In 2024, Mariposa leaders entered Walla Walla fifth grade classrooms with a fully updated curriculum for this group of students who started school in 2019 and were in kindergarten when the pandemic hit in 2020.
Today’s fifth-graders are part of the first generation to spend their lives immersed in social media, with screens everywhere.
Changes in the use of technology in and out of school have had a major influence on these girls’ early learning experiences and continue to shape their worlds.
They have health and relationship challenges related to screen time, including loneliness, isolation, obesity, and cyber-bullying.
The YWCA is all about helping women and girls become leaders in their own lives, said Rebecca Patterson, Mariposa Coordinator, and we need to meet them where they are.
If we don’t include the online space where so much of their lives are happening, she said, we’re missing a big opportunity to help girls learn and grow.