Students at Portsmouth High School are exploring the lives and struggles of women throughout history in teacher Tayler Zempter’s Women’s Studies class.
“Women’s Studies can cover a lot of different things. We do a unit on women’s history – the suffrage movement, women during World War II, and the second wave of the women’s movement in the 1960s,” Zempter said. “In other units of the year, we do sections on body image and beauty standards and how that affects women and young girls. We do units on women in different cultures and how the definition of being a woman changes culturally. We do heavy topics too, predominantly facing women, like domestic violence, sexual assault, harassment, and those kind of things.”
Zempter has been teaching this class for most of her 10 years with the district. Because the class is not state-tested, she said students have the freedom to explore history and issues at their own pace and interest.
Students participate in class projects, such as a suffrage timeline, or creating a fictional woman who would have lived during a specific time in history and exploring what her life might have been like. This year, the entire class is working together to imagine the complex life of a woman during World War II.
“This project is our Women Through the Decades project, and they literally design this woman and they tell her story through sensory statements,” Zempter said. “This year’s students chose to make her a nurse in the 1940s and they made her Puerto Rican-American. When they create their sensory statements, they’re basically seeing history through her eyes and through her context as a woman of color.”
She said it’s important for students to have exposure to different groups of people and perspectives to help them better understand history and the modern world. And while they discuss modern issues facing women, Zempter said the class is open and accepting of the views of all people.
“The point of the class is not to have them have a certain opinion about those issues. It’s just to have them think about those issues and really have an understanding what the different perspectives are and what the outcomes could be. It opens up a place where they can feel comfortable talking about those things, and helps them learn how to respect the opinions of people who maybe you don't agree with but you can create a conversation that’s based on respect and listening to one another,” Zempter said.
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