Teach About Women provides curriculum, PD, workshops, and student-facing programs to help K-12 educators make gender equity part of every aspect of school life. ​Our signature workshops can be adapted for your unique school community. 

Featured Program for Women's History Month:

Rethink the Power Template

“You cannot easily fit women into a structure that is already coded as male; you have to change the structure.”
― Mary Beard, Women & Power: A Manifesto

Talent / Progress / Achievement / Expertise / Inclusion 

In what ways are these concepts coded male? How can we change how we teach about them in order to change how our students conceptualize these hallmarks of power? In this workshop, we look to history to help us redefine our cultural template for what a powerful person does and is–not only in terms of gender, but in terms of race, class, sexuality and any other facets of identity. We begin by unpacking the ways how these phenomena look and feel in today’s world. We then explore some historical antecedents that seem gender neutral but really support a male-centered understanding of how, say talent works, or what inclusion looks like. We end collaboratively by talking about ways that we can shift our collective understanding of how these forces shape individual lives. Our ultimate goal is for teachers and students to begin to imagine new templates for how power can work in our society.

Facilitator: Georgina Emerson | Audience: This program can be adapted for students, faculty/staff, and parents.

Women, Gender & Power

programs focused on changing the stories we tell about gender and power in the past and present

Cultivating Resilient Masculinities  Workshop Series for Co-ed & Boys Schools

Audience: K-12 Co-ed & Boys School Faculty and Staff | Facilitators: Jason Ablin and Georgina Emerson

In this workshop, we lay the foundation for understanding the challenges and possibilities for creating healthy and successful school environments for students. By exploring our own individual and collective expressions and thoughts on masculinity and gender, the faculty works collaboratively to outline a clear path forward for learning and communal growth. Learn more about this three-part workshop series. 

​Women, Gender and History: How can we use history to change the way power looks? 

Audience: History departments, K-12 and college | Facilitator: Georgina Emerson

How can we, as history teachers, hit the major notes of our courses in ways that shed light on gender dynamics, and women's experiences, and intersectionality? In this workshop, we discuss teaching practices and share resources to give teachers the knowledge and skills to teach about women and gender in the past with confidence. Available March, 2022 soon as a self-paced, online course. 

Design the Right Intersectional Feminism Elective for your School

Audience: Faculty and administrators, especially department chairs, K-12 and college | Facilitator: Georgina Emerson

In our world of difference, no single feminism suffices. Simlarly, no single "feminist elective" can work in every school. In this workshop, participants design and plan a feminist elective that fits with their school schedule and, more importantly, addresses the needs of their school community. Participants explore through several sample syllabi and organizational methodologies including ones that emphasize more history, more literature, more current events or more global perspectives. We go over effective ways to apply intersectional lenses and ensure liberatory and culturally-responsive teaching of complex and weighty material. Available March, 2022 soon as a self-paced, online course. ​

Four Pernicious Untruths we Teach K-12 Students about the Past– and how to set the record straight

Audience: Educators, grades 6-12 | Facilitator: Georgina Emerson

In this workshop, we will confront the male hegemony over our symbolic systems as it manifests in the stories we tell about the past. Stories about the past, told daily in history classes and frequently in other subjects such as science and math, hold the weight of truth for young people. In this session, we will focus on four untruths that we, as teachers, tell about the past. Each example aligns with current popular discussions about gender gaps in the arts, business, political representation, and science.

1. The European Renaissance revitalized the arts.
2. Johannes Guttenberg invented the printing press. 
3. The French Revolution of 1789 was an important step towards representative government. 
4. The medical profession developed to provide quality healthcare.

Theory to Practice: Make Intersectional Feminist Pedagogy part of your daily teaching ​

Audience: Teachers and Advisors in every department, grades 5-12 | Facilitators: Kemeyawi Wahpepah & Georgina Emerson

Intersectional. Feminist. Critical. All these are words that appear more and more in front of pedagogy. But how can teachers, advisors and mentors to students in K-12 schools truly embrace these principles? This workshop is all about the practical, day-to-day ways we can incorporate critical intersectional feminist pedadogy into our teaching. We will begin with a brief history of intersectionality, as coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, and then explore specific ways that teachers and advisors can infuse these principles into content, activities and assessments. ​​

You have to know these things: Feminist Poetics & Ethics

Audience: K-12 and college English departments & teachers of writing | Facilitator: Griffin Payne

Who's story is being told and by whom? Who's story is not being told? Where is this story coming from, and why is that important? You have to know these things. Inspired by a line from the poem North American Time by Adrienne Rich, this workshop seeks to support educators, administrators, and students (when appropriate) in developing competencies and reflexes for bringing an intersectional feminist approach to text selection, reading, analysis, and dialogue. Drawing from a rich lineage of feminist poets and poetry, this workshop is an experiential deep dive that will help participants to develop new awareness and a new sense of ethics when using stories, literature, art, essays, and primary sources from marginalized and oppressed voices . Participation also comes with access to a resource library of intersectional source material.

Food, Shopping and Power

Audience: Faculty and administrators, especially department chairs, K-12 and college | Facilitator: Michael Kideckel

Consumption is power. And one way around the problem of the "women's history" section of the textbook is to understand that the way that dominant historical narratives show power is simply insufficient. Women have been at the forefront of history not just because they achieved elected office or major wealth, but because their historical roles helped drive society. What we consider to be important work is coded by gender. "Domestic" activities underlie political movements, from tea boycotts in the American Revolution through market women protests against British colonialism in Nigeria. Thinking about how what we eat, wear, and buy puts women at the forefront while (and by) reshaping how we imagine power to work.  Participants explore sample events, media, and lessons that will allow them to add both women and feminist perspectives to electives and survey classes.

Women have always worked: A short history of women in business

Audience: Parents and alums | Facilitator: Georgina Emerson

Women have always worked. In this workshop, we look at some of the historical problems that women have been facing for hundreds of years, especially those that shape how women navigate the transition into more senior roles. Not only do we examine the ways women have done business in the past, we explore successful strategies and useful tactics we can all apply in our own careers.
 Drawing on the latest research, including that of Mabel Abraham at Columbia Business School, we survey the various challenges that women continue to face, particularly in making the transition from working to leading. 

• Raising capital
• Reaching to new markets
• Hiring Employees
• Utilizing the newest technologies and trade secrets
• Building supportive professional networks
• Caring for children & aging parents 

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Liberatory, intersectional practices 

Programs that go beyond addressing gender alone

Liberatory Writing Practices: A roadmap for Humanities teachers

Audience: K-12 teachers interested in writing as pedagogy | Facilitator: Georgina Emerson

This is a workshop for any teacher that wants to use writing to explore liberation. We mean liberation in the broadest sense as anti-bias, feminist, intersectional, resonant, and celebratory, especially of BIPOC communities and voices, and above all, humanizing. While most teachers want to incorporate anti-bias and equity work into their curriculum, they often lack specific steps for designing units and planning lessons. These theme/question pairings offer teachers a roadmap for using writing to reframe how they organize their materials. Teachers leave the workshop invigorated by new ideas and excited to use writing to deepen their students understanding of the world and themselves . For an example of how this method works, take look at our 2021 Gender Equity Institute Resources. 

Antibias Themes and Questions: An intersectional approach to curriculum

Audience: Teachers and department heads,  grades 5-12 | Facilitator: Georgina Emerson

​In this workshop, teachers explore six theme+question pairings that offer roadmap for integrating antibias resources and ideas into curriculum. Developed while teaching a course called Global Feminisms, they invite and nourish a multiplicity of perspectives on identity and power, especially how injustices play out at on an individual, interpersonal, institutional, and structural level. This workshop will focus particularly on using these tools to address how gender, race, and class shape American lives. Because they invite both broad analysis and individual introspection, these theme/question pairings can be used in many ways, across various subjects, such as to guide unit plans, anchor essay topics, or stimulate conversation.

Teach About Power: Empowering Our Students to Question, Educate & Advocate

Audience: Teachers and Advisors in every department, grades 5-12 | Facilitators: Kayko Donald & Georgina Emerson

How can we teach our students not just to educate themselves but to become liberatory educators in their own right? Drawing on the research-driven framework proposed by Zoretta Hammond on culturally-responsive teaching and the brain, Georgina Emerson and Kayko Donald, a teacher and her student-intern, co-created a program called Teach About Power to guide students (ages 12 to 18) to question, educate and advocate for what truly matters to them. Our step-by-step lesson plan allows students to clarify and spread their own messages through rigorous academic engagement. Attendees will get a chance to go through the process themselves: to question, educate, and advocate based on case studies.

LGBTQ+ & queer-inclusive pedagogy

programs aimed at making K-12 schools empowering spaces for queer and trans youth in particular

Disrupting Gender- and Heteronormativity in PK-12 Schools

Audience: K-12 faculty, staff and administrators | Facilitator: Brandie Waid

PK-12 schools in the United States are rife with gender and heteronormative structures that reinforce societal scripts (a term coined by Harper Kennan) about the kinds of bodies (and the way those bodies inhabit spaces) deemed socially acceptable. Such structures, which are oppressive to LGBTQ+ youth, are so ubiquitous with teaching and learning that they are often hard to identify, much less disrupt. In this session we will explore methods of identifying such structures, as well as ways to disrupt and dismantle them to provide more welcoming, liberating, and joyful schooling experiences for our LGBTQ+ students.

Queer Identity and Pedagogy in Mathematics Teaching and Learning

Audience: Math faculty, grades 6-12 and college-level | Facilitator: Brandie Waid

What does queer identity have to do with the teaching and learning of mathematics? How can we utilize tenants of queer pedagogy, culturally responsive teaching, and critical race theory to create mathematical spaces that are more welcoming (and humanizing) for students of LGBTQ+ identity. In this two-part workshop, we will explore these questions and engage with examples of queer mathematics pedagogy and queer inclusive mathematics curriculum.

Queer liberatory spaces: Transforming your K-12 school into a place where every student can raise their voice

Audience: K-12 faculty, staff and administrators | Facilitators: Brandie Waid & Georgina Emerson

Although we have seen a positive turn in attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people in the US, 2021 has brought an unprecedented number of anti-LGBTQ+ (especially anti-trans) legislation and attacks, the majority of which directly target LGBTQ+ youth and their families. As educators, we must support our students in becoming inclusive, ethical leaders who can create a better future for LGBTQ+ communities. In this session, we explore how schools can create queer liberatory spaces that feed into purposeful, problem-solving programs where students can center the experiences of LGBTQ+ folx. Taking a three-pronged approach, presenters use real world examples of content, practices, and school-wide policies to guide discussion.

Transgender Stories and Theories

Audience: K-12 Faculty, Staff & Admin | Facilitator: Caroline King

Personal narratives can be the gateway to understanding and empathy. This workshop therefore centers around stories as an anchor for learning about transgender identities, from pronouns to stereotypes to histories. As participants learn to look at gender through variegated and intersectional lenses, they will also develop their own workshops to help incorporate inclusivity into whatever subject matter they teach. Also available as a 30-day email challenge. Coming soon.

A common thread that runs through our programs is a dedication to integrating curriculum, school environment and educational policies to create spaces where all students can learn, thrive, and lead, regardless of gender.