March is Women’s History Month in the United States, and March 8th is International Women’s Day.  Once your FSU is up and running,  you and your union members will be leading your campus in these events, and will be working on them during club and committee meetings all year.  It's a fantastic way to begin getting the community comfortable with female-centric images and discussions–which will seem very foreign to many to start.  Backlash may be common, so get used to the idea of people rolling their eyes at you:)    

We began by choosing diverse women throughout history who have contributed to various fields of knowledge and civic life.  I chose women for whom I found short, high quality, age appropriate biography videos online.  Later, I added women who were/are directly involved in the gender equity movement–women such as: Patsy T. Mink, Christina Garcia, Dolores Huerta, and Ida. B. Wells. This way, we begin normalizing critically important gender equity phrases and vocabulary amongst the staff and students.

Homeroom teachers are given a link to the slides presentation around the first of March, and are given the ability to choose any slides to show that day, and throughout the month as time permits.  Students also have access to the slides as well, and can view the materials in their free time. Each historical woman gets her own page in a Google Slides presentation I created which contains the link to her video, a short bullet point list, and a Google form as a contest entry form.  As the students watch the films during class time when instructed to do so by teachers, or in their free time, they complete a form which asks a few basic questions about the woman.  Later, the FSU selects one entry at random to win a 20 dollar cash prize.  It's really fun and engaging, because the union members created a big poster and surprised the students in their homeroom.  You can see the current Google Slides presentation my union is using by visiting ssasv.org.  After spending countless hours creating the original version, the girls in the union work on adding a few new women each year. They have done a fantastic job, so I cannot take all of the credit. But like a lot of things, this has to be started and led by the adult advisor.