PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
FROM THE EDUCATORS COLLOQUIUM ON GENDER EQUITY

This book will enable teachers and other educators, at all grade levels, and across content areas, to make sure that their students, girls and boys alike, will have an equal chance to succeed in school and in the future. In these pages are lesson plans/exemplars and other guides simple, practical, and punchy created by teachers and other school staff out of their own and each others’ classroom experiences. All are focused on integrating gender equity into every classroom.

Elsewhere in this book, the careful process behind the making of the handbook is described in detail. But it is also worth saying how this project came to be the people and agencies that collaborated to get this done. That is our purpose here.

The idea for a comprehensive but easily usable handbook, composed by classroom teachers for classroom teachers, emerged in the fourth year of the project known as the Educators Colloquium on Gender Equity in Rhode Island Elementary and Secondary Education (The Colloquium). Originally proposed by Bristol-Warren Superintendent Guy DiBiasio, a co-chair of the Colloquium, the concept was defined by another member, Dr. Vivian Morgan, a professor of mathematics at Rhode Island College. The Colloquium members enthusiastically welcomed the idea and made the handbook a top priority in their Gender Equity Action Agenda.

For four years, the Colloquium, a panel of educators formed by the Education Committee of the Rhode Island Commission on Women, worked to promote ways to make gender equity a regular feature of every day school practice. As they knew from personal experience and from the meetings and surveys they had conducted, such concrete help as a handbook provides was very much needed. And, for the Colloquium, it was a fitting culminating project in their final year.

We are keenly aware that we could never have produced this handbook if many other people and agencies had not "weighed in" with all kinds of help. Each has earned our respect and gratitude.

Central to the success of the project was the involvement of the faculty at Rhode Island College (RIC), colleagues brought on board by Vivian Morgan, an original member of the Colloquium. In particular, Nancy Sullivan, Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Curriculum, became the chief planner, organizer, and facilitator, as well as one of three codirectors. Rose Marie Cipriano and Vivian Morgan were the other two co-directors who guided the many teachers and others who came forward to take on the tasks. Dr. Sullivan, as Chief Editor, also shaped the materials into the document before us. We honor and thank them all.

It would probably not have been possible to undertake this effort at all without the wholehearted support of the Rhode Island Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

(RIDE). The Commissioner, the Deputy Commissioner, and the Gender Equity Specialist, Nancy Warren, were members of the Colloquium, and when Dr. DiBiasio went to the Department for help on behalf of the Colloquium, he found them ready partners. All the funding, and much staff support came from the Department.

The contributions of the individual members of the Colloquium the superintendents, principals, teachers, guidance counselors, and others who comprised the panel who stayed faithful over the years of the project, were critical. They gave their time and expertise for five years to help themselves and their colleagues in the challenging task of institutionalizing gender equity. The Education Committee of the RI Commission on Women, which initiated the Colloquium, continued to provide essential staff support. Freda H. Goldman, then Chair of the Education Committee, served as the project director for the colloquium, throughout these five years.