The 16th annual “Women in History” presentation brought Saugus High School students on a trip to space as this year’s theme was female astronauts on Monday afternoon in the Saugus High gymnasium.
The six women who were featured were Sally Ride, Jasmin Moghbeli, Sharon Christa McAuliffe, Mae Jemison, Valentina Tereshkova and Sunita Williams Pandy.
Louise Willard, career transition advisor at Saugus High and organizer of the event, said that this style of presentation is a way to hold students’ attention.
She portrayed Sally Ride during the presentation.
“Because I think everybody learns in a different way. And not everybody can get to the theater. Not everybody has a theater class or a drama class, and this combines being at school with having a little bit of theater, even though we are doing monologues … they’re going to walk away with this information in their head because it was a live presentation,” Willard said.
She added that she paints all the sets every year. Her solar system took about a week or so to complete.
“My husband did the stars, and he came up with the idea of having the sun coming across all of the sets. But we were very specific on the sizing of the planets and where they were placed to the sun,” Willard said with a laugh. “And a fun fact, I have a 3-foot kitchen table that I paint them on. I don’t know what they look like until they’re all up.”
Addison Rivera, a freshman at Saugus High, said it felt great to perform in the presentation because it is something she has always wanted to do.
“It felt amazing. I definitely want to act when I grow older. Acting’s definitely my passion. And it just felt amazing to be able to share that with the school, and especially to honor the women that came before me, it felt, it felt like an honor,” Rivera said.
She did a monologue as Jasmin Moghbeli and said she was practicing for two weeks during spring break.
She added that she plans on participating in the presentation every year because she had a wonderful time and loves women’s history.
Wendy Noonan, an English teacher at Saugus High, performed her best Russian accent as Valentina Tereshkova.
Noonan said she loves participating in the event because it gives the students an opportunity to learn things across the curriculum.
“Students can see the connections between the different subject areas that they study. There have been past years when it has been female writers, or artists, or athletes, and it’s nice to see those connections between your physical education class, and your elective class, and your English class, and as in this year, your science class. So, I think that’s important that students learn to synthesize that this whole world works together,” Noonan said.
She added that the presentation engages students and helps them retain the information more.
The presentation includes: the set, the costumes, the visual presentation with photos, the accents, the magazine covers of the women, students using American Sign Language, and the monologues.
“And I think it’s just important that as human beings, we hear it, we see it, we experience it, and I think especially today with technology and social media out there, we’re being inundated at all times with imagery and short bursts of information and little snippets and pieces of sound bites,” Noonan said. “And I actually think that as educators, we can use that in our favor.”
