opinion known. So sure was he of his notions about the past, he referred to them as historical facts. "I'm so sick of hearing women whine about being left out of history," he fumed at a class during his Introduction to African History lecture. "If women had done anything besides have babies and die, they would've been included in history."
If only the old curmudgeon had taken the time to visit Jeanne Boin's Willow Glen classroom during March, which is National Women's History Month, her students could teach the old history professor a thing or two about the ways that women have shaped the world.
Sixth-grader Anabelle Cadena, for example, would be happy to tell him all about feisty labor organizer, Mary Harris "Mother" Jones. And Alberto Talavera will soon be a specialist on the life of outspoken activist Sojourner Truth.
Throughout March, several local teachers and students are working to reclaim women's important contributions to the world, ranging from female athletes and leaders to political activists and artists.
Last week Jeanne Boin, English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher at Willow Glen Middle School, led her class to the Interactive Lab for Internet research. Each student had picked someone who attended the Woman's Rights Convention of 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, and the class will spend the next few weeks doing research. Besides immortalizing each of their favorites with a written biography, the young historians will gather photos and create a "Women's Hall of Fame."
"At the beginning of the unit, I asked the class to look back and think about how many women we had talked about over the year. Many students felt said they'd only learned about men in history," Boin says. "Students talked about how women are often overlooked."
Boin, who began teaching at the school nine years ago, says she tries to include Women's History Month in her curriculum. When she was growing up, she remembers only learning snippets about certain famous women like Susan B. Anthony, but says that as an avid reader she discovered remarkable women.
Many women like Boin sensed a void of information on their gender while studying the past. It's that shared experience that led to the formation of Women's History Month, ratified by Congress in 1987 after heavy lobbying from the National Women's History Project. The project evolved out of Sonoma County's Women's History Week, which has been an annual event since 1978. Like the national event, Sonoma's woman-centered week emphasized uncovering the forgotten heritage of females.
Ten years later, many are still unaware of Women's History Month, and many students interviewed said they'd learned little about females in history. Taking a break from her Internet search on environmentalist/author Rachel Carson, 12-year-old Jasmine Moreno says she can't remember studying any other women activists.
Sister Stephanie Still, Social Studies Department Chair at Presentation High School, agrees there's a lot of work to be done to reclaim the importance of women in history. But she also says there's been much progress in the way we study the past.
Still has been teaching for 20 years, and has spent the past 11 at Presentation, Willow Glen's all-girls Catholic high school. She says that both teachers and textbooks are trying to be more inclusive, and attributes it to the flurry of activism in the '60s and early '70s.
"I think the textbooks are trying to include everybody, not just the 'Dead White Guys,' as some call them," Still says sweetly. "It's becoming accepted by the mainstream to include everybody's histories."
Still adds that beyond just snippets about famous women and minorities, historians are trying to include perspectives from the margins.
San Jose Unified School District has nothing planned district-wide, according to spokesperson Maureen Monroe. But teachers throughout the district are getting creative about incorporating Women's History Month into their curricula on their own.
Monica Hojda, a physical education teacher at Willow Glen Middle School, is offering credit for students who choose to select a favorite female basketball player and write a short profile. She'll also be screening "Dare To Challenge," a program about the history of women in sports, narrated by Billie Jean King.
Our country may be struggling to catch up to where we should be in teaching about women in history, but according to 11-year-old Stephanie Fonesca, it's an international concern. Fonesca, who moved with her family from Portugal last year, says she learned little about women in Portuguese history while in school there.
"In Portugal, I think there's more men than women," she says.
But as she wrinkles her face, frustrated with the limited information she could find about Eleanor Roosevelt, she adds that there hasn't been nearly enough written about women of the past here in her adopted homeland, either.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
