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Circular Reasoning

Posted on | January 8, 2009 | 641 views |

Girls Circle curriculum model provides opportunity for service and learning

By Julia Harris

No one knows more about the challenges of raising girls than Vicki Pitstick, program manager for Ohio State’s Honors and Scholars Center. After all, she’s got three of them.

“One thing I have become really passionate about is making sure my children are well prepared to deal with all the … ‘stuff’ … they’re going to face,” Pitstick said, sitting in her small attic office of the gabled Kuhn Honors and Scholars House.

“You know, things like peer pressure, girl aggression, body image issues, alcohol and drugs, and sexual pressure.”
Her search for guidance led her to the Girls Circle, a research-based program that is essentially a structured support group for girls aged 9-18. Participants in the program meet weekly for eight or 12 weeks, depending on the length of the curriculum module, for guided discussion, creative activities and personal reflection.

The idea, Pitstick says, is to create an informal and nurturing environment where girls, led by a facilitator, address risky behaviors, build on protective factors and improve interpersonal relationships.

Not only does she see the program as something that could benefit her own daughters, but she’s fired up about using it with Ohio State students in her new, year-long immersion project in women’s issues.

“Every quarter we offer a not-for-credit immersion project on a specific social issue,” she said. “We’ve done lots of different issues, like HIV and AIDS, mental health, prisoner reentry. But I thought there were certain issues that merited more than just a quarter and that there were students who would enjoy a more in-depth project. The Girls Circle program gave us the idea to do a year-long focus on women’s issues.”

Pitstick put her head together with Laura Kraus, associate director of the university’s Economic Access Initiative, to come up with an outline for the year’s content.

With funding from a Critical Difference for Women grant, they launched fall quarter with 20 students and started with an exploration of women in leadership and politics. Winter quarter will look at body image issues women face, and spring quarter will tackle the topic of work-life balance, career and family.

Each quarter, students read books related to the topic, attend regular presentations and engage in community service work at places such as women’s shelters or other sites that deal with women’s issues
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That’s where the Girls Circle program comes in.

“For their service project, 11 of our students chose to go through training to become Girls Circle facilitators and lead circles in local schools,” Pitstick said.

This training involved a two-day seminar, which addressed practical considerations such as how to be an effective facilitator and how to deal with problematic situations that can arise in group settings. Also required is participation in Girls Circles led by Pitstick and Kraus.

Although the curriculum as it stands is intended for a younger demographic, Kraus said it worked just fine with the undergraduates.

“We did the unit called ‘Who I Am’ with our students and they liked it because it harkened back to their adolescence and engaged them in creative things they might not have done since they were kids,” she said.

Sample sessions dealt with topics such as the difference between assertive, aggressive and passive behavior, and the importance of setting goals for the future.

Kraus, for one, has great plans for the Girls Circle curriculum model. “How cool would it be for us to have the first economic access program in the nation that uses this model to deliver a college planning and career development curriculum to high school juniors and sophomores?” she said.

“It could be a fun way to deliver college access information, which can be a little dry, and to let kids talk about it with their peers, brainstorm, make it their own and start to solve their own problems.”

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