"More Than a School": Providing a Safe Space for Girls to Rewrite, Direct, and Act Their Life Stories

• In Event: 35.058 - Women Leading for Social Justice Across P–20 Contexts

Abstract

Girls’ life stories are often pre-determined culturally. It is as if they are reading from scripts, acting how they have been socialized, and following the direction of others in more powerful positions. It takes brave and loving school leaders to create a culture of resistance, along with critical teaching by knowledgeable teachers to interrupt, disrupt, and rewrite educational policy and practice. For many students, it means purposefully creating a safe space that includes building social networks and cross-generational relationships as well as providing leadership opportunities to develop collective power. And by doing so, girls are able to take ownership as actors of their life stories and become healthy and whole.

Around the world, girls play important roles in their families and communities by providing child or elder care and conducting household chores so that adults in their settings may work and earn an income. More often than not, the male children are not expected or required to play similar roles. Rather, boys have more freedom to define their personal, familial, and societal roles, which often includes garnering an education and pursuing economic opportunities in the public sphere. While some have begun to recognize this situation as something that might occur in “developing nations,” Western society rarely examines its own practices to assess whether girls really do have the self-determination to pursue their full potential. It is easier to “see” the “other” (as in “poor” countries or “non-Christian” nations) as robbing girls of the opportunities to share public space and reach their full potential. In fact, since, in America, we “allow” girls to go to school, we automatically assume that all girls in the US have access to what it takes to choose their own paths and bring their dreams to fruition.

Thankfully, scholars are bringing to Western society’s attention the specific ways schools can be cites of reproduction that continue to perpetuate outdated norms. Some educators now recognize that students, generally, and “minorities” (Black and Hispanic students as well as females of all ethnicities), in particular, need and should be provided a safe space where the “isms” of society are questioned and/or where their voices are heard (Fielding, 2001, 2004; Greene, Cardinal, & Goldstein-Siegel, 2009; Healthy Girls Healthy Women, 2001; Mansfield, Welton, & Halx, 2012; Mitra, 2008a; Mitra & Gross, 2009; Sands, Guzman, Stevens, & Boggs, 2007).

This paper shares the story of a group of women educators who created a novel school culture, and the female students who meet them there, to disrupt and transform the dailiness of sexism, racism, and classism. Through a commitment to building robust relationships and forefronting the voices of women, this community of learners is working to confront the past and interrupt the present, and revolutionize their future trajectories. In the words of one parent, “This is more than a school. They’re preparing you for life.”

Author

• Katherine Cumings Mansfield, Virginia Commonwealth University