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Atherton High School

CIF 2024:

Women at the Center

Kymani Moore

Zoe Lambdin

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Our Project Idea

For our project we wanted to create a lesson plan that could be used in our mixed grade Women's Studies class.

We really wanted to focus on the ways nuclear weapons harmed women as well as how nuclear bombing has been portrayed in media, specifically media with female leads.

Kymani created slides that talked about female activists and Zoe created slides that talked about film depictions of nuclear bombing.

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Kymani’s Lesson

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Women's Leadership: Bedi Racule

Bedi Racule is a postgraduate student in the South Pacific, a nuclear abolitionist and activist who highlights the nuclear weapon testing that goes on in the Pacific islands. She works to strengthen the voices of nuclear survivors/victims, and she wants the next generation of youth to help fight and advocate for the end of nuclear weapon testing.

She educates about the U.S. nuclear test operation “Castle Bravo” that happened March 1, 1954. It was the largest hydrogen bomb tested in the Pacific and 1000 times stronger than the Hiroshima bomb. People in nearby islands during these tests were exposed to fallout radiation and the poisoning affected lots of people’s health, especially young kids. The residents who were once living on the Pacific islands affected by nuclear testing had to be relocated to safer places that provided them food, shelter and healthcare.

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Women's Leadership

Begins (0:51)

Jot down some thoughts or questions in your class notebook at these "minute marks" during the video:

7:39 "Another nuclear disaster is inevitable if the waste of radiation isn't removed. The U.S promised to remove it but seemed to have forgotten their promise."

9:25 "Nuclear weapons are terrible weapons and they should not be used on innocent men, women or children, yet the U.S government and other nuclear-armed states went ahead and tested these weapons in our islands. Are we not innocent human beings?"

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Zoe’s Lesson

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Film Excerpt

Grave Of The Fireflies

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Film Discussion

That was the first 20 minutes of “Grave of The Fireflies”, a movie directed and written by a Isao Takahata, a Japanese man who survived the bombing of Okayama City when he was just 9 years old.

Takahata infuses the story with his own experiences from the war and creates a very real image of Japan after the attacks.

Despite the film’s very heartbreaking and negative depiction of the war, Takahata never intended for it to be an anti-war film. He believes that films graphically depicting and activally criticizing war only lead to more violence.

Within a small group, discuss how you felt about the directors portrayal of the bombing and why you think he chose to depict it the way he did. In five minutes, come back together as a class and share your thoughts on the clip.

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Clips From Our Lesson

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How We Engaged The Class

We showed videos with engaging visuals and professional speakers in order to draw the students in.

We had multiple times during our lesson where students would break off into small groups or pairs and share their thoughts, as well as discuss questions we would have on the board.

After our lesson we had students write down a personal reflection on what they learned.