Operation Girl Power In-School Workshops were offered to groups of girls at three different schools throughout NYC - P.S. 41, The Abraham Joshua Heschel School, and The Rebecca School.

The Arts Effect worked closely with administrations, PTA members, and teaching staff to develop an Operation: Girl Power! program that best served the specific needs of each school and community.

Workshop Model

As a team, students were guided through 60-minute workshops that included community building activities, lively, yet respectful debate and discussion, private reflective journal writing, and finally, exciting role play and scene development exercises inspired by the topics addressed in class. Each class ended with the assignment of a creative Take Home Girl Power Project to be completed by the girls before the next session. Participants worked together toward the common goal of creating, producing, and performing their own original creative pieces and testimonials that reflect their voices, their experiences, and the reality of their world. These pieces were performed for faculty and parents.

Objectives

• Create a safe, nurturing space for the girls of NYC to share ideas, speak openly about their experiences, communicate fairly, discuss dreams, fears, and frustrations, and collaboratively develop an original theatrical piece as an ensemble.

• Establish trust and respect within the group though a series of team building exercises and activities.

• Encourage and guide healthy conversation, debate, and discussion regarding the particular social challenges facing elementary/middle school girls. For example: lunch/recess pressures, gossiping, initiating or being the subject of rumors, friendships exclusion, cliques, etc.

• Adhere to the “Listening Guide” developed by psychologists and specialists in girl development, Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilligan. This method encourages mentors to “move where the girls lead” and “stay with the girls’ voices rather than one’s own in hopes of helping girls to develop, to hold on to, or to recover knowledge about themselves and their feelings.”

• Engage the girls in role playing, scene creation, and improvisation as ways of safely exploring topics the girls bring forward in sessions such as “mean girls”, peer pressure, exclusion, growing pains, self image, misdirected aggression, and more.

• Provide weekly journaling themes to prompt the creative and reflective writing necessary for fully articulating and exploring experiences and feelings.

• Empower the elementary and middle school girls by introducing them to creative, productive tools that aid in the further development of their sense of self, their communication and interpersonal skills, and their social and psychological well-being.

• Support the girls by taking them seriously: “Taking girls seriously encourages them to take their own thoughts, feelings, and experiences seriously, to maintain this knowledge, and uncover knowledge that has become lost to them.” Rachel Simmons, Odd Girl Out