Women's History Month

I volunteered to read to Rachel's class during Women's History Month. I headed in last Tuesday with a couple of books, two of which I actually got to read. Rachel was very upset that I didn't read the book she wanted me to read -- it was about women's suffrage in Wyoming -- but the class wanted me to read about some of the first women in flight (the book I chose was distressing in that it focused a bit too much on the Jazz-Age cuteness of the one of the women) and I chose another one about a girl who had fought for a union at a garment factory in the 1920s (this is no doubt where Rachel gets her indignation around women's rights).

I tried to engage the class while I read, pointing out how silly it was that men once thought that women didn't have the same brains as they did and thus couldn't be given the right to vote, or that they didn't think women were capably physically to do the jobs men could. A couple of boys agreed with those sentiments, to my exasperation and annoyance, but Noah (mentioned in a previous post) was very mature in his responses that, of course, girls could do anything boys could do. The fact that BOTH his parents are pilots for the Air Force probably helped.

Anyway, at the end, Rachel got very upset when the kids got up and left to get ready for their extended-day activities. "Some of the boys at recess said girls can't do everything that boys can do," she said, sniffling, and I told her that of course they could, and women are doing all sorts of things now that men do, and then she started really crying and said, "I wish they would do more. I wish we had a woman president."

I replied that we very well might next year, and she was still crying and said, "I wish there was a woman president NOW!"

I couldn't really answer that, except to hug her close and try to comfort her. The hapless substitute teacher handed out chocolate Easter eggs to everyone, and that seemed to make Rachel feel better.