Yerba Buena Honors Great Women in History

Great women like Sally Ride and Shirley Temple Black were honored at on Friday as part of a special school assembly celebrating Women's History Month.  Parent and teacher volunteers took to the stage, portraying historical female figures while addressing the audience about their accomplishments.

The Women’s History Project, sponsored by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), was established to introduce students to the contributions made by those women often left out of history books, said , the school's music teacher, who has been organizing the annual event for the past 10 years.

Each year, the AAUW provides schools with a list of influential women along with scripts for volunteers to use in their portrayals, according to Leininger.  This year the project theme was Our History is our Strength. 

"In recognition of the 100th anniversary of women winning the right to vote in California, all of the subjects selected for the project were born in California or played an important part in our state’s history," said Leininger.

In the past, volunteers have gone from class to class, sometimes performing their role a dozen times.  Last year, Leininger decided to do the program as an assembly.

“Doing Women in History as an assembly works really well, because it is less disruptive to the classrooms, the volunteers only have to perform their oles twice– to separate primary and upper grade assemblies and-the kids have more time to ask the women questions," said Leininger.  "We have also incorporated a multi-media presentation."

Long-time Yerba Buena teacher Sandy Fleishman, who retired last June, returned to the school to play the roll of Shirley Temple Black.  During her performance, the children watched a video of the young Temple Black singing “Good Ship, Lolipop” and learned that she went on to be a delegate to the UN and an ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia.

During the Q&A period, one child asked, “Who are you really?” Fleishman, never breaking character, responded: “Why I’m Shirley Temple Black!”

The children also learned about Clara Shortridge Foltz, the lawyer and California suffragist instrumental in giving women the right to vote 100 years ago; Bridget “Biddy” Mason, a slave who walked 2000 miles from Mississippi to Utah and eventually to San Bernadino to become the first African American woman to own land in Los Angeles; and Los Angeles native Sally Ride, the first American woman in space.

“I love this program and think it’s very important, because women are left out of the history books, because they weren’t political leaders or leaders of war," said Leininger. "But women have made incredibly important contributions to history."