“When states decide to use force to deal with broader threats to international peace and security, there is no substitute for the unique legitimacy provided by the United Nations.”
Opening speech to United Nations General Assembly, New York, N.Y., 12 September 2002
Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged black history
“(1929-1981) Senegalese novelist and activist. Despite the brevity of her writing career, Mariama Ba’s published novels secured her an international reputation. Une Si longue letter (1979; tr So Long a Letter), her first novel, won the first Noma Award for Publishing in Africa at the 1980 Frankfurt Book Fair. Le Chant ecarlate (tr Scarlet Song, 1981), her second novel, was published posthumously and also gained international attention. Ba’s works examine such issues and polygamy, clitoridectomy, and woman’s ability to transcend the negative consequences of the irresponsible use of power in a traditional Muslim and patriarchal society. The novels affirm the ability of women to experience such potentially devastating situations, and yet move beyond victimization to action and wholesome self-expression.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“America is woven of many strands; I would recognize them and let it so remain…. Our fate is to become one, and yet many—this is not prophecy, but description.”
Ralph Ellison
Invisible Man epilogue (1952)
Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Hey! Black History Month 2019 begins today. I’m always excited for this month to roll around. In 16 years of teaching in inner-city schools, I have served students of predominantly (recent) African Descent. (I modify that locution with recent because as it turns out, we all–humans, I mean–started out in Africa. As the late, great Richard Pryor put it, “So Black people we the first people had thought. Right? We were the first to say, ‘Where the f**k am I? And how do you get to Detroit?’”)
Because I have, from childhood, been enamored of syncretic African cultural forms in this country–particularly jazz–the history of Black people in the United States has always been a deep interest of mine. As a matter of fact, I consider the seven years I lived in Harlem a post-graduate exercise. I really was thrilled to read about the locations of famous nightclubs, or the addresses of famous Harlem residents (Billie Holiday’s first apartment was on was on 138th Street, just off Lenox Avenue; A’Lelia Walker’s Dark Tower was on 136th Street in Sugar Hill–I could go on at length starting with 555 Edgecombe Avenue or The Dunbar Apartments–there are just so many of these august addresses in Harlem) and then stroll by to look at them.
Because David Blight, a historian at Yale, has recently published a new biography of him (you can read Ta-nehisi Coates’ review here), let’s start the month with this short reading on Frederick Douglass and its vocabulary building and comprehension worksheet.
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.
“…grossness for the sake of grossness…the world will not be proud of it in that distant tomorrow which irrevocably sets the true value on books of today.”
The Literary World
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged literary oddities
Here is a supported glossary on the parts of speech that, if you teach them, could accompany any lesson on English usage or the parts of speech.
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.
“Antihero: A protagonist who lacks traditional heroic virtues and noble qualities and is sometimes inept, cowardly, stupid, or dishonest, yet sensitive. The type is best represented in modern fiction and drama, although it appears as early as 1605, in Don Quixote, James Joyce’s Leopold Bloom in Ulysses, Kingsley Amis’s Jim Dixon in Lucky Jim, and Joseph Heller’s Yossarian in Catch 22 are antiheroes.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged fiction/literature, readings/research
Since it’s Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day today, and I am on a two-hour delay for the start of the school day, circumstances both permit and require me to off this context clues worksheet on the verb proliferate. Merriam-Webster says it is used both intransitively and transitively, although I don’t know that I have ever used it transitively.
Would it look and sound like this? “The lobbyist from Big Bummer proliferated legislation promoting bad vibes wherever he went.”
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.
Ok, dawn just arrived here in the Northeast. I seem to be getting away with it so far, so let me offer up another lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “A Matter of Diamonds.”
I open this one with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the noun phrase and concept of pecking order. You’ll need the illustration, text, and questions for the case, which I’ve scanned directly from the book. Finally, here is teacher’s copy and answer key to solve the case.
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.
Here is a learning support for transition words instruction if you do that sort of thing with your students. This was a hot item at the school in which I worked for ten years in Lower Manhattan. These are tricky words to teach, especially to English language learners.
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.
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