Tag Archives: united states history

The Weekly Text, 8 October 2021, Hispanic Heritage Month 2021 Week IV: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Los Angeles

Posted on October 8, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here on the fourth Friday of Hispanic Heritage Month 2021, is a reading on Los Angeles along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

This second-largest city in the United States, known in the vernacular by its initialism, L.A., was founded as a city in 1781, but claimed as Spanish territory by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo in 1542. The city became Mexican territory in 1821 after the Mexican War of Independence. Then, in 1848 (a momentous year in world history, to say the least), after the Mexican-American War, following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States purchased the territory that became the state of California two years later, in 1850.

The city is a rich producer and repository of Chicano culture. This is the municipality, after all, that played a role in giving the world the nonpareil Los Lobos.

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: Bay of Pigs

Posted on September 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba in 1961. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of four relatively dense compound sentences and five comprehension questions. The Bay of Pigs debacle, as the reading observes, was an embarrassment to the administration of President John F. Kennedy. It is also a significant moment in the history of the Cold War.

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: Alamo

Posted on September 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Alamo. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three dense compound sentences and three questions. I am tempted to explain why I take issue with the use of the word “heroic” in the text, but perhaps that is best left to the students reading it.

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: Guatemala

Posted on September 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Guatemala. This is a full-page worksheet with a four-sentence reading and eight comprehension questions. I contrived the questions for this text with an eye toward assisting students in developing their own understanding of how to tease out relatively complex details in a text. In this case, that work involves situating Guatemala in relation to its neighboring nations in Central America.

Editorially (if I may), I think Guatemala ought to be a subject of deeper inquiry in our world history or global studies (or whatever your district calls these kinds of courses), especially the dreadful consequences of United States foreign policy in this sovereign nation. Reading the primary documents from this period leads to the inescapable conclusion that the United States government was complicit in genocide.

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: Cesar Chavez

Posted on September 24, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Cesar Chavez, the legendary civil rights activist and labor leader. This is a full-page worksheet with a four-sentence reading and six comprehension questions. As I do with many civil rights leaders, I wonder what Cesar Chavez would make of the current economic and social situation in the United States.

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, 17 September 2021, Hispanic Heritage Month 2021 Week IV: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on the Gadsden Purchase

Posted on September 17, 2021 | Leave a comment

For the first Friday of Hispanic Heritage Month 2021, this week’s Text is a reading on the Gadsden Purchase with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. The Gadsden Purchase brought territory in the far southern reaches of the present-day Arizona and New Mexico into the United States, and was concluded in 1854, six years after the Mexican-American War, which was arguably an imperialist move by the United States to seize territory that rightfully belonged to Mexico.

To clear up any confusion (mostly my own, I guess), the Gadsden Purchase was concluded by Ambassador James Gadsden. He is not the namesake of the Gadsden Flag, which has become a symbol of far-right political movements in the United States, including the perpetrators of the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capital. Rather, the Gadsden Flag is named for its designer, Christopher Gadsden, who was, among other things, a delegate to the Continental Congress in colonial North America. Unsurprisingly, though, James Gadsden was the grandson of Christopher Gadsden.

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: Salvador Allende

Posted on September 15, 2021 | Leave a comment

Today begins Hispanic Heritage Month 2021. So let’s begin with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Salvador Allende. This is a half-page worksheet with a four-sentence reading and four comprehension questions.

Allende was overthrown in a United States-sponsored coup in 1973. This was a particularly disgraceful moment in the history of United States foreign policy–though a similar event, the coup that overthrew President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala, certainly competes. But so do so many other covert U.S. interventions in sovereign states around the world.

In fact, if you’re interested in learning more about how anti-communism informed a variety of political and social disasters across seven continents, I highly recommend Vincent Bevins’ recent book, The Jakarta Method. Mr. Bevins is a skilled journalist, and his book is a masterful synthesis of how United States foreign policy has distorted global development–and caused the deaths of over a million people guilty only of having a communitarian vision of a more just world.

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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On the Road

Posted on September 6, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a reading on Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Kerouac, and particularly this novel, influenced me greatly as a very young man. I probably read On the Road five times, and The Dharma Bums another five.

I recently listened to some recording of William S. Burroughs on the streaming music service I use, and some of Kerouac’s recordings popped up as recommendations. So I listened, and realized that Jack Kerouac (and all the Beats, really) will probably always be in my life.

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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Anarchism

Posted on September 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a reading on anarchism along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

This is a relatively short reading, but nonetheless a good general introduction to anarchist philosophy. It also effectively introduces some key figures in the history of anarchism, and allows that this was a political movement that often used violence as a means to achieve its ends. Because many of the teenagers I have served over the years have been what I guess I would call “natural anarchists,” certain students in my classes have taken a relatively high interest in this material.

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: The Grapes of Wrath

Posted on August 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on The Grapes of Wrath. This is a half-page worksheet with a three-sentence reading and three comprehension questions. In other words, a concise introduction to the novel’s basic plot, with an excursus on the origins of its title.

If you’re looking for something longer on this book, you’ll find it here. If you want something on John Steinbeck himself, here that is as well.

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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