The League of Women Voters

Through my supervisor, Ms. Janice Kroposky, I had the privilege of recently having the League of Women Voters conduct 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 that brought my students through a suffrage timeline. To begin with, my students were assigned an avatar. Every avatar had a person with different characteristics from each other. From there, my students had the job to decide during the League’s presentation when they believe their person belonged in that part of history that was 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.

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

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. 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.