The Mad Mina and the invisible gender (LS-IT-621)

Topic

From the hidden mothers (a genre of photography common in the Victorian Age featuring a series of women obscured by curtains, tablecloths, or furniture while they held squirming infants still for portraits) to the Dutch left-wing radical feminist activist group Mad Mina, from the Italian Feminists’ call for legal abortion to the gender pay gap ‘statistics, this learning scenario encompasses a variety of themes connected with the battles of women for becoming visible in a world designed for men.

Learning objectives

Through this cross-curricular LS students have the opportunity to practice extensive and intensive speaking and reading skills in the target language (English) using a variety of agreeing / disagreeing phrases and learning a range of words and expressions related to political struggle. The accurately selected resources and documents encourage pupils to think critically about feminist activism connecting their own, or familiar, lived experiences with feminist perspectives on social justice.

Material realized by students for tear Stereotype Up campaign

Activities

Students accomplish a wide range of tasks aimed at boosting their creativity and thinking skills, such as, for example, realizing an imaginary interview with Wilhelmina Drucker, one of the first Dutch feminists, or creating a digital poster for a campaign to dismantle gender stereotypes.

Learners are also requested to realize a questionnaire to discover the recipient’s attitudes towards women’s and men’s roles in society and to test their ability in detecting the clichés about gender representations. The annexes included in the Learning scenario allow to easily replicate the listed activities in different educational settings and contexts.

Highlights

The learning scenario, perfectly aligned with the Sustainable Development Goal 5 Gender equality, works well also as a prevention of bullying related to gender discrimination. The level of participation of the learners in the planned activities is excellent because their protagonism and imagination are strongly promoted and rewarded within the whole learning path.

Tear Stereotype Up Campaign realized by students

Would you like to know more about this learning scenario? You can download it below:

Europeana-DSI-4-Learning-Scenario-template-Teachers-Y4_Abbate Download

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Public Domain Mark 1.0: the featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana and has been provided by the Atria, Institute on Gender Equality and Women’s History.

sanjazdralovic says:

April 15, 2022 at 8:27 pm

So inviting to implement… Great topic and teaching (learning) material and methods. I love the variety of angles, resorces and periods explored, and how it leads students through the developement of equal rights movement. It illustrates how grand and necessary it always has been. So many great activities. Great work!

Anonymous says:

April 19, 2022 at 10:41 pm

Thank you, Sanja: I hope the implementation of this LS is easy to realize and the annexes should facilitate the reproduction of the learning activities also in contexts different from the Italian one. I agree with you: making the female gender visible is still a must. Love. Emma

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Paraskevi Sarbani says:

April 28, 2022 at 7:38 pm

A fresh take on an intriguing subject! This is such a thoughtful and thorough use of the Europeana collections. I love how it expands on very different subjects, making it possible to be implemented by teachers of different disciplines. I also believe it is of great importance that this LS brings to discussion a taboo subject, the reproductive rights of women. Thank you very much, Emma, for your contribution!

emmaabbate says:

April 29, 2022 at 11:40 am

Dearest Paraskevi,
you just hit the mark! Reproductive justice is still a taboo topic in our schools due to heavy cultural influences that prevent teachers from addressing this theme in the classroom.
However, this should in no way hinder our students from being fully informed about their rights regarding sexuality and reproductive life and, as teachers, the need to make them aware of this issue is becoming increasingly urgent, especially when I think of the tragic episodes of gender-based violence.
Thank you so much for your sensitiveness.
Emma

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dianamariabeldima says:

April 28, 2022 at 9:59 pm

Dear Emma,
First of all, I would like to congratulate you for this very detailed and extensive project. It is really ambitious to prepare a project to be implemented in 15 weeks!
Secondly, the subject is still very actual and young generation of girls should be aware of the women’s efforts during the centuries and more precisely during the 20th century when political, social and economic rights were achieved.
Thirdly, I appreciated a lot the very detailed instruments of evaluation, the rubrics, that you have also enclosed to your learning scenario.
My sincere congratulations and good luck!

emmaabbate says:

April 29, 2022 at 11:30 am

Dear Diana Maria,
the Ls is articulated and yes, is more a project than a lesson plan (but you can intend it as a lesson plan if you just select some activities concentrating on a single topic).

And thank you so much for having smartly notated the presence in the annexes of the evaluation grids (I put a big effort into creating them): as a teacher, I consider evaluation a core moment of the learning process because it is apparently the final part of the LS but, actually, it is a crucial passage for our learners and it deserves to be highly considered to give students the exact feedback on what they learned.

Thank you again for this kind note, I really appreciated it.
Emma

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