Tag Archives: Women

Jan Micha Influential Women in History Project (Grade 4)

“To know the women who came before us is to know ourselves. It is to know the blood memory that runs through our veins. It is to know that the unlived dreams of our ancestors are our honor and our duty to live out, right now. Because right now, as women and as girls, when it comes to the work of the women before us, we may not be able to pay it back, but we can certainly pay it forward.” -Cleo Wade

For over 30 years Grade 4 Hamlin students have taken the stage in front of their peers and parents, giving voice to inspiring women who came before them. This project was started by a beloved Hamlin teacher Jan Micha, and is now named after her.

For this project students select a woman from history, do extensive research from multiple sources, then embody that person, presenting in character with substance, poise and eloquence. When Hamlin alumnae come back to visit they often cite their Women in History presentation as an enduring hallmark of their education.

Our students will present to their parents tomorrow tonight at the Century Club from 6-9 p.m.. This afternoon they will have the opportunity to partake in “Meeting of the Minds.” At this occasion they will speak as their influential women, discussing various topics with their peers, who are also in character. While sharing profound discourse, students enjoy delicious treats and sip drinks.

This year girls are representing the following women:

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Samira Khan from OneProsper Speaks at Hamlin

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Grade 6 social studies students are studying the eastern hemisphere and the issue of water scarcity in countries like India. As part of their learning experience they are focusing on the struggle of women in the northern Thar Desert where resources are scarce, forcing girls to forgo school in order to walk long distances to get water for their families. This spring our OneProsper partnership continued for a 3rd year with students doing individual fundraising to assist women and girls in India.

Samira Khan from OneProsper visited Thursday morning and presented to the 6th graders about their nonprofit work. She spoke about the holistic approach that OneProsper is taking to bring girls out of poverty. In Rajasthan, some girls can spend up to 7 hours a day collecting water, using up a lot of their time. By building a tanka, a well that collects rainwater for communities, girls don’t have to spend their time and energy getting water. Clean water reduces challenges and has a number of benefits for girls and their communities, providing families with better health and sanitation. Also, having easy access to clean water means girls are able to have time to go to school. Clean water also allows families to grow and sell produce, providing another means to earn income.

To learn more about OneProsper, please visit: https://www.oneprosper.org/

Hour of Code Week @Hamlin

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The beginning of December brings a weeklong celebration of coding and STEM. Students in all grades Kindergarten through Grade 8 are participating in various activities centered on a dynamic exploration of technology and related fields. Our students join kids from around the globe in this engaging endeavor.

Throughout the week students are practicing their coding skills using the following:

Lightbot, Cargo-bot, Playgrounds, Code.org, Human Resource Machine, Kodable, App Lab, Dance Party, Blockly, Classic Maze, Compute it, and Conditionals with Cards.

On Wednesday morning we will welcome guest speaker, Jenny Wang. Ms. Wang is a computer science student at Harvard University, intern at POPSUGAR, director of Startup Girl, and board member for Shiffon Co. Jewelry.

For the 4th year running, The Hamlin School will celebrate STEMming the Gender Gap Day on Friday, December 7. The day is an opportunity to promote science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education/careers for our students, while connecting with female tech leaders in the Bay Area. Hamlin girls will be able to observe, interact, and learn, as they prepare to be tomorrow’s tech innovators and help #StemGenderGap!

This year Hamlin is visiting a variety of fantastic Bay Area organizations; we are incredibly thankful for these partnerships.

Students in grades K-7 will have experiences at:

The Lawrence Hall of Science, The Bay Area Discovery Museum, The Exploratorium, Salesforce, POPSUGAR, Eventbrite, HoneyBook, UCSF, USS Hornet, Tesla, Apple, Brightwheel, California Academy of Sciences and Sentry

Students in Grade 8 will have the opportunity to learn from the following speakers on campus:

Sali Christenson, Founder of Argent
Patricia Santos, CEO and Co-Founder of Volition Beauty
Heidi Zak, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Thirdlove
Eurie Kim, Investor at Forerunner Ventures
Kathryn Duryea, Founder and CEO of Year & Day
Steph Palmeri, Partner at Uncork Capital
Lauren Loktev, Partner at Collaborative Fund
Sara Adler, Partner at Wave Capital

Former U.S. Treasurer Rosie Rios Speaks at Hamlin

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On Friday, The Hamlin School was honored to welcome former Treasurer of the United States, Rosie Rios.

Rosie Rios was the 43rd Treasurer of the United States and has accepted a position as a Visiting Scholar at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University effective October of 2016. She is most recently known for initiating and leading the historic efforts to place a woman on U.S. currency for the first time in over a century. She resigned her position in July 2016 and received the Hamilton Award, the highest honor bestowed in the U.S. Department of the Treasury. At the time of her resignation, she was the longest serving Senate-confirmed Treasury official beginning with her time on the Treasury/Federal Reserve Transition Team in November 2008 at the height of the financial crisis.

Treasurer Rios gave an inspiring presentation and shared the following (among other points):

-“It is important for me that girls see themselves on our currency. I want girls to see themselves as history-makers. It is inspiration for aspiration.”

-She spoke about how few women from history are seen in public places, as statues, on our currency, on the walls of high school classrooms.

-She led a campaign asking the American people for suggestions about which woman should be on the twenty-dollar bill.

-Harriet Tubman was selected for the twenty-dollar bill, but Treasurer Rios wanted every submitted woman to be recognized. She created a website called Teachers Righting History, where people can learn more about all the women who received votes, almost 250 in total.

-“There are very few public statues of women. San Francisco doesn’t have a single one. But very soon there will be a statue of Maya Angelou in front of the Main Public Library.”

-Treasurer Rios is leading a campaign to bring more public statues of women to cities like New York, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.

-Treasurer Rios is also working with Major League Baseball to create baseball cards of all the women from the Teachers Righting History database. The MLB will be distributing these baseball cards at games next season.

-As a special surprise, Treasurer Rios signed (above her official printed signature) and distributed dollar bills for every middle school girl.

To learn more about her work with Teachers Righting History, please visit: http://teachersrightinghistory.org/

Demonstrating Leadership: Symposium in Grade 6

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Symposium is the intensive for our Grade 6 students. Intensives are a concentrated period of study where an entire grade is working on a project or projects, with profound research and preparation, followed by a public event. These intensives are designed with Hamlin’s mission in mind, as our students meet the challenges of their time.

In Ancient Greece, a Symposium was a regular meeting where men discussed problems. Today, a symposium is a formal meeting where multiple specialists deliver short addresses on a topic.

The Symposium presented topics focused on this year’s theme empathy + knowledge= hope. The event took place at the Century Club and shared information about: personal and social identity, the concept of privilege, the partition of India, access to water in India and various countries in Africa, human trafficking, the danger of a single story, women micro-entrepreneurs and their roles in developing Africa, the Cultural Revolution, representation of women and people of color in Hollywood, the role of education, the role of propaganda in government, and globalization.

Alice shares: For our final unit, we devoted ourselves to creating today’s show. Individually, we considered the many topics we could go into greater depth about, and we got sorted into our small groups with a specific presentation format to follow. We studied our kind of presentation, making sure we understood the ways that song lyrics or PSA imagery or a 21/20 episode are strongest and have greatest impact. We researched our topic in depth, and we put together a draft of our presentation. Next, we revised and revised our work — and then reconsidered and revised it some more.

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Jan Micha Women in History Presentations

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When you walk in the footsteps of greatness, you too can become great. For 30 years Grade 4 Hamlin students have taken the stage in front of their peers and parents, giving voice to inspiring women who came before them.

This year girls are representing the following women:

Suffragists & Abolitionists

Elizabeth Key Grinstead (1630)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815)
Victoria Woodhull (1838)

Educators, Writers, & Journalists

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860)
Nellie Bly (1864)
Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867)
Julia Child (1912)
Dr. Temple Grandin (1947)

Women of Flight

Hazel Ying Lee (1912)
Maggie Gee (1923)
Dr. Sally Ride (1951)

Scientists & Mathematicians

Rachel Carson (1907)
Dian Fossey (1932)
Sylvia Earle (1935)
Grace Hopper (1906)
Katherine Johnson (1918)

Visual & Performing Artists

Julia Morgan (1872)
Lucille Ball (1911)
Audrey Hepburn (1929)
Maria Tallchief (1925)
Misty Copeland (1982)
Michaela DePrince (1995)

Athletes

Babe Didrikson Zaharias (1911)
Althea Gibson (1927)
Wilma Rudolph (1940)
Kit Deslauriers (1969)
Kristi Yamaguchi (1971)
Mia Hamm (1972)
Dominique Dawes (1976)
Michelle Kwan (1980)
Natalie Coughlin (1982)
Alex Morgan (1989)
Michelle Sung Wie (1989)
Bethany Hamilton (1990)
Aly Raisman (1994)

Entrepreneurs

Charlotte Parkhurst (1812)
Oprah Winfrey (1954)
Elizabeth Skidmore (1965)

Leaders

Deborah Sampson (1760)
Mary Bowser (1839)
Betty Reid Soskin (1921)
Diane Nash (1938)
Abigail Adams (1744)
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884)
Michelle Obama (1964)

Below is a video clip of Elizabeth Cady Stanton:

Tea With Inspiring Women

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On May 10, Grade 4 students brought the lives of inspiring women to Hamlin, showcasing in-depth knowledge, accents, and costumes. Students selected a woman from history, did extensive research from multiple sources, and then embodied that person at a table with tea and treats.

The conversation was guided by a series of thoughtful questions addressing everything from education to important life events, and even embarrassing moments. Girls sat in groups of four at tables. Guidelines for the discussion included: Have fun, See what you have in common with the other inspiring women, stay on topic, stay in the personality of your inspiring woman, react to what each other is saying.

Women from various eras were represented including (among others): Abigail Adams, Oprah Winfrey, Sylvia Earle, and Michelle Kwan.

Next week these students will have the opportunity to formally present as their women for our Jan Micha Women In History Program.

The video below shares a slice of the tea and conversation:

Women Writers of Color Speak Truth at Hamlin

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On March 30, seven powerful women shared personal narratives, speaking about truth, identity, gender, resilience, and inner strength. These women were unified by the dynamic vision of Deborah Santana, who recently brought together the voices of 69 writers in the beautiful anthology, All the Women in My Family Sing.

All the Women in My Family Sing is a vital collection of prose and poetry by women of color, with topics that range from the pressures of being the vice-president of a Fortune 500 Company, to escaping the killing fields of Cambodia, to the struggles inside immigration, identity, romance and self-worth. The brief, trenchant essays capture the aspirations and wisdom of these powerful women as they exercise autonomy, creativity, and dignity and build bridges to heal the brokenness in today’s turbulent world.

The following writers shared from their work:

Vicki L. Ward, Shizue Seigel, Kira Lynne Allen, Maria Ramos Chertok, Nayomi Munaweera, Randi Bryant-Agenbroad, and Hamlin’s own, Wanda M. Holland Greene.

Below are some quotations and topics that surfaced:

-“Standing in our truth, is also standing in our power.”

-“One woman speaks her truth and the world splits open.”

-“I would have told my younger self that her body belonged only to herself.”

-“I started to get assimilation fatigue and had to be the complete me.”

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All The Women In My Family Sing

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All the Women in My Family Sing is an anthology documenting the lessons and experiences of women of color at the dawn of the twenty-first century. These brief, trenchant essays offer glimpses into the hard-fought struggle to exercise one’s autonomy, creativity and dignity. Whether regarding the workplace, the current restrictions on immigration into the U.S., the trauma of ill health, or the sadness of divorce, these essays capture the aspirations of women of color to live as full citizens of the world. In a time when rights are being taken away from people, these women stand in the power of inclusion, the right to self-identify, social justice and equality.

“These brilliant and moving essays show the astonishing, brave and passionate lives of women of color as they fight for autonomy, equality and love.” —Isabel Allende, author

This book comes out in print on January 30, 2018, and features a short essay by Wanda M. Holland Greene (Head of The Hamlin School).

To order the book please visit: https://www.amazon.com/All-Women-My-Family-Sing/dp/0997296216

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Tag Archives: Women

Jan Micha Influential Women in History Project (Grade 4)

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Samira Khan from OneProsper Speaks at Hamlin

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Hour of Code Week @Hamlin

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Former U.S. Treasurer Rosie Rios Speaks at Hamlin

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Demonstrating Leadership: Symposium in Grade 6

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Jan Micha Women in History Presentations

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Tea With Inspiring Women

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Women Writers of Color Speak Truth at Hamlin

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All The Women In My Family Sing

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