aMUSE Journey for Juniors grades 4-5
Click here for current schedule & registration deadlines.
Juniors will earn the Reach Out, Speak Out & Try Out awards as they gain understanding of the many roles women and girls play and the leadership skills used to play them. They become aware of how stereotypes could hold them back, and they Take Action to help stop stereotypes and gain the courage, and confidence to try out new roles. Completing a Junior Journey is a prerequisite for the Bronze award. |
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What Happens on an aMUSE journey ? Here is a sneak peak at a few things we do.
Who am I? Who would I like to be? Imagine the possibilities !
Interviews
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The girls examine the roles they play in their own lives and explore new ones they might like to try. They interview women from varied walks of life to see what roles they have and learn about the choices they made and the path they took to become what they are today. 
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Paper Dolls
After brainstorming about the many roles women can have, the girls make paper dolls that reflect who they are now or who they might like to be.
Give a Picture a New Story
Many of the aMUSE journey activities are designed to build the girl's storytelling skills. The Give Picture a New Story activity asks the girls to write a story from another person's perspective. This is difficult for many girls to do. This story was the best example I've seen. It was written about a family Christmas card photo from the experience of the scout's older brother. As you read it, put a whine in your voice as the scout did when she shared it with the group.
Oh, It was just
another day, then BOOM! Mom wants to
take pictures for Christmas cards. I already look handsome in every picture.
Oh, great, here comes my annoying little sister Nicole. She asks How do I
look? I said OK, but deep down inside I
didn’t care. Then mom told me where we
were going to take pictures. I started
groaning silently, I would rather stay home and play video games. When we were taking pictures, I had to pose
good. I knew I was posing better than
everyone. Then here came my Aunt Jenny
to take the picture. I was like, just be done already. She took like a hundred
pictures, but my electronics were waiting in the car. That was my day to take Christmas pictures.
The journey culminates when the girls Take Action to "bust" a stereotype during a presentation to an invited audience using the artistic medium of their choice.
Click here for examples of real aMUSE Take Action Projects
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What is the aMUSE journey really about?
This video was brought to my attention by a parent of a girl attending the aMUSE journey. She thought that is perfectly summed up the journey. I agree, so I posted it here for everyone to see.
#YouCan from Confidence Coalition on Vimeo.
Gender Stereotypes in media and toy advertisements
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Real World Inspiration for aMUSE Take Action Projects
Who is your role model ? Barbie? Cinderella?
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Hasbro to unveil black and silver Easy-Bake Oven after teen's petitionMaKenna Pope was 13 when she shopped for an Easy Bake Oven for her brother. She thought the stereotypical pink design might discourage boys from using the toy. She decided to take action by starting a petition to make a more neutral design. She collected 40,000 signatures! Hasbro invited her to visit & they created an new product.
Stereotypes addressed: only girls can bake, pink toys are for girls, all girls want pink toys, (maybe some girls wanted black ovens too), boys and girls don't like the same things or the same toys. It is also a great example to prove that ONE PERSON CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
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Makenna with her petitions
Here's "her" product in a Target ad !!
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Stereotypes addressed : only boys like science, only boys are good at science.
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Stereotypes addressed : Girls can't play sports with boys, Girls can't be football players
Ohio Girl Who
Challenged ‘Boys Only’ Football Rule Will Get To Play
Makhaela Jenkins, the 12-year-old Ohio girl who challenged her middle school district’s ban on girls playing football, will get to take the field as a member of the school’s football team this fall after all.
The Liberty Union-Thurston District School District announced that it would rescind its ban on female participation in contact sports after the American Civil Liberties Union threatened to file a lawsuit on Jenkins’ behalf, CNN reported. The district decided that it did not want to spend the money it would take to defend itself against such a lawsuit.
“We have no intent of competing with the deep pockets of the ACLU in any litigation situation in order to secure a favorable judgment,” the district said in a statement. “Therefore, we will allow female participation in contact sports.”
That reasoning isn’t the most noble, which should raise concerns about whether the district’s acquiescence will turn into actual support for Jenkins when she joins the team and takes the field. She deserves the same support from coaches and teammates that her male teammates will receive, and that’s the district’s job to monitor and ensure. If it doesn’t, it could have further problems on its hands.
Fairfield County never provided a reason for its original ban, which is hardly unique. A Philadelphia youth league banned 11-year-old Caroline Pla from playing football in February because it worried for her safety and “inappropriate contact” that may occur between her and boys. A private school in Atlanta chose to ban 12-year-old Madison Baxter from football because boys had “impure thoughts” about her. Pla was eventually allowed to rejoin her team; Baxter left her school to attend one that would let her play.
There are more than 1,500 girls playing football at American high schools, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. That number has increased by 17 percent over the last four years. It makes sense to be concerned about their safety. But given what we’ve learned about concussions and brain injuries in football in recent years, high school and youth league administrators should be concerned about safety for all of their players — not just the girls.
Makhaela Jenkins, the 12-year-old Ohio girl who challenged her middle school district’s ban on girls playing football, will get to take the field as a member of the school’s football team this fall after all.
The Liberty Union-Thurston District School District announced that it would rescind its ban on female participation in contact sports after the American Civil Liberties Union threatened to file a lawsuit on Jenkins’ behalf, CNN reported. The district decided that it did not want to spend the money it would take to defend itself against such a lawsuit.
“We have no intent of competing with the deep pockets of the ACLU in any litigation situation in order to secure a favorable judgment,” the district said in a statement. “Therefore, we will allow female participation in contact sports.”
That reasoning isn’t the most noble, which should raise concerns about whether the district’s acquiescence will turn into actual support for Jenkins when she joins the team and takes the field. She deserves the same support from coaches and teammates that her male teammates will receive, and that’s the district’s job to monitor and ensure. If it doesn’t, it could have further problems on its hands.
Fairfield County never provided a reason for its original ban, which is hardly unique. A Philadelphia youth league banned 11-year-old Caroline Pla from playing football in February because it worried for her safety and “inappropriate contact” that may occur between her and boys. A private school in Atlanta chose to ban 12-year-old Madison Baxter from football because boys had “impure thoughts” about her. Pla was eventually allowed to rejoin her team; Baxter left her school to attend one that would let her play.
There are more than 1,500 girls playing football at American high schools, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. That number has increased by 17 percent over the last four years. It makes sense to be concerned about their safety. But given what we’ve learned about concussions and brain injuries in football in recent years, high school and youth league administrators should be concerned about safety for all of their players — not just the girls.
Stereotypes addressed : Girls can't play sports with boys, Girls can't be football players,
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The Kicking Queen - A girl plays football with the Boy's team at Homecoming and is crowned Homecoming queen the same night
Stephen McGee for The New York Times
Brianna Amat at practice Monday, three days after her winning kick. A longtime soccer player, Amat, 18, had tried out for the football team in the spring. By MICHELINE MAYNARD Published: October 3, 2011 ANN ARBOR, Mich. — In his 18 years at Pinckney Community High School, Jim Darga, the principal, said, the homecoming queen had always been crowned at halftime of the school’s football game. Never before, though, had she had to be summoned from the team’s locker room.
Alan Ward/Daily Press & Argus, via Associated Press
Brianna Amat, the first girl to make the Pinckney varsity football team, said her teammates had “been so accepting of me.”
And that was just the beginning of Brianna Amat’s big night. If being named homecoming queen is a lifetime memory for a high school student, so, too, is kicking a winning field goal. For Amat, 18, they happened within an hour of each other.
On Friday, with Pinckney leading powerful Michigan rival Grand Blanc, 6-0, at the half, Amat, the first girl to play football for the school’s varsity, was asked to return to the field. When she arrived, she was told that her fellow students had voted her queen. When the tiara was placed on her head, she was wearing not a dress, like the other girls in the homecoming court, but her No. 12 uniform, pads and all. A short while later, with five minutes to play in the third quarter, Amat was called to the same field to attempt a 31-yard field goal. She split the uprights. The kick proved decisive as Pinckney held on for a 9-7 victory against a Grand Blanc team that had come into the game ranked seventh in the state in its division. It also earned Amat the nickname the Kicking Queen.
The twin accomplishments were still sinking in Monday, said Amat, a senior who has played soccer since she was 3 but who tried out for the football team only last spring, at her soccer coach’s suggestion. “It’s just starting to hit me today,” she said in a telephone interview. “The guys were congratulating me, but without them, I wouldn’t even have gotten close” to making the kick.
“It was pretty special,” said Darga, who watched Amat win her crown and the game and called her an “accomplished athlete.” Before Friday, Darga said, Amat was known primarily as a student with a perfect 4.0 grade average who was involved in student government, serving as treasurer.
Although the high school has had a female player on its junior varsity team, Amat is the first girl to make the main squad in Pinckney, a village of 2,000 17 miles from Ann Arbor. The school, which draws from several rural communities, has 1,440 students.
Amat’s prowess as a defender on the school’s girl’s soccer team led to the invitation to try out as a football kicker. She competed against two male students, including one who wound up as the team’s punter. “She won the position on her own merit,” Darga said. “She won it outright.”
Amat had no previous football experience before joining the team in summer training. But she spent hours kicking balls in a field to her father, Ronaldo, a window and door salesman, and her brother Brandon, a University of Michigan student.
Amat said her father and mother, Nanci, who works at the high school, approved of her playing. “They’ve been really supportive of everything I do,” she said. Amat made her debut during the Pirates’ first game this season, when she was called in to kick an extra point after a touchdown. “The whole warm-up, I was nervous,” she said. She said she stayed calm during the kick but that afterward, “my heart was beating in my ears from the adrenaline.” Amat said she had not needed much adjustment to become Pinckney’s first female varsity football player. She was surprised at how quickly she was made to feel like one of the guys.
“They’ve been so accepting of me, it’s as if I’ve always been their teammate,” she said. The main drawback has been the separate locker room provided by the school, which keeps her apart from the male players. “After the games, they’re celebrating in their locker room and I’m by myself in my locker room,” she said. On Friday night, Amat said she had an extra incentive to make her third-quarter field goal. She had missed an extra-point attempt in the first half, leaving Pinckney ahead by 6-0. “I put pressure on myself to make it,” Amat said. “I wanted to apologize to the team.”
She added that the miss also distracted from the homecoming ceremony. “I don’t think I went into homecoming mode,” she said. “I just wanted to get back into the locker room and be with the team.” At Pinckney, students vote for a homecoming court made up of one male and one female student from the freshman, sophomore and junior classes, and three boys and three girls from the senior class. The king and queen are elected in a schoolwide vote.
In the locker room at halftime, Amat and a male teammate were told they were part of the court, and went out in their gear. (Had she not been playing, Amat said, she would have worn “a nice dress, a long dress, what the other girls had on.”) She was met by her brother, her kick retriever, who had given up tickets to the Michigan-Minnesota football game the next day so that he could watch her play and, ultimately, to serve as her homecoming escort.
There was no time to relish the victories, said Amat, who went straight home to bed. As student treasurer, she had to rise early Saturday to help with decorations for the homecoming dance. She wore a black and silver dress to the event, which she attended with a group of friends. Winning kick and coronation behind her, Amat said she was now concentrating on winning acceptance to Western Michigan, where she applied in September.
Amat plans to set sports aside to concentrate on a degree in business advertising. But she said she might reconsider if offered an athletic scholarship. The attention, from classmates and the news media, has been a surprise to the kicking queen. “For the longest time, I was the shyest kid ever, and now everybody knows my name,” she said. “It’s a totally different experience.”
Stephen McGee for The New York Times
Brianna Amat at practice Monday, three days after her winning kick. A longtime soccer player, Amat, 18, had tried out for the football team in the spring. By MICHELINE MAYNARD Published: October 3, 2011 ANN ARBOR, Mich. — In his 18 years at Pinckney Community High School, Jim Darga, the principal, said, the homecoming queen had always been crowned at halftime of the school’s football game. Never before, though, had she had to be summoned from the team’s locker room.
Alan Ward/Daily Press & Argus, via Associated Press
Brianna Amat, the first girl to make the Pinckney varsity football team, said her teammates had “been so accepting of me.”
And that was just the beginning of Brianna Amat’s big night. If being named homecoming queen is a lifetime memory for a high school student, so, too, is kicking a winning field goal. For Amat, 18, they happened within an hour of each other.
On Friday, with Pinckney leading powerful Michigan rival Grand Blanc, 6-0, at the half, Amat, the first girl to play football for the school’s varsity, was asked to return to the field. When she arrived, she was told that her fellow students had voted her queen. When the tiara was placed on her head, she was wearing not a dress, like the other girls in the homecoming court, but her No. 12 uniform, pads and all. A short while later, with five minutes to play in the third quarter, Amat was called to the same field to attempt a 31-yard field goal. She split the uprights. The kick proved decisive as Pinckney held on for a 9-7 victory against a Grand Blanc team that had come into the game ranked seventh in the state in its division. It also earned Amat the nickname the Kicking Queen.
The twin accomplishments were still sinking in Monday, said Amat, a senior who has played soccer since she was 3 but who tried out for the football team only last spring, at her soccer coach’s suggestion. “It’s just starting to hit me today,” she said in a telephone interview. “The guys were congratulating me, but without them, I wouldn’t even have gotten close” to making the kick.
“It was pretty special,” said Darga, who watched Amat win her crown and the game and called her an “accomplished athlete.” Before Friday, Darga said, Amat was known primarily as a student with a perfect 4.0 grade average who was involved in student government, serving as treasurer.
Although the high school has had a female player on its junior varsity team, Amat is the first girl to make the main squad in Pinckney, a village of 2,000 17 miles from Ann Arbor. The school, which draws from several rural communities, has 1,440 students.
Amat’s prowess as a defender on the school’s girl’s soccer team led to the invitation to try out as a football kicker. She competed against two male students, including one who wound up as the team’s punter. “She won the position on her own merit,” Darga said. “She won it outright.”
Amat had no previous football experience before joining the team in summer training. But she spent hours kicking balls in a field to her father, Ronaldo, a window and door salesman, and her brother Brandon, a University of Michigan student.
Amat said her father and mother, Nanci, who works at the high school, approved of her playing. “They’ve been really supportive of everything I do,” she said. Amat made her debut during the Pirates’ first game this season, when she was called in to kick an extra point after a touchdown. “The whole warm-up, I was nervous,” she said. She said she stayed calm during the kick but that afterward, “my heart was beating in my ears from the adrenaline.” Amat said she had not needed much adjustment to become Pinckney’s first female varsity football player. She was surprised at how quickly she was made to feel like one of the guys.
“They’ve been so accepting of me, it’s as if I’ve always been their teammate,” she said. The main drawback has been the separate locker room provided by the school, which keeps her apart from the male players. “After the games, they’re celebrating in their locker room and I’m by myself in my locker room,” she said. On Friday night, Amat said she had an extra incentive to make her third-quarter field goal. She had missed an extra-point attempt in the first half, leaving Pinckney ahead by 6-0. “I put pressure on myself to make it,” Amat said. “I wanted to apologize to the team.”
She added that the miss also distracted from the homecoming ceremony. “I don’t think I went into homecoming mode,” she said. “I just wanted to get back into the locker room and be with the team.” At Pinckney, students vote for a homecoming court made up of one male and one female student from the freshman, sophomore and junior classes, and three boys and three girls from the senior class. The king and queen are elected in a schoolwide vote.
In the locker room at halftime, Amat and a male teammate were told they were part of the court, and went out in their gear. (Had she not been playing, Amat said, she would have worn “a nice dress, a long dress, what the other girls had on.”) She was met by her brother, her kick retriever, who had given up tickets to the Michigan-Minnesota football game the next day so that he could watch her play and, ultimately, to serve as her homecoming escort.
There was no time to relish the victories, said Amat, who went straight home to bed. As student treasurer, she had to rise early Saturday to help with decorations for the homecoming dance. She wore a black and silver dress to the event, which she attended with a group of friends. Winning kick and coronation behind her, Amat said she was now concentrating on winning acceptance to Western Michigan, where she applied in September.
Amat plans to set sports aside to concentrate on a degree in business advertising. But she said she might reconsider if offered an athletic scholarship. The attention, from classmates and the news media, has been a surprise to the kicking queen. “For the longest time, I was the shyest kid ever, and now everybody knows my name,” she said. “It’s a totally different experience.”
Stereotype " Girls can't be inventors. The inventors below break quite a few stereotypes themselves.
Women have invented many things that we use today. For profile of women and stories about their inventions go to
http://susancaseybooks.com/women_invent.html
Here are a sample of a few women & their inventions
Hedy Lamaar (Hedwig Keisler Markey) – 1942, Secret communication system
Hazelle Rollins – 1938, Marionette Toy
Maria Telkes – 1948, Solar Heated House/Solar Still for life rafts/Solar Ovens
Bertha Dlugi – Diapers for parakeets
*Bette Graham – 1955, Liquid Paper
**Patsy Sherman – 1971, Scotchgard (3,574,791)
Gertrude Elion – 1954, drugs to fight childhood leukemia and other diseases
Helen Free – Self-test for Diabetes
Stephanie Kwolek, 1966, Kevlar (bulletproof vests)
Ann Moore – 1969, Infant Carrier
Rose Totino – 1975, Frozen Pizza
Andrea Tierney – The Bug House
Barbara Thompson – Computer Toys
*Laura Robinson – Balderdash board game
Ellen Ochoa – Optical Scanner
Sally Fox – Non-flammable naturally colored cotton
Grace Hopper – Cobol (computer language)
Susie Wee – 2000, Streaming Video
http://susancaseybooks.com/women_invent.html
Here are a sample of a few women & their inventions
Hedy Lamaar (Hedwig Keisler Markey) – 1942, Secret communication system
Hazelle Rollins – 1938, Marionette Toy
Maria Telkes – 1948, Solar Heated House/Solar Still for life rafts/Solar Ovens
Bertha Dlugi – Diapers for parakeets
*Bette Graham – 1955, Liquid Paper
**Patsy Sherman – 1971, Scotchgard (3,574,791)
Gertrude Elion – 1954, drugs to fight childhood leukemia and other diseases
Helen Free – Self-test for Diabetes
Stephanie Kwolek, 1966, Kevlar (bulletproof vests)
Ann Moore – 1969, Infant Carrier
Rose Totino – 1975, Frozen Pizza
Andrea Tierney – The Bug House
Barbara Thompson – Computer Toys
*Laura Robinson – Balderdash board game
Ellen Ochoa – Optical Scanner
Sally Fox – Non-flammable naturally colored cotton
Grace Hopper – Cobol (computer language)
Susie Wee – 2000, Streaming Video