Tag Archives: black history

Four Sets of Questions to Support Students in Preparing Research Papers

Last, but possibly not least (I hope), from the past couple of years as a co-teacher in Jason Zanitsch’s senior English Language Arts class, here are four documents to support Jason’s Multi-Genre Research Project Unit. In this series of lessons, students are called upon to choose a topic to research–they are provided a list of potential topics, but strongly encouraged to pursue something they prefer–and present it to the class in a genre they choose: a video, a paper, a skit, a panel discussion, and so forth.

Along the way in this course, I’ve developed supports to assist students in this assignment–the post on solipsism, a dozen or so posts below this one is something I developed for this work. For today’s post, here are lists of questions to arouse students’ thinking on Assata Shakur, the Scottsboro Boys Case, the West Memphis Three Case, and the murder of JonBenet Ramsey.

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.

A Learning Support to Aid Writing on Lawrence Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development

Are you familiar with Lawrence Kohlberg’s  Theory of the Stages of Moral Development? My excellent co-teacher in the years I worked in his senior English Language Arts class, Jason Zanitsch, developed a clever unit in which students apply their understanding of Kohlberg’s framework to assess a character from the fiction and dramatic texts–the characters in August Wilson’s magisterial play Fences were favorites for this work–that we had dealt with in this class.

I developed this learning support for a mid-term examination, which was the composition of an essay on the above, for students to use. I don’t know how useful it would be for you. But if you’re dealing with Kohlberg in any way, this document is in Microsoft Word (like practically everything else on this blog) and can be easily manipulated for your classroom needs.

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.

Dozens (Playing the)

Dozens (Playing the): In the culture of American blacks, a contest of mutual insults concerning relatives, especially the opponents mothers, sometimes in rhymed couplets and often graphically sexual or scatological (the ‘dirty dozens’). See also SIGNIFYING.

‘His broad cultural approach to prizefighting is also illuminating. A discussion, for example, of the style of black boxers invokes jazz, “bad n****r” folk figures and form of insult known as “the dozens.” Diane McWhorter, The New York Times”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

Cultural Literacy: Dog Eat Dog

Moving on through my differentiated and supported materials folder, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom dog eat dog. I suspect you can find this document, in a simpler version, elsewhere on this blog. I developed this version of this worksheet to accompany a reading of the Langston Hughes poem “Let America Be America Again” which puts this idiom to work.

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.

Word Origins: Banana

banana: [L16th] Africa is the original home of the banana. The word traveled to English through Portuguese and Spanish from Mande, a language group of West Africa, arriving in the 16th century. In the 20th century slang expressions began to appear. American people began to go bananas with excitement, anger, or frustration in the 1950s. The top banana, ‘the most important person in an organization,’ derives from US theatrical slang. It referred to the comedian with top billing in a show, a use first recorded in 1953 from a US newspaper, which also mentions second and third bananas. People have been slipping on a banana skin since the beginning of the 20th century: the comic writer P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) referred in 1934 to “Treading upon Life’s banana skins.” The banana republic, a small state, especially in Central America, whose economy is almost entirely dependent on its fruit-exporting trade, was referred to as early as 1904.”

Excerpted from: Creswell, Julia. Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Alice Childress

“Alice Childress: (1916-1994) U.S. playwright, novelist, and actress. She grew up in Harlem and studied drama with the American Negro Theater, where she wrote, directed, and starred in her first play, Florence (produced 1949). Her other plays, some featuring music, include Trouble in Mind (produced 1955), String (1969), The African Garden (1971), and Gullah (1984). She was also a successful writer of children’s books, including A Hero Ain’t Nothing But a Sandwich (1973).”

­­­­­­­­­Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

Audre Lorde

Audre (Geraldine) Lorde: (1934-1992) U.S. poet and essayist. Born in New York City to West Indian parents, she worked as a librarian until 1968, when he began to write full-time. She is best known for her passionate writing on lesbian feminism and racial issues, including Cables to Rage (1970), New York Head Shop and Museum (1974), and The Black Unicorn (1978), often called her finest work. Her battle with cancer inspired The Cancer Journals (1980) and A Burst of Light (1988, National Book Award).”

­­­­­­­­­Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

The Weekly Text, 6 March 2026, Women’s History Month Week I: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Zora Neale Hurston

We’ve now turned the corner into Women’s History Month 2026. Mark’s Text Terminal opens its observance of this month with this reading on Zora Neale Hurston along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

Whether or not one teaches Hurston’s novels, it seems to me that students, by the time they graduate high school, ought to know about this important figure in United States cultural and intellectual history.

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.

Places in Women’s History: Shirley A. Chisholm State Office Building, Downtown Brooklyn, New York

Frantz Fanon on European Social, Political, and Spiritual Ethics

“When I search for Man in the technique and the style of Europe, I see only a succession of negations of man, and an avalanche of murders.”

Frantz Fanon

The Wretched of the Earth “Concerning Violence” (1961) (translation by Constance Farrington)

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.