It all started when…

I was teaching a psychology course as a first-year teacher. Our class was discussing crime and the topic of rape was brought up. A male student was quick to point out that rape was always a woman’s fault — it is her responsibility to protect herself and be chaperoned by a man. To my surprise, many of the boys in the room agreed with him. In a different class, a student wrote an entire essay on why it is a waste of money to educate girls, since they are going to end up being housewives and mothers. Opinions like these were not rare, in fact, they were common and openly expressed. And every time, girls in my classroom looked to me for an answer, a solution, a statement to make it make sense.

I knew something had to be done. I created a curriculum for a Women and Gender Studies course and began my journey to teach more about women and girls at the high school level. Not just in that course, but also in my regular World History and United States history courses. This book is half teaching memoir, half history-you-were-never-taught. It answers questions like: What does it look like when you really try to teach about women? What happens when there are conflicts in the classroom or with colleagues about the topics you are teaching? How did students react to what they were learning? You can already guess that the adults in the building were more opposed to the course than the students themselves. Young people like new ideas, even if they later decide they do not agree with them.

It is important to remember that we educators are not here to convince students, but instead to open their minds to new realities and possibilities. I believe that many of our problems — from global gender inequality to domestic violence to low self-esteem in girls — can be solved if we taught more about women in history. Why? Because to not teach about them is to convey a simple message: women and girls don’t matter. But we did matter in the past, and we do in the present. Our impact, though largely wiped out in history textbooks (especially of women of color and LGBTQ), has existed in every time period of human history. Without women, there is no human civilization. Simple as that. And when girls and young women being to understand that concept, wow, do their worlds change!

Education is the root of all change. Let’s put in the work. Let’s show students that there is so much more to learn.