The League of Women Voters

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Through my supervisor, Ms. Janice Kroposky, I had the privilege of recently having the League of Women Voters.

The organization conducted a presentation for my 7th grade advanced social studies class. The presenters Patricia Supplee, Luisa Paster, Agnes Roche, and Beth Andrea Stevens, created an interactive lesson on suffrage.

League of Women Voters presentation

Avatar

To begin with, I assigned each student an avatar. Each avatar represented a person with distinct characteristics. During the League’s presentation, my students then decided where their assigned person fit within the historical moments being shown.

Since we were remote learning, they accomplished this by first beginning with their icons on. Then when they thought their person belonged in that time in history, my students would turn off their icon to reveal their face.

Suffrage

The League’s presentation went into many areas in history. It began with the meaning of the word suffrage (right to vote). Then why was it important that we vote. The presentation showed that everyone should vote and that all elections were important. It was important that people vote in all elections from the presidency, to members in congress, and to the governor of our state so that everyone would be properly represented. Ideas on why people vote was shown.

Here was that list:

• Environment
• Immigration
• International Relations
• Social Justice
• Education
• Taxes
• Covid 19
• Stop gun violence

American Revolution

From there, the presentation went into the time of the American Revolution. It was mentioned that Great Britain saw voting as opposing the crown. However, after the American Revolution the Founding Fathers had to design the rules for voting and this took place around 1789.

Voting during the American Civil War

The timeline presentation then went into who was eligible to vote during the American Civil War, the 19th Amendment (which gave women the right to vote), the 15th Amendment being challenged by the Jim Crow Laws, the importance of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the 26th Amendment during the Vietnam war which lowered the voting age to 18.

Furthermore, besides African Americans and women, the Suffrage presentation went into the hardships that many other groups went through trying to gain their right to vote. Those groups were Asian and Native Americans.

In closing my supervisor and myself would like to thank the League of Women Voters for giving our 7th-graders a hands-on civics lesson and walk through history about the struggle of people to gain the right to vote.