![\"IMG_0515\"](\"http:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/IMG_05151-300x225.jpg\")
On Thursday afternoons, Kelsey Martin \u201912, MAT \u201913 leads\u00a0a women\u2019s empowerment group in which she and\u00a020 participants dissect the pitfalls and pressures of womanhood, muse on meaningful quotations, and expose their\u00a0deepest feelings and fears.<\/p>\n
On Friday mornings, the participants go back to being second and third graders and\u00a0Martin goes back to being their teacher.<\/p>\n
Martin, who\u2019s in her third year of teaching at a public charter school in Houston, Texas, started Rise Like a Girl last year because she wanted to give students \u201cthe tools they need to lead powerful and successful lives.\u201d Despite its members\u2019 ages, the group tackles weighty issues: gender roles and equality, body image, insecurities, female empowerment, self-esteem, the importance of having a voice.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted this club to be more mature than what you would expect from 8-year-olds,\u201d says Martin. Conversations can range from what the girls see on TV and online\u2014\u201cwomen’s as bodies rather than minds\u201d\u2014to standing up to boys on the playground who insist girls can\u2019t play soccer. \u201cThose things really do affect the girls,\u201d says Martin.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s familiar ground for Martin, who says she felt unsure of herself growing up: \u201cI always felt very less than. As girls we\u2019re subconsciously told not to stand out, not to be heard as often.\u201d<\/p>\n
She found her voice at TCNJ while completing a double major in education and women\u2019s and gender studies, and later a master\u2019s in teaching. It was also during this time that she became passionate about empowering girls while they\u2019re still young.<\/p>\n
Many of Martin\u2019s students come from low-income homes and male-dominated cultures in which the dads typically make the decisions and the moms defer. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing wrong with that if everyone is happy,\u201d says Martin. \u201cBut there is also another way, and that\u2019s something I want my girls to know.\u201d<\/p>\n
She wants to spread that message to girls beyond her school, and is currently writing a 20-week curriculum that teachers and community leaders can use to launch their own versions of Rise Like a Girl.<\/p>\n
Parents can get in on the effort too, says Martin, by giving their kids options. Don\u2019t assume your daughter will hate football and love the color pink; give her space to explore and express herself. Then, says Martin, \u201cLet her fly with that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alumna Kelsey Martin started a women\u2019s empowerment group for an unlikely group: her 8-year-old students. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":9647,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-corner","category-fall-2015"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}