Teachers Bring History--and Women Who Made It--to Life

The teachers at San Fernando Junior High School dressed up as famous women recently in an effort to not only make history breathe again, but walk and talk and carry a picket sign.

Grace Welden came as Eleanor Roosevelt in a dignified blue suit with gloves and a veil. Vice Principal Rita Davis was Queen Nefertiti in a tall headdress and a blue-and-gold gown that shimmered and rippled like the Nile in the first rays of the sun.

Joanne Margolese marched as Mary (Mother) Jones in front of 200 students gathered in the library. Waving a placard and carrying a cassette player blaring a union-organizing song, she brought the 19th-Century crusader to life so effectively that the students laughed and clapped when she shouted, “Join the union!”

Principal Maria Reza, dressed as United Farm Workers organizer Dolores Huerta with “No Grapes” buttons pinned on her red T-shirt, said the Living History project was designed to show students that they can succeed beyond their imagining.

“These are women who made a difference, who changed the world,” she said.

That message is important at San Fernando Junior High, where 96% of the students are Latino and many live in poverty. Margolese said the expectations of the girls in particular are “very low.” Many still think only of getting married and having children.

Not that that is a bad thing, the teachers said. But they should know that there is more available to them out there. In the words of Reza: “It is important for our population to identify with appropriate role models.”

The role models they chose to portray might have as much to say to the rest of us about our society as they do to the students. In those choices, one could see the effects of change that have swept over the cultural landscape in recent decades.

Most of the women chosen were activists, and some were revolutionaries.

Ethnic diversity was reflected in Betty Walkes’ decision to come as Coretta Scott King, wife of the slain civil rights leader, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. June Asher portrayed Rosa Parks, who galvanized the civil rights movement in the South by refusing to obey the law that said she had to sit in the back of a bus.

Besides Huerta, other Latino women portrayed included Frida Kahlo, the Mexican artist, and two soldaderas , women of Pancho Villa’s forces in the Mexican revolution of 1910. One shocked the students by concluding her presentation by saying that Villa became jealous of her success as a military commander and ordered her shot. “So I died,” she said.

The historical event so captivated the school’s staff that even cafeteria workers and secretaries joined in. When a performance was interrupted by an announcement from the office, Reza identified the speaker by her character. “That’s Nefertiti talking,” she said.

Each took her role very seriously. At one point, the women gathered for a picture. “Smile,” the photographer urged Rita Swift, playing Kahlo, until someone told him that Kahlo “never smiled.”

Some of the characters were controversial. One teacher chose Janis Joplin, the rock singer who died of a drug overdose. Asked why someone would present her as a role model, Davis tried to explain that the teacher who made the choice is an “ artiste ,” and that Joplin appealed to the teacher as an artist in spite of her flaws.

Davis said she was sure that the teacher would have shown how the singer was destroyed by drug use. But it was impossible to know because she did not appear for her scheduled performance.

Had any farmers been in attendance, they might have been offended by the “No Grapes” buttons on Reza’s Huerta costume. Cesar Chavez, founder of the UFW, has maintained a long boycott against grapes, saying they are contaminated by cancer-causing pesticides, which grape farmers dispute.

“They’re being poisoned,” Reza said of farm workers.

A farmer might protest that Reza, recognizable as the school’s premier authority despite her costume, was advocating a political cause to students on school time.

Reza admitted that she admires Huerta and has picketed in support of farm workers. But she did not think that she had crossed the line between education and propaganda. She was merely playing her role to the hilt.

A Living History project in the Conejo Valley a few weeks ago went too far when a student portrayed Adolph Hitler and tried to explain the German dictator’s hatred of Jews. Teachers in the school said this was a history lesson, nothing more. It didn’t wash with outraged parents to whom the memory of the Holocaust is all too real.

School district officials said only “positive” characters would be used in future history projects, whatever that means.

By that standard, one might have knocked out several women chosen by the teachers last week. Cleopatra could be characterized as a grasping monarch who committed suicide and Joan of Arc as a disturbed woman with a messianic complex.

But Reza didn’t screen the characters selected by her colleagues. Controversy is nothing to be avoided, in her opinion.

“Women who made a difference were controversial,” Reza said.

“If we were milquetoasts and wimpy women, no one would have recognized us,” she added, lapsing into her character.