Year of the woman

For February and March I’ve shared important women and POC like Bessie Coleman, Harriet Tubman, Mae Jamison, and Rosa Parks with all my library students. We’ve read books like  The Oldest Student; How Mary Walker learned to read by Rita Lorraine Hubbard and Oge Mora and Counting on Katherine; how Katherine Johnson saved Apollo 13 by Helaine Becker. We’ve discussed men such as Thurgood Marshall, George Washington Carver, John Lewis, Sammy Lee, and Henry “Box” Brown. 

Invariably one of my older students will ask why isn’t there a men’s month? My answer sounds something like ... Well we live in a a patriarchal system and white males predominate in every field available except perhaps education and you’ve studied American history from a white lens. You learned about our white “founding fathers”, explorers, scientists, and inventors in school using a text book that generally gives an age old slice of approved information and it’s up to you to seek out a more well-rounded view on everything. And it’s my job to help you see things in new ways through research and exploration. 

It’s hard to know how far to take it; I don’t want to overwhelm my students yet I want to push them enough to look outside their predominantly white community at the larger world and see others with compassion, as humans. 

Other resources to explore: The Black History Channel and the History.com's Women's History 

With our first female vice president it is more important than every to help all our students understand how important these achievements are and we need to keep pushing for more.