HFFU Leadership Team

 

Introducing the Winning A Voice Leadership Team

In 1997 through a $10,000 grant from Wells Fargo, HerStory For Futures Unlimited distributed the Women’s Suffrage Kits (the Winning A Voice curriculum) to 30 school sites. Thirty 5th grade teachers taught the previously untold story of American women’s 150-year struggle for the vote. Three of the teachers that taught the curriculum during the spring semester, 1998 were Amy Winuk (Elk Grove, CA), Debby Stone (Carlsbad, CA) and Darlene Sweatt (Ventura, CA) . Then in 1999, these three teacher leaders presented the curriculum at the 38th Annual California Council for the Social Studies in Santa Clara, California and at the 79th Annual National Conference for the Social Studies in Orlando, Florida. Since then, Debby Stone has changed grade levels and this year James Kennedy has joined the Leadership Team.


About the Leadership Team:
Amy Winuk has worked for the Elk Grove, California School District since 1994 where she has taught kindergartners, fourth and fifth graders. She has been the elementary representative and organizer for the Drug, Alcohol, Tobacco Education and Tobacco Use Prevention Education Programs, the publicity representative for the school and was selected by the principal as school representative to the Superintendent’s Advisory Committee. Amy completed her master’s thesis addressing gender equity in the classroom. She has appreciated having the Winning A Voice curriculum as another way to provide a more balanced curriculum for her students and has shared it with her 5th grade teaching colleagues.
Darlene Sweatt has more than 30 years of teaching experience in the classroom, working with second through sixth graders. She specializes in integrating and correlating the arts into a thinking curriculum and worked for many years as a Music and Dance Fine Arts Mentor Teacher. Her professional accomplishments and activities are numerous and include work with the California Arts Project Leadership Academy, and the Geography Institute of National Geographic. She has received several awards and has also sat on many committees, including the Mid-South California Arts Project Advisory Committee, the California Arts Project, the Ventura County Arts Education Committee, and the District Standards Committee and was a presenter at both the California School Leadership Academy and the Southern California Mentor Teacher Conference.
James Kennedy has been teaching in Napa for two years. He loves teaching U.S. History to his 5th and 6th graders and brings a flair for the dramatic to his presentations. He is trying to empower a new generation of leaders to embrace their civic duties in a participatory democracy. His students understand that the Constitution is a living document and seek to manifest the human rights won for us by our founding fathers and mothers. He used the Winning A Voice curriculum by having the students study what issues the founding fathers and mothers struggled with as they implemented this constitutional democracy. Next year he hopes to periodically supplement his textbook work with more of the exciting components found in the Winning A Voice curriculum with an emphasis on "living herstory."