Tag Archives: hispanic history

On Monday of this week, Hispanic Heritage Month 2025 began. This observance runs from 15 September to 15 October every year. This year, as with last, I report with considerable chagrin that I have no materials that would rightfully–in the editorial view of this blog–constitute a proper Weekly Text to observe the contributions and achievements of United States citizens of Hispanic descent.

Like last year, I had every intention of preparing a unit on the infamous Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles in 1943. I imagine, or imagined, such a unit would become part of a sociology class I taught a few years ago. Alas, I have never been asked to teach that course again. Last year I co-taught four English classes. It happens that I found a copy of Thomas Sanchez’s novel Zoot Suit Murders in one of the local Little Libraries. So, alternatively, I thought I might work up an English Language Arts unit on that book. It appears to be in print, and Luiz Valdez adapted his play on the Zoot Suit trial into a film that would probably complement cogently a reading of Thomas Sanchez’s novel.

But, since I am at the most eighteen months from retirement and little more than a body (I’m co-teaching two biology classes this year, not a subject in which I possess any expertise whatsoever) in the school in which I serve, if I do this work, it will be after I am no longer a full-time classroom teacher.

In any event, this week’s Text is this reading on John Brown with its accompanying 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.

For the final Friday of Hispanic Heritage Month 2024, here is the post for this month that bears the scantest relation to Hispanic History: a a reading on the World’s Columbian Exhibition of 1893 along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. As this event’s name indicates (and if you’ve read Erik Larsen’s fascinating book The Devil in the White City, you know most if not all there is to know about the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition), it is related to Christopher Columbus, to wit the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the “New World.”

Certainly Spain’s arrival in the New World basically begins what we might consider Hispanic History, that’s how we come by the word Hispanic, after all. So there is marginal relevance here. I don’t know, this event seems like the conquistador’s round of self-congratulation for a job of genocide well done.

But as I said at the outset of this month, I am woefully under-inventoried where materials related to Hispanic History is concerned.

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.