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PRINCETON: Students dress as women they admire

By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
   When second-grader Hannah Park got ready to go Stuart Country Day School of the Sacred Heart on Friday, she left her customary uniform behind and. Instead. wore a costume to make her look like auto racer Danica Patrick.
   In fact, anyone walking the hallways of the Jean Labatut-designed school would have found a lot of that going on. Women We Admire Day, which started at the school in 1984 and has continued ever since, saw all roughly 120 Stuart girls in kindergarten through fifth grade come dressed as a woman they have researched and prepared to speak about in character through the day. Even their teachers got in on the act.
   The girls get to choose the woman they will impersonate although they have to justify why the women are admirable. Choices run the gamut from the well-known — think Amelia Ehrhardt and Joan of Arc — to those less well known, but who have made an impact.
   ”Jane Goodall is always popular, to Oprah Winfrey; all different women throughout history,” kindergarten teacher Heidi Echternacht said.
   The event is designed to include the educational component of having the girls research and learn about the women they’ve chosen.
   ”I think it’s certainly one of the highlights of the year,” said Michelle Dowling, head of Stuart’s lower school. “I think what’s impressed me is that it’s quite meaningful for them. It’s not just a day of fun.”
   Though the girls are not graded for the event, Ms. Dowling said it’s “a piece of how they can connect to a woman that’s been important in society.”
   Ms. Echternacht said the girls in her class wrote biographies of the women they chose and made computer-talking characters. She said the event showed the girls “the many different ways you can lead and the many different ways that women bring so many different qualities to the world.”
   In the morning, girls went to breakout sessions, called “centers,” that had different categories, such as sports and arts, that fit the women they chose. A highlight of the day was due to come in the afternoon. Known as the “talking museum,” the girls would talk in character to passersby who make a small donation, proceeds of which go to a charity the third-grade classes select.
   Except for its coed preschool, Stuart is a private, Catholic all-girls school up to the 12th grade. Opened in 1963, the school celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Parents pay tuition — up to $31,800 per year for the upper or high school — to send their daughters there.
   Second-grade teacher Barbara Anne Cagney, in her 33rd year at the school, helped bring the event to the Stuart. She and two colleagues went to a conference in New York City sponsored by the Women’s National History Project.
   ”They were presenting the idea of dressing as women and trying to get women back in history,” Ms. Cagney said. “And we just came home and said we can do this.”
   The first Women We Admire day was in March of 1984 when all the teachers and students participated. She said it has grown from a day to come in costume to in-depth learning, from girls reading biographies, researching online and creating information poster boards about the women.
   For her part, Ms. Cagney came Friday as Barbara Henry, who taught Ruby Bridges, a black first-grader who integrated a school in 1960 in New Orleans. To accent her outfit, Ms. Cagney wore a photo around her neck of Ms. Bridges and Ms. Henry. At past events, she’s been different people; the first year, Ms. Cagney said, she probably would have been American journalist Dorothy Day.
   ”So I’ve run the gamut from the known and unknown,” she said.