Happy Women’s History Month! To recognize and celebrate the value and contributions of women and girls to society, we are highlighting the PSU capstone course GirlPower!, taught by Professor Sally Eck.
GirlPower! is not your average class. Over the course of a term, PSU students in the University Studies track work closely with a group of teenage girls from local schools and organizations, leading empowering activities and developing meaningful relationships.
The class culminates in a zine that the students and teenage girls create together based on topics of the girls’ choice. Eck, herself a PSU alum and past participant GirlPower!, leads the course and aims to give girls the chance to discover their own voice.
Preparing to Lead
Eck has been teaching GirlPower! since 2001, and is proud of the work her students have done and the lasting impact they have made.
Students start the course by dividing into pairs and searching for a partner organization to support. In the past, students have worked with groups from the local community, including the Boys & Girls Club of Portland, AVID, Boys and Girls Aid Society and various schools.
In class, Eck leads them in discussions designed to prepare them to work with the girls in their group, covering topics like informed consent, obscenity laws and being a mandated reporter. They also discuss their own assumptions and biases about girls today — including deeply rooted cultural misconceptions.
“There’s this idea that girls don’t have anything valuable to say, that it doesn’t really matter, and it will just be frivolous. And none of that is true,” says Eck. “That’s all built on discrimination, sexism and misogyny and adultism.”
Along with understanding and beginning to dismantle their own biases, Eck wants her students to feel comfortable leading discussion groups that center the girls’ perspectives. She leads by example in her classroom, modeling what students can do in the groups.
“One of the strategies that I use in the course,” Eck explains, “is to have what we do in the classroom mirror what they’re going to do in the groups. I want there to be some muscle memory and some familiarity to it, so that facilitating is not so overwhelming.”
Co-Creating Their Vision
While facilitating the discussion groups, the PSU student pairs allow the girls they’re supporting to direct the topics of conversation.
“We ask the girls to talk about what they would like [to talk about] to make it a session where they can really be themselves, tell their stories and take care of each other,” Eck says. “We’re not bossing peoples’ experiences.”
At the end of the quarter, the students compile their work with the girls into a zine. This can take a while, as students sort through the many topics and conversations and choose, with input from the girls, what they will feature.
Topics range from recent conversations with friends to the best mascara to what has been happening in the girls’ lives. “Our girls are complex and thoughtful and creative, and they have a great deal to offer and to say about their experiences,” says Eck. And of course, the teenagers can also be silly – for their quotes in the zine, they’ve used pseudonyms like Minnie Mouse, Snickers Bar and Beyonce.
The course culminates in what Eck calls a “girl fest,”: a night on campus filled with pizza, games and crafts, for the PSU students and girls to celebrate the work they have done together over the past ten weeks.
A Lasting Impact
Both PSU students and girls from the partner organizations reflect on the course as a meaningful and positive experience. “A lot of times, the girls are like, ‘I wish we could always meet with these students. I wish we could keep going.’ And in some cases, the students and the girls have formed certain connections and have been able to create that and make that happen,” says Eck.
There have even been a few cases of a girl participating in the GirlPower! course as a teenager, then attending PSU and taking the course to participate as a student on the other side.
“Every term it’s special because the container we can create, and the work that we do is sacred and invaluable,” says Eck. “Girls are misunderstood and sensationalized simultaneously. And being able to be a conduit for voice and reality and kind of the space for community making and meaning making and empowerment and self awareness – there’s just nothing else like it.”
Students in the course agree. “The class helps to break those societal oppressions that we’ve grown up with. It’s so important for these girls, or those who identify as girls, to be able to know that adults are listening to them,” says Sheena Allison, an urban and public affairs major.
Aspen Hansen, an English major and writing minor, agrees. “I think the way Sally teaches the class encourages us to be in a space with the girls that is person-centered. There’s so much hierarchy that’s broken down, and that is obviously empowering for the young girls. But it’s also empowering for me, because when that hierarchy is broken down, you realize the networks and the communities that we can build.”
Lily Tobin, a film major, adds, “We’re creating a safe space for these young girls, which feels like such an honor. The classroom itself is a safe space because of the environment that Sally creates.”
Some students feel that the course was not only an empowering experience for the girls, but will help them towards their future career goals, too.
“This course blends really well into the career track that I’m interested in,” says Chris Elliot, a social sciences major. “Specifically, I want to do family systems therapy and art therapy. So doing a zine that incorporates art and voices of how people are impacted and the kind of things that they’re going through is really valuable and really beautiful.”
Hansen also hopes to use what they have learned in this course in the future. “I think there’s such a craving in the world for this kind of intergenerational connection. I was a little nervous going into our sessions with the girls, but the experience really solidified for me wanting to work intergenerationally,” she says. “I’m hoping to do an MFA in writing. I want to combine creativity and art with that kind of intergenerational connection and give young girls a voice.”
Eck hopes that her students will take what they have experienced in GirlPower! and carry it with them, remembering that they can learn and make an impact while having fun.
“Fun is a potential strategy for doing the work,” she says earnestly. “We have a weird Puritan ethic that says that if it’s not painful, and arduous in a way, then it doesn’t count. And so I think students are surprised that something scholarly and poignant and meaningful could be joyful and interesting and compelling.”
The GirlPower! Capstone course is available to any undergraduate student at PSU who is ready to fulfill their capstone requirement. Sally Eck will next teach the course in Summer 2024.