We are a mixed-gender friendship group in Year 10, and last term, we had a lesson on domestic violence delivered by our local Women’s Aid charity. It was here that we realised how little we knew about this issue and so many other related issues.
We knew loads about every other curriculum subject, but next to nothing about healthy relationships, or on gender well-being and gender equalities. We didn't realize that challenging gender inequalities can help address violence against girls and women. We started to join up the dots and think about gender injustice and how unfair the world can be for boys, girls, men and women.
Inspired by YouTube flashcard stories where people hold up signs with hand written messages on for people to read, we decided to create our own story board, and spread the word that we are #morethanourgrades.
Making anonymous Flashcard stories can be a simple, safe and effective way of raising awareness about sensitive issues.
"#morethanourgrades became our community challenge Welsh Bacc project. We delivered leaflets and talked to community members about gender equality and designed a likert scale questionnaire to find out what students and staff thought about our flashcard story."
Schools these days seem to see and value us more as grades on paper, not as people. Our well-being is just as important as our GCSEs.
WHAT DID WE DO?
1: Working across the curriculum
We began working our way through each curriculum subject and took it in turns to speak out loud something we knew or remembered from different subjects, like Maths or P.E.
2: Researching what we didn’t know
We mind-mapped all the things we didn’t know about gender equalities and gender well-being, and used the AGENDA 'information' web resources to find out more.
3: Making don’t know/do know pages
We then created a flashcard story book, with one page highlighting things we ‘did know’ and one page highlighting things that we ‘didn’t know’.
4: Illustrating
We illustrated each page, and drew our favourite Disney characters on the front cover. Each character, for us, challenges or is constrained by gender, sexual or racial stereotypes.
5: Filming teacher’s hands turning the pages
Using an ipad, we filmed teachers turning the pages that matched their own subject. This became a great way to spread the message about our project across the school. Lots of teachers asked us what we were doing and why. Many, like us, learned new things about gender equality or gender-based violence. A few teachers thought that we were taught enough already which led to some interesting discussions!
6: Tweeting #morethanourgrades flashcard story
We used movie maker to make our film. When it was finished, we played it on our school TV everyday day during our Welsh Bacc week. We tweeted each school subject’s twitter account and asked them to pls RT (please retweet). We also set a student-staff form group challenge to guess which teacher turned which page. We will show the film again on International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (25 Nov) and hope other students will make their own flashcard books next year.
“It was really fun running around getting all the teachers to turn the pages, and watching the looks on their faces when they realized what the book was all about!”
“I loved illustrating the book – I love Disney!”
“I really enjoyed this … because we are more than our grades!”
Check out Amnesty International's guide to social media activism, as well as Feminist Frequency's guide to protecting yourself from online harassment.
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