Student Resources

• Anticipate: Two Preambles 
• Alice Paul and Responsibility Narrative
• Virtue in Action

Teacher Resources

• Analysis Questions 
• Virtue in Action  
• Journal Activity
• Sources for Further Reading  
• Virtue Across the Curriculum  

• Sentiments: Views or opinions on a subject. 
• Resolutions: A formal statement of decisions or wishes of a group of people. 
• Self-evident: Another word for obvious.  
• Endowed: Another word for given.  
• Unalienable (inalienable): Unable to be taken away.  
• Instituted: Another word for established.  
• Deriving: Another word for receiving. 
• Responsibility: To strive to know and to do what is best rather than what is most popular or expedient. To be trustworthy for making decisions in the best long-term interests of the people and tasks of which one is in charge.
• Heckled: To interrupt a speaker at a public event.
• Plight: A difficult situation.
• ConcoctionAnother word for a mixture of things.
• Jeers: Another word for insults.
• Rebuffed: An unkind rejection.

Procedures 

• The following lesson asks students to consider the virtue of responsibility and how it relates to working toward their needs and the needs of others.  
• Alice Paul’s sense of responsibility was a testament to the perseverance of a decades-long struggle by American women to participate in the civic life of republican government by voting and offering their consent to the laws under which they lived.    
• Students will engage with the story of Alice Paul as they consider the question: Why is individual responsibility necessary for the United States to be a successful self-governing society? 
• The main activity in this lesson requires students to read and analyze a narrative that explores Alice Paul. Students may work individually, in pairs, or small groups as best fits your classroom. The analysis questions provided can be used to help students comprehend and think critically about the content. As the teacher, you can decide which questions best fit your students’ needs and time restraints.  
• Additional activities include comparing parts of primary sources to prepare students for the lesson and an exercise to recognize how these responsibilities may shift and change over time. 
• Lastly, the lesson includes sources used in this lesson for further reading and suggestions for cross-curricular connections.

Anticipate

• Scaffolding Note: You may use this activity to prepare your students and introduce the vocabulary and ideas discussed in this lesson. The Anticipate Activity gives more background to the women’s suffrage movement, so students may better understand Alice Paul’s place in the larger context of that fight for women’s rights.  
• Essential Vocabulary; 
  • Sentiments: Views or opinions on a subject. 
  • Resolutions: A formal statement of decisions or wishes of a group of people. 
  • Self-evident: Another word for obvious.  
  • Endowed: Another word for given.  
  • Unalienable (inalienable): Unable to be taken away.  
  • Instituted: Another word for established.  
  • Deriving: Another word for receiving. 
• Distribute the Anticipate: Two Preambles activity. Have students complete the Anticipate Activity for homework or in class.   
• Have students share the similarities and differences they identified in the two preambles with a shoulder partner. 
• Lead a class debrief by asking: 
  • How many years passed between the writing of these two documents? 
  • Why is it significant that Elizabeth Cady Stanton borrowed the language of the Declaration of Independence in the Declaration of Sentiments? What point was she trying to make? 
  • Whose responsibility is it to ensure that all people are protected equally in their ability to enjoy natural rights? 
  • Push students to define responsibility (“If we are all responsible, what does that mean?”) 

Engage

• Transition to the Alice Paul and Responsibility Narrative. Students will learn and analyze the story of Alice Paul and the virtue of responsibility. 
  • “Over 60 years after the Declaration of Sentiments and resolutions was signed in Seneca Falls, New York, the push for women’s rights, including the right to vote, continued. In this reading, we will look at the work of Alice Paul as an example of displaying the virtue of  Responsibility: Acting on good judgment about what is right or wrong even when it is not popular. Individuals must take care of themselves, their families, and their fellow citizens/others in civil society and a republic and be vigilant to preserve their own liberty and the liberty of others.”
• Scaffolding Note: It may be helpful to instruct students to do a close reading of the text. Close reading asks students to read and reread a text purposefully to ensure students understand and make connections. For more detailed instructions on how to use close reading in your classroom, use these directions. Additional reading strategies are provided for other options that may meet your students’ needs. 
• Essential Vocabulary: 
  • Heckled: To interrupt a speaker at a public event. 
  • Plight: A difficult situation. 
  • Concoction: Another word for a mixture of things. 
  • Jeers: Another word for insults.
  • Rebuffed: An unkind rejection.

Explore

• Transition to the analysis questions. Have students work individually, with partners, or as a whole class to answer the analysis questions. 
• Scaffolding Note: If there are questions that are not necessary to your students’ learning or time restraints, then you can remove them from your analysis.  
• Analysis Questions 
  • For what cause was Alice Paul working?  
  • What can you infer about Paul’s experience with force-feeding in England?  
  • Paul returned to the U.S. in 1910 after her stay in England. As a member of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association (NWSA), she scheduled a parade to coincide with President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration. The parade was not without its challenges.  Men shoved and tripped the marchers, while police did little to assist. One hundred marchers were taken to the hospital. How do you think the virtue of responsibility helped Paul work to overcome the challenges of facing a hostile crowd? 
  • The parade got the president’s attention. Paul went to the White House two weeks later, and the president promised to give the idea of voting rights for women his “most careful consideration,” but this promise did little to satisfy Paul. Should she have let that conversation be the end of it?  
  • Paul and the 500 others who were arrested for speaking, publishing, peaceably assembling, and petitioning became known as political prisoners. Why might Wilson have ordered the suffragists to be released from prison?  
  • If you were writing a eulogy for Alice Paul, what would you say, and why? How should Paul’s efforts on behalf of women’s suffrage be remembered?  
  • Identify two other examples of responsibility in United States history. How has responsibility on the part of individuals helped the United States to be the kind of nation its founders envisioned? How can responsibility play a part in maintaining our republic?  

Assess & Reflect

Virtue in Action  

• Distribute Virtue in Action handout. Review the direction and examples with students. Allow students time to reflect on and answer the prompts individually.   

AND/OR

Responsibility Journal Activity  

• Have students self-reflect and answer the followings in their journal: 
  • What are the specific responsibilities you hold as an individual? You may use the list you previously brainstormed in the Virtue in Action Activity. What challenges do you face when trying to fulfill these responsibilities? What are some ways you can overcome these challenges?  

Extend

Sources & Further Reading  

• Explore the following list for additional sources and further reading on Alice Paul.  
  • Adams, Katherine H. and Michael L. Keene. Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2007.  
  • Cassidy, Tina. Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait?: Alice Paul, Woodrow Wilson, and the Fight for the Right to Vote. New York: 37 Ink, 2019.  
  • Ware, Susan. American Women’s History: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 

Virtue Across the Curriculum  

• Below are corresponding literature suggestions to help you teach about responsibility across the curriculum. Sample prompts have been provided for the key corresponding works. For the other suggested works, or others that are already part of your curriculum, create your own similar prompts.    
  • The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien: 
    • Describe how the responsibility of carrying the Ring affects Frodo and how it affects the rest of Middle Earth. How do his companions help him bear the responsibility of carrying the Ring?
      
  • President John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address (1961): 
    • Discuss the responsibilities President Kennedy placed on Americans in his speech. How does he connect these responsibilities to Founding principles of the American Revolution?