Abstracts Category : Other

A Classroom of One's Own: A Gender Studies Curriculum for Secondary Education

by Rana Backhaus

Purpose of the Project: This thesis project is a call to action for secondary schools toprioritize and include a broader scope of humanities courses in order to effectivelyprepare students, not only as literate and skillful citizens, but also as emotionallyintelligent, reflective, and practiced in social and worldview analysis. The essentialargument is that an institution such as public education should provide physical space andfunding to offer courses that create an environment of intellectual freedom for allstudents. Specifically, gender studies provides an entry point toward this goal as it affectsall people and infiltrates all aspects of society. The course goals are: to provoke interestand investigation into incomplete historical narratives, to facilitate academicunderstanding of complex gender issues which are oversimplified by media, to buildempathy within both individuals and communities, and to expand the current privilege ofaccessing such curriculum from college to secondary schools.Procedure: Extensive research in the fields of gender and feminist studies, criticalcultural theory, and pedagogy was performed to inform this project??? in addition to theutilization of seven years of secondary classroom teaching experience. Both inspirationfor the course, and much of the curriculum, are centered around Virginia Woolf???sproclamation in her 1929 extended essay, A Room of One???s Own, that intellectualfreedom can be achieved when people obtain economic empowerment and physical space of their own . Implementation of the course was proposed and initialized at Windsor High School, in Windsor, CA. During the 2016-17 school year, the inaugural course took place with two sections and 27 students. Throughout the year, I continued research whileadjusting the course outline to meet the needs of students.Findings: In a classroom of one???s own, the curriculum and delivery empower students,individually and socially, to observe and analyze their world through a more empatheticgender lens. Connecting historical and contemporary gender issues through the study ofintersectionality deeply engaged students in learning, and inspired community activism.The course was also successful on an administrative level, as my school has chosen tocontinue the program, and expand critical lens development through humanitiescurriculum by adding an ethnic studies class, in the same spirit of the gender studieswork.Advisors/Committee Members: Backhaus, Rana (sonomaauthor).