“Sisterhood Survival” Aims to Help Pre-Teen Girls Before Middle School Transition
By R. M. Carkhuff
Mandi Davis, English Learner (EL) teacher at Dupont, and Head EL teacher for the division, is trying to help fifth grade girls.
“Middle and high school years are, socially, extremely difficult for our brightest girls because as they’re growing up their emotions are incredibly impacted by how other girls and other women treat them,” she said.
This is why Ms. Davis is teaching “Sisterhood Survival” over the first Intersession. Intersession courses are born from teacher passions, and Ms. Davis has a personal passion for preserving positive connections between women.
“I am extremely fortunate to have been the recipient of an all female college education, and those four years of my life were transformational in the way that they helped me understand the dynamics of relationships between women.”
There are three main components to Sisterhood Survival. The first is reading a novel called “Things Seen From Above” by Shelley Pearsall. From Ms. Pearsall’s website, the book description:
You can never tell where a simple line may lead...
April is desperately looking for an escape from all the gossip and drama of the sixth grade lunch hour, so she signs up to be a Buddy Bench monitor for the fourth grade recess.
Joey Byrd is a fourth grade outcast who just wants to be left alone. He's a boy on the fringes, who wanders the playground alone, dragging his feet through the dirt. What is the purpose of his mysterious lines? Are they really as random as they seem?
The novel fits in well with what Ms. Davis is aiming to teach.
“We’re going to do a novel study. I want to use the novel study as a jumping off point for daily socratic seminar discussion groups. Give the girls and opportunity to have a safe space to discuss what’s already happening, how they have coped with it, how it has made them feel, and then talk about from an adult perspective -- from a women who’s been there, done that, and still fights against it today, what is that going to look like as you grow up? And what can you do so that it doesn’t turn you into someone you don’t want to be?”
Next, folks in the course will be “looking at representation of how women get along with each other in the media. Clips from things like ‘Real Housewives’ and Nickelodeon shows like ‘Sam and Cat,’ to prominent YouTubers who are teaching our kids to be obsessed with what they look like and to judge other people based on what they look like. [Media that] is teaching girls that other girls are competition, that other girls are the enemy, that other girls are something they have to push away so they have a chance.”
Finally, Ms. Davis will have students keep a journal where they will introspectively write about their experiences with this topic, and what they are learning in the course. “The only way girls this age are going to get [solid self-esteem] is not just through talking, it’s through introspection. Because self-esteem is not built through hearing what other people tell you about yourself. Self-esteem and self-confidence are built through having the tools to stand up and be yourself and be proud of the things you accomplish.”
“I want the whole thing to be about really thinking about who you are, letting your freak flag fly, if that’s what you need to do, and be comfortable waving that,” Ms. Davis explained. “[Let’s] take girls at the fourth-through-sixth grade level and give them a safe space to talk about the reality of why girls act like this, what it really means, and how you can help girls who are expressing their own discomfort with themselves and their own personal misery without that taking away your joy and your shine. Give them the strength to understand that their personal weird is going to turn into something amazing if they can just get through middle and high school holding onto that weird -- seeing it as a light and not something they need to hide.”