Category: girls

Unlikely new nonfiction

Our G6 Language & Literature classes have just started a unit on “Unlikely Heroes” and I must admit I’ve been having an amazing time finding some fantastic new biographies and memoirs to entice them into reading this genre and keeping an interest in the lives of people who may not always make the headlines, or who they may not be aware of, or who they only have an inkling of.

Two very interesting stories from the sporting realm are those of Jesselyn Silva with “My Corner of the Ring” (boxing) and Ibtihaj Muhammad with “Proud: living my American dream” (fencing). These are a double win to my mind featuring both lesser written about sports for middle grade students AND featuring young girls from non-traditional backgrounds in those sport – I have a daughter who fences and I know exactly how expensive (and sometimes snobby/exclusive) we’ve found it. There’s also the recent cliffhanger with young football players in Thailand, excellently written about by Marc Aronson in “Rising Water : The Story of the Thai Cave Rescue”.

Through my privileged connection with the Neev Children’s book awards, I’m able to encounter books that I wouldn’t otherwise be aware of such as “Like A Girl: Real Stories for Tough Kids” by Aparna Jain that showcases the lives of 56 Indian ladies, who may not be familiar to our students. Another book worth mentioning is the hybrid graphic novel / biography Indira by Devapriya Roy and Priya Kuriyan (Illustrator). What makes that book special is the way it weaves in how writing research is conducted in present day with the historical facts.

Our students are also living through history making by people in the here and now such as Autumn Peltier and Greta Thunberg (We Are All Greta: Be Inspired to Save the World by Valentina Giannella, Manuela Marazzi (Illustrator)). And our school is extremely lucky to have had a long-standing relationship with Jane Goodall who will be attending our FOEN conference next week (Hope for animals and their world. Unfortunately I wonder if that message of hope still stands ten years later).

Finally we’re also seeing more books either featuring LGBTQ+ heroes or where they are part of the narrative of other history. In a fairly conservative International environment there is always the question of how (not whether) one brings this up. I find that someone like Alan Turing is a wonderful segue into the area. (Alan Turing by Jim Eldridge; The imitation game : Alan Turing decoded written by Jim Ottaviani; Genius inventions : the stories behind history’s greatest technological breakthroughs by Jack Challoner; Stories for boys who dare to be different : true tales of amazing boys who changed the world without killing dragons by Ben Brooks ; illustrated by Quinton Winter and Queer heroes by Arabelle Sicardi ; illustrated by Sarah Tanat-Jones.)

The last three books, are ones where he is part of an anthology. One thing that we’ve started doing as part of this unit, is where there are a number of “heroes” in one book, we’ve added all the names in the table of contents to our cataloging record. That helps students to find different perspectives, formats, lengths of explanation and viewpoints of the same person. We’re hoping that some students will start with one of our many combined biographies, for example the great series of “Forgotten Women” by Zing Tsjeng or the “Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls; or The Good Guys or Stories for Boys; or Stories for Kids; or “A History of the world with the women put back in” by Kerstin Lücker & Ute Daenschel and end up further researching one particular person who catches their interest.

An amazing thing has happened to nonfiction since around 2016. The visuals, design and layout has improved to no end, so books have become so much more enticing. I’m also loving the fact that biographies of women are no longer so ugly and we’re finding out about other amazing women such as Didda the ruler of Kashmir from 958 CE to 1003 CE (Queen of Ice by Devika Rangachari).

More of the wonderful books and how we categorised the various types of heroes around this unit can be found on our library guide. The revolving book lists (created with LibraryThing for Libraries) on each section lead back to our catalogue where students can see if the book is available and if necessary put the book on hold.

Next time I hope to write about some more fabulous nonfiction recent finds related to other curriculum units.

I wish I didn’t have to welcome you

I’m part of this club that I never want to be in the position to welcome others to, and yet yesterday afternoon I had to admit yet another member.

I don’t even know what to call it – I don’t want to name it – #metoo has connotations that I’d rather not introduce an 11 year old to, but maybe we need to.

The scenario. Last hours of the last day of a G6 camp. A young girl sitting to the side crying. As the nearest available woman I was asked to see what the problem was. She was really upset. Why? She’d had a great idea during one of the group activities that was ignored, but then wholeheartedly accepted when a boy reiterated the exact same idea minutes later. I affirmed her right to be upset, and angry and frustrated. And inside I’m thinking omg, how horrid that at the tender age of 11 she’s already being confronted with this. Or how admirable that she’s so aware – I think I was in my own private intellectual haze until at least university.

I told her there was a name for what had happened – sort of, and explained mansplaining. I told her there were other strong capable women out there who were ready to support girls like her and that I’d send her some articles. I told her that crying was unfortunately not the answer, nor was setting herself aside. I quickly taught her some calming breathing, and yesterday evening got in touch with a wonderful teacher at our school who runs a club for students around the themes of gender and identity. I spoke to a couple of teachers who had been at the stations where she’d been excelling in leadership – intellectual and physical and who totally “got” that what had happened was that she’d been taken down a peg or two by the wanna-be alpha males in the group. At 11. Yes. At the age of 11. It probably happens earlier, but perhaps the consciousness and self-righteousness and awareness of what has just happened doesn’t happen earlier (frontal lobe and all that?).

#weareallfeminists

Right sentiment – wrong question

My husband and I attended a “school board of governors meets the parents” evening on Thursday night and one of the attendees asked what the school was doing to encourage more girls to go into STEM careers. There was also some discussion about the fact that even in this liberal high achieving school certain stereotypes of “boys being good at math” and “girls being good at the humanities” was panning out (if the ISA scores were an indication at least).

I am glad that type of question was asked, but I think we need to examine the whole gender thing far more deeply.  It’s not just about STEM. After the public forum, I confronted the head about the fact that except for this meeting and one other on “teens and technology”, every other public forum of the school had been held during working hours. Including the coming “meet the teacher” event. Which meant that either working parents couldn’t attend, or one or the other or both had to take leave. What kind of message are we sending our students – male and female – at this most formative time in their lives about who we allow and expect to be engaged in a child’s education?

If these meetings are not important – why hold them? If they are important, why are you excluding the economically active role models of your community and only including those who either have enough leisure, have the financial means to be free during working hours, or have chosen for one reason or another (including the reason that if they didn’t stay at home they couldn’t be a participant in their school community life) not to work full-time.

In the years that I chose not to work full-time, one of the over-riding factors in my choice was exactly that I wanted to be a part of my children’s school community and to contribute to their educational lives in this way.  Then I was thrust into full-time work out of economic necessity and no longer had the luxury of factoring this into my choice. And now I am one of the excluded.

Now as an excluded I wonder if I am the only one protesting, or if there are more like me, but we are just not aware of each other, since through our exclusion we are isolated voices that can be ignored.  I wonder how many tried, failed and gave up.  Because the school’s standard answer is that evening events / meetings are not well attended so they are not worth their while.  Is it the chicken or the egg. And more than anything else, what does that say to our daughters and sons about expectations of motherhood, careers, educators, participation in a community?