'Courage to act in a small way': Clues toward community and change among women teaching girls

During the Laurel-Harvard project on girls' development conducted at the Laurel School for Girls in Ohio, women educators from the school noted that there were similarities in their experiences as women and in the experiences of the girls as they move into adolescence. One in particular, was a silencing or withholding of one's thoughts and feelings in order to maintain relationships both private and public.;These women requested that the Harvard research team participate with them in a series of three retreats in which all could explore the connections between being women and teaching girls.;After the first retreat that I proposed studying this retreat process, its possibilities for community building and the events or changes that might result from both.;My research question undergirding this "Women Teaching Girls" project asked if the experience and work of community among women educators would help the women to express their feelings and thoughts more freely in the public world of the school. If so, how would this affect the education of girls? Data indicates that the experience of community did influence the women to speak and act in school and it resulted in changes in relationships with students and colleagues.;I see the retreat process as a political intervention in the education of these girls as the process enabled the women to name "traditional" injunctions to girls to be "nice", to be quiet and to deny disruptive feelings such as anger and sadness. The re-evaluation of such messages raised questions of power and authority, questions which are political in nature.;The data are all qualitative and include: interviews with each woman, retreat curricula, taped retreat sessions, personal notes, observations and correspondence between myself and the other women.;Reading and analysis of the data have been informed by a voice sensitive, reader-response method which illuminates the reader's relationship to the text and interpretation brought to the reading. Qualitative research methods which advocate the distilling of themes, typologies and category systems have further guided my analysis. Particular actions taken individually and collectively by the women serve as cross-checks of verbal data. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.).