WELLS ─ STRETCH students of Wells Elementary School teacher Suzanne Laplante-Killoran welcomed several fourth-grade classes to the school’s second-floor atrium on June 6 to watch a presentation regarding the women’s suffrage movement in America.

The right to vote was eventually granted to women after an arduous 70 plus-year campaign ending in 1920 with the passage of the 19^th Amendment to the Constitution.

Laplante-Killoran’s group first presented a quiz show followed by a panel of eight students speaking as some of the leading participants in the suffrage movement including Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Frederick Douglass.  This was followed by audience questions.

In a segment similar to “To Tell the Truth,” audience members had to vote as to which one of three contestants was telling the truth in portraying Abigail Adams (1744-1818), wife of future President John Adams. After the contestants read their statements and took questions from the audience, student Carys Ramsey finally stood up to a cheering audience as Abigail Adams.

In March of 1776, Abigail lobbied her husband with a letter urging him, a delegate at the time to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, to be mindful of women’s interests in deliberations there.

Laplante-Killoran is the STRETCH teacher at the school. STRETCH stands for Services To Reach Educationally Talented Children.

The upcoming 100^th anniversary of the passage of the 19^th Amendment gave Laplante-Killoran the idea to focus her students on the women’s suffrage movement.

Students did research, wrote reports, designed T-shirts and created displays reflecting the inequality and challenges women faced before the right to vote was granted to them.

The audience for the presentation consisted of the fourth-grade students of teachers Kathy Reeves, Trevor Hopwood, Pam Lear, Alison Clark, Beth Bush, and Melissa Stapleton.

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