Guiding Questions: 

• What can we learn from Alice Paul?
• How can what we learn from the work of Alice Paul inspire individual activism and perspectives on positive social change?
• What issues are worth fighting for?

Themes: Dedication, Persistence, Activism

Big Idea: This lesson’s Big Idea explores activism in found spaces and newly discovered faces. Students reflect on the work and activism of Alice Paul and explore, through a review of primary sources, how personal initiatives and statements of desired social change in the present day can be inspired by and found in the work of activists like Alice Paul throughout history.

Supporting Questions:

• What about the right to vote is so powerful?
• What does it mean to have the right to vote?
• What issues are worth fighting for?
• How does the work of Alice Paul inspire individual change?
• How do you inspire change?
• How might the work, friendships, and self-initiated activism of Alice Paul serve as inspiration for individual approaches to social change?

Students use Library of Congress primary sources to (a) examine the work and strategies for change executed by Alice Paul and others as a part of the women's suffrage movement in the United States and (b) create an original found poem that reflects students’ individual change statements.

The overarching goals and objectives are to spark reflection and critical thinking on individual opportunities to make change using Alice Paul’s work as found inspiration.

• Students reflect upon the meaning of social justice movements.
• Students analyze images and written materials related to Alice Paul and the suffrage movement.
• Students evaluate what justice-related issues are important to them and create found poems about social change.