Castilleja School

We adapted the project to fit with our schedule in the fall (the project would have fit better in a unit in the Spring, and we will come back to the subject then). Students researched the suffragists individually in a collaboration with our library to learn some research skills. In groups, students discussed the 2-3 women they had researched, and used their research to pick one woman from the group to create a poster. I made the family member section optional. Student collaboration and design work on the posters was the best part. They realized they had to work together and design something that really showcased their drawings and the research to teach people about their suffragist. The project will be showcased at school during our January Global Week. The theme this year is “Seats at the Table: Women, Peace, and Security” and we will display the suffrage posters around school to honor these women who demanded the vote and a place at the table. If we get good photos of the displays I will send them in January.

MY OWN PERSONAL STORY –

My great, great-grandmother, Margaret Jane Nicholson Frick, was a teacher and a school administrator in Los Angeles from the 1880s until her retirement. Some of her former students formed a suffrage club to fight for the passage of women’s suffrage in California in 1911 when it was on the ballot as a state constitutional amendment. They named the club in her honor, and she was actively involved in the work. She kept a scrapbook of the newspaper clippings about suffrage that year and the work the club did to help pass the amendment. She registered to vote as soon as she could. Although she kept the scrapbook, when she wrote her memoirs for her two sons she did not mention her work on suffrage.