March was Women’s History Month and the 12th graders taking the American Women’s History elective course with teacher Tiffany Wayne chose to commemorate by launching a campus education campaign highlighting historical and current gender equality issues. The students created a series of colorful posters that they displayed throughout the upper campus. The posters featured eye-catching graphs and charts related to the wage gap, American women’s political participation, sexual assault, and representations of women in the media. Other artfully designed posters displayed thought-provoking quotes from activists or highlighted facts related to global issues such as education, poverty, child marriage, and women’s status worldwide.
‘The goals of the course are to provide historical context for understanding women’s experiences and contributions throughout U.S. history and to examine how ideas about gender have impacted the lives of both women and men,’ said Wayne. ‘But throughout the year we have also related our historical inquiry to current issues in the news that affect the students’ lives today.’ Wayne explained that when the class discussed doing a Women’s History Month project, the students immediately wanted to share with the larger campus community some of the issues they had been studying and discussing. The poster project was agreed upon as a visual way to engage the campus community beyond those taking the class.
Response to the posters was immediate, as middle and high school students, as well as other visitors to the upper campus, stopped to read and discuss the issues highlighted. In some cases, other students even left anonymous comments or questions attached to the photos. But the feedback caught the Women’s History students off guard at first.
‘The reactions to the poster project were surprising to me,’ said senior Carlo LeGan. ‘The intention for posting the information was to make a conversation throughout the school, not to create arguments.’ Wayne was pleased, however, to see other students engaging with and talking about the information presented.
‘I encouraged my students to provide follow-up responses based on their research,” she said. “If someone questions our facts or statistics, we have to be prepared to back up the information. This is part of the process of educating around sometimes controversial ideas or challenging people with different ways of looking at the world.’
This is the first year that American Women’s History has been offered as an elective course at Mount Madonna School. Wayne also teaches middle school World History. Wayne holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a B.A. in women’s studies from the University of California, San Diego. She is the author or editor of several books, including most recently a 4-volume reference work on Women’s Rights in the United States: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Issues, Events, and People, just published in December 2014.
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Nestled among the redwoods on 355 mountaintop acres, Mount Madonna is a safe and nurturing college-preparatory school that supports students in becoming caring, self-aware and articulate critical thinkers, who are prepared to meet challenges with perseverance, creativity and integrity. The CAIS and WASC accredited program emphasizes academic excellence, creative self-expression and positive character development. Located on Summit Road between Gilroy and Watsonville.