Tag Archives: united states history

Pancho Villa

Posted on October 3, 2025 | Leave a comment

“Pancho Villa originally Doroteo Arango (1878-1923) Mexican guerilla leader. Orphaned at a young age, he spent his adolescence as a fugitive, having murdered a landowner in revenge for an assault on his sister. An advocate of radical land reform, he joined  Francisco Madero’s uprising against Porfirio Diaz. His Division del Norte joined forces with Venustiano Carranza to overthrow Victoriano Huerta and in 1914 was forced to leave with Emiliano Zapata. In 1916, to demonstrate the Carranza did not control the north, he raided a town in New Mexico. A U.S. force led by General John Pershing was sent against him, but his popularity and knowledge of his home territory made him impossible to capture. He was granted a pardon after Carranza’s overthrow (1920) but was assassinated three years later. See also Mexican Revolution, Alvaro Obregon.”

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

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Cultural Literacy: Spanish-American War

Posted on October 3, 2025 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Spanish-American War. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of seven sentences (the sixth of which is a long compound, and probably ought to be edited into smaller pieces for emergent and struggling readers) and seven comprehension questions. As usual, the editors of The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy do an admirable job of condensing complicated events into a cogent snippet of text.

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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Cultural Literacy: Colombia

Posted on September 19, 2025 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the nation of Colombia. This is a full-page worksheet with reading of five sentences and eight comprehension question.

This document is a literacy builder, for lack of a better description. The first and last sentences are longish and heavily punctuated, and perhaps might be better off revised for brevity and cogency. On the other hand, the first sentence, mostly a list separated by serial commas, is followed closely, even explicated, by the comprehension questions and follow it. In other words, depending on the readers you’re working with, this document might be the right one to help them stretch into some more complicated material both in form and content.

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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The Weekly Text, 19 September 2025: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on John Brown

Posted on September 19, 2025 | Leave a comment

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.

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The Weekly Text, 5 September 2025: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Coeducation

Posted on September 1, 2025 | Leave a comment

The Weekly Text for 5 September 2025, for some reason, is this reading on coeducation and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. I have only the faintest idea of why I developed this material; I vaguely recall a class that didn’t believe me when I told them that men and women were–and are (e.g. Smith, Mount Holyoke, both part of the Five College Consortium, which includes my alma mater, Hampshire College)–educated separately in many colleges and universities in the United States.

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.

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Cultural Literacy: Reparations

Posted on August 22, 2025 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on reparations. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences and three comprehension questions. If discussing reparations for the the horrors of chattel slavery in the United States is now forbidden as thought crime (have you seen the index of forbidden words in the Trump administration?), you’re safe with this document. It focuses on war reparations.

Which isn’t to say that one couldn’t dilate on the reading to include reparations for crimes against human rights or the sin and crime of enslavement, no matter how far in the past. I’m just saying.

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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Bauhaus

Posted on August 22, 2025 | Leave a comment

“Bauhaus: (German, ‘house of architecture’) A school of architecture and design, founded in Weimar Germany, in 1919 by Walter Gropius. The school stressed functionalism in art and tried to unite the creative arts and the technology of modern mass production with 20th-century architecture. In addition to more strictly architectural studies, courses in painting, handicrafts, the theatre, and typography were given by outstanding artists, including Lyonel Feininger, Vassily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee. Functionalism, or the international style, in architecture and a number of examples of industrial design, such as the tubular lighting and steel furniture of Marcel Breuer, were first developed at the Bauhaus. In 1925, the school moved to the buildings designed for it by Gropius in Dessau; three years later, Mies van der Rohe became its director.

The Bauhaus was attacked by Hitler’s regime, and in 1933 it was forced to close. However, its great influence on modern architecture and design continued in Europe and the U.S. through its masters and students.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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The Weekly Text, 29 August 2025: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Charles Ponzi

Posted on August 22, 2025 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is a reading on Charles Ponzi accompanied but its vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

In the fall of 2008, when the United States economy crashed and nearly took the rest of the world down with it, I had just accepted a job at an economics-and-finance-themed high school in the Financial District in Manhattan. I rode the 2 or the 5 train from the North Bronx to the Wall Street Station. My school was on Trinity Place, right across the street from Zuccotti Park. In other words, I worked right in the middle of the Financial District while the place was–metaphorically–going up in flames. It was a weird time: the streets were weirdly quiet, and the restaurants and bars, usually full of boisterous traders, were dead.

Then came Bernie Madoff. My students couldn’t understand what he’d done, but several of them sure were interested. These documents are some of the fruits of my labor that sought to educate these kids about, well, rip-off artists.

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.

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Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, New York City, Social Sciences, The Weekly Text, Worksheets

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Lazlo Moholy-Nagy

Posted on August 22, 2025 | Leave a comment

“Lazlo Moholy-Nagy: (1895-1946) Hungarian painter, photographer, and art teacher. After studying law in Budapest, he went to Berlin in 1919, and in 1923 he took charge of the metal workshop of the Bauhaus as well as the Bauhaus-book series of publications. As painter and photographer he worked predominantly with light, His ‘photograms’ were composed directly on film, and his ‘light modulators’ (oil paintings on transparent or polished surfaces) included mobile light effects. As an educator, he developed a widely accepted curriculum to develop students’ natural visual gifts instead of specialized skills. Fleeing Nazi Germany in 1935, he went to London and then to Chicago, where he organized and headed the New Bauhaus.”

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

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Crusade

Posted on August 22, 2025 | Leave a comment

“Crusade (noun): A journalistic focus on a cause or an abuse, such as a needed political corruption of governmental measure; purposive, editorialized, civic-minded reporting. Noun: crusader; verb: crusade.

‘The truth is that this crusading business is one of the worst curses of journalism, and perhaps the main enemy of that fairness and accuracy and intelligent purpose which should mark the self-respecting newspaper. It trades upon one of the sorriest weaknesses of man—the desire to see the other fellow jump. It is at the heart of that Puritanical frenzy, that obscene psychic sadism, which is our national vice. No newspaper, carrying on a crusade against a man, ever does it fairly and decently; not many of them even make the pretense.’ H.L. Mencken, A Gang of Pecksniffs”

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

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