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Go-To Grandmothers
February 2008
Inspirational Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo
This Discussion Guide contains the following Activity Sections:
- The Answers to Your Questions
- Problem Solving: Exploring Options, Giving Advice
- Make a Historical and Global Connection: Changing Options
I. The Answers to Your Questions The purpose of this activity is to ask teens to reflect on the role grandmothers have played in their lives.
- Gather the teens in a circle. Go around the room and have each teen say a few words, or share a brief favorite story, about a grandmother – hers, a friend’s, or even one from history or a book she’s read.
- Grandparents often get unique nicknames from their grandchildren. Ask the group to yell out all of the nicknames they have for their own grandparents, or they’ve ever heard for others’ grandparents. Ask a volunteer to write down all of the nicknames on a board for everyone to see.
- Ask the teens to write journal entries about their relationship to their grandmother(s) from three different times in their life. You can suggest ages 8, 14 (or current age), 35, and 60. In other words, the teens may have to imagine into their own future . . . and imagine how what they think of their grandmother(s) will change over time and over their own aging process. Note: even if teens do not know their grandmother(s) for whatever reason, they can still have feelings about who that person was, is, or means to them.
- Ask for two very brave volunteers. Invite those volunteers to role-play a conversation between a teen and her grandmother. The prompt is a conversation the teen wishes she could have with her grandmother but couldn’t, or hasn’t. What does the teen want to say? Why hasn’t she been able to have this conversation with her grandmother? What does the grandmother say in response?
- Many teens find a source of wisdom and strength in their grandmothers. Ask the teens to read “Top Ten Ways to Show the World You Respect Yourself.” Give the teens two options: either pick three of the top ten that they think would be most important to their grandmother. . . or write a new “top three ways to show the world you respect yourself” from a grandmother’s point of view.
- For a bonus activity, if teens are close with a grandmother, ask them to take one of these activities to her and share what they wrote.
II. Problem Solving: Exploring Options, Giving Advice
The purpose of this activity is to foster critical thinking about how grandmothers are viewed by American culture.
- Ask the teens to use an Internet search engine and search for “gifts for grandmas.” What do they find? Ask them to write a three sentence description of what defines a grandmother and her likes based solely on the search results.
- Open the group discussion to stereotypes about grandmothers. Here are some questions to pose: What does the stereotypical grandmother look like? How old is she? How does she spend her time? Is she weak or strong? Does she think about major world issues? When people make fun of grandmas, what are the jokes really about?
- In response to the two previous activities, structure an informal debate between the teens. Have one side represent “grandmas as depicted by stereotype” and one side represent what they consider the opposition, perhaps “grandmas as depicted by personal experience.” Which type of grandma would the teens rather be when they grow up? Are there good things about the grandma stereotype?
- Give teens a chance to brainstorm as many positive grandmother role models as they can. Role models may come from popular culture (“Golden Girls”), public life (Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi), business (Madam CJ Walker), arts (Grandma Moses) or from the teens’ personal lives. End the conversation by asking one of the teens to read the lyrics to Holly Near’s song, “1000 Grandmothers.” (Better yet, play the song, if that’s possible!)
- Ask the teens to write for five minutes straight about how grandmothers influence their family’s sense of identity and culture. Tell them to try to include one concrete example.
Resources
III. Make a Historical and Global Connection: Changing Options The purpose of this activity is to learn about how the unique power of grandmothers has been and can be used to change the world and to challenge the teens to find a way to join the cause.
- Grandmothers are organizing themselves all across the globe to effect social change. Ask the teens to read about a specific effort in Argentina, the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, in this month’s Girl Talk, “Tell Me the Truth: Who am I?”
- How else are grandmothers engaged in activism? Ask the teens to read up on one of the groups listed below (or a group they discover in their own research), and summarize the mission and activities of the grandmothers’ group to their peers.
- Here comes the hard part: challenge the teens to identify at least one way to support the work of a grandmothers’ group they researched. Do they want to work together, or as individuals? Do they want to write letters on behalf of a grandmothers’ campaign? Stage a sit-in? Contact elected officials? Raise money and donate it to a grandmothers’ cause? What is the most effective, most creative way the teens can join forces with grandmothers to effect positive social change?
- For a bonus activity, organize a screening of Run Granny Run and ask the teens to facilitate a post-film question and answer session about the importance of democratic participation at any age.
Resources
Resources
- Run Granny Run. USA. 77 mins. (2007) Directed by Marlo Poras.
This documentary follows Doris "Granny D" Haddock in her campaign to secure a seat on the US Senate, at the ripe age of 94. www.grannyd.com
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