“Yet even as I wince at the terrible risk we all took, I remember thinking at the time that it was the right decision—because it it felt as though the hand of fate was ushering us forward.”
Melba Pattillo Beals on the Integration of Little Rock Schools, Warriors Don’t Cry (1994)
Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.
She’s not much read today (though I have loved the books of hers I’ve read), but I think this Cultural Literacy worksheet on novelist Willa Cather ought to have some currency in our secondary classrooms in the United States (at least!). This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of one compound sentence with two comprehension questions.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“To what poem is Joan Didion referring in the title of her book Slouching Toward Bethlehem (1968)? She refers to the last line of ‘The Second Coming‘ (1921) by William Butler Yeats: ‘And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/Slouches toward Bethlehem.'”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
If you can use it, which I suppose is another way of saying if you have a student with an interest in her, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Greta Garbo. This is a half-page worksheet with a three-sentence reading and three comprehension questions. A simple, but effective introduction to this famously reclusive woman.
May I presume to recommend a viewing of Ninotchka? I doubt anyone would be sorry he or she watched this fine film.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Patriotism in the female sex is the most disinterested of all virtues. Excluded from honors and from offices, we cannot attach ourselves to the State or Government from having held a place of eminence…. Yet all history and every age patriotic virtue in the female sex; which considering our situation equals the most heroic of yours.”
Letter to John Adams, 17 June 1782
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
For the final Friday of Women’s History Month 2022, here is a reading on Julia Child along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Whatever one thinks of French cooking, which Ms. Child brought to American cuisine, she was by any measure an accomplished woman.
I confess ignorance where both French cooking and Ms. Child are concerned–my own palate, alas, is undeniably plebeian. In researching this post, I learned that she stood six feet, two inches tall; her height disqualified her from World War II service in the Women’s Army Corps (WACs) or the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services). She joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to today’s Central Intelligence Agency, where she worked directly with OSS founder General William J. (“Wild Bill”) Donovan. According to Ms. Child’s Wikipedia page, in her service to the OSS, she took on the task of solving the problem of curious sharks setting off underwater explosives placed by the OSS. She experimented with recipes that would serve as shark repellent; her method is still in use today.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“…It is a pity that Mrs. Friedan has to fight so hard to persuade herself as well as her readers of her argument. In fact her passion against the forces of the irrational in life quite carries her away.
Yale Review
It is superficial to blame the ‘culture’ and its handmaidens, the women’s magazines, as she does… To paraphrase a famous line, ‘the fault dear Ms. Friedan, is not in our culture, but in ourselves.’”
New York Times Book Review
Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Victorian Period. The era is named, of course, for Queen Victoria and her outsized influence on British mores during her reign. This full-page worksheet leads with a four-sentence reading which includes two long compounds, and six comprehension questions. In other words, a decent summary of an important social, economic, diplomatic, and political period in Great Britain,
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Magdalena Abakanowicz: (1930-2017) Polish sculptor. A descendant of nobility, she graduated from Warsaw’s Academy of Fine Arts in 1955. She became the pioneer and leading exponent of sculpture made of woven fabrics, calling her three-dimensional weavings ‘Abakans’ (from her surname). She produced series of fabric forms called Heads (1975), Backs (1976-80), Embryology (1980), and Catharsis (1986). She has also exhibited paintings, drawings, and sculptures in other media internationally, and has been widely imitated in Europe and the U.S. Beginning in 1965, she taught at Poznan.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Queen Victoria. This full-page document contains a five-sentence reading with one longish compound, and six comprehension questions. It’s suitable, therefore, to use as independent practice, aka homework; it would make a suitable piece of classwork, or even make-up work, as well. Or, because it is a Microsoft Word document, you can export it to a word processor of your preference, or edit it as is, for the needs of your students.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
Mark's Text Terminal 
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