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HerStory For Futures Unlimited is a non-profit organization that seeks to promote women’s history in early education. HFFU was founded by Executive Director Milli-Ann Iuso-Cox along with other educators.
We work to make history more inclusive by writing and presenting curriculum that acknowledges women’s contributions to America. Our mission is to provide role models to our future leaders via curriculum for children at the earliest possible stage in their education. Thus, we are working to include herstory in history so that today’s students can learn our story. |
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Girls portraying suffragists from the WInning A Voice
book with a replica of the women’s suffrage flag.. |
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Working in our classrooms, educators in the San Francisco Bay Area discovered that positive role models, so important during students’ formative years, are rarely present and often uninspiring in standard curricula. The experiences of women and people of color have been largely overlooked in the construction of America’s cultural history. In order to fill this gap and to ensure that all students see themselves represented in the curriculum early on in their school lives, we have designed an interdisciplinary curriculum plan especially for elementary and middle grades. Each unit provides students with noteworthy and heretofore hidden role models to inspire both girls and boys and to foster more inclusive and respectful cultural attitudes.
Through the use of the curriculum, educators have found that when we uncover the hidden histories of women and other under-represented groups, the entire community is measurably enriched and much more respectful of the whole human experience. The value of exploring, demonstrating, and practicing the variety of ways people approach their world is important because society benefits from the understanding and use of all its human resources. |
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Author Milli-Ann Iuso-Cox & fan at the Barnes & Noble
Winning A Voice book signing. |
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The long road to the development of Winning A
Voice began at Joaquin Miller School in Oakland, California in
1972. Milli-Ann Iuso-Cox and her fifth grade class came across
a remote reference to Susan B. Anthony while studying the election
process. Ms. Iuso-Cox was surprised and disturbed by how little
she knew about this women's rights activist. Anthony's achievements
and dedication, spanning fifty years, had never been mentioned
in the materials used in the classroom. The class decided to research
Susan B. Anthony's life and influence. On Anthony's birthday, Ms.
Iuso-Cox and her class declared a school holiday, made a presentation
to the school and decorated a symbolic birthday cake. |
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Kids in costume portraying influential
women with biographical cakes. |
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But that was just the beginning of their
investigation. As they studied, students soon realized that many
other women had played an important part in history too. They
too deserved our respect and admiration. To do that we created
a HerStory Parade which soon became an exciting annual tradition
at Joaquin Miller School. As each successive class endeavored
to build on the research done by previous classes, hundreds of
new heroines were uncovered and celebrated. HerStory became a
community project that had a rippling effect throughout the school
district. Despite community efforts, however, many of the pieces
to the puzzle were still missing, and access to information about
these women was severely limited.
In 1985, the Oakland Unified
School District granted Ms. Iuso-Cox a one-year sabbatical to
continue her research. During that period, Ms. Iuso-Cox traveled
across the country, gathering research materials and ideas for
a new women's history curriculum. |
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In 1989, Ms. Iuso-Cox left
the classroom to work full time on research and curriculum development.
She became the facilitator of women's studies for the Oakland
Unified School District and presented the new curriculum to elementary
teachers throughout the district. Student, parent, and teacher
responses were overwhelmingly positive. During that time a course
of study on women¹s history for the elementary grades evolved.
Each grade level was given a specific unit to cover. |
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The all-star cast of the Winning A Voice
musical documentary. |
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By 1995 the first unit was completed.
It was called Winning A Voice and was designed for the 5th grade
to supplement the traditional unit on the Constitution. With the
help of a $10,000 grant from Wells Fargo, the unit was published
and distributed for field-testing to 30 elementary school sites
in California. The enthusiastic testimonials of the pilot study
teachers convinced Ms. Iuso-Cox, the author, that the curriculum
was finally in the form that she had been striving for: challenging, inspirational
and easy to implement. |
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