Oratory and the Common Core Standards

Over at the EDSITEment “Closer Readings” blog, Michael Steudeman, a former secondary school English teacher in New Orleans and currently a Ph.D. candidate in rhetoric at the University of Maryland, has some great tips on using oratory to meet Common Core Standards. “Great speeches,” he notes, provide “a way to combine instruction history/Social Studies with English Language instruction.” Specifically, speeches are a great way to meet two Common Core … Read more »

Celebrating Black History Month

Today officially begins the annual celebration of Black History Month, when we as a nation set aside the month of February to celebrate contributions made by African Americans and to examine the legacy left by these civil rights leaders—for today and tomorrow. In the coming weeks, we’ll be using the opportunity to highlight some great teaching resources and primary sources you can use in your classroom to teach … Read more »

Today in history: Happy birthday, Jackie Robinson!

On January 31, 1919, the American baseball player Jackie Robinson was born in Cairo, Georgia, to a family of sharecroppers. The following year, his family moved to Pasadena, California, and it was here that Robinson grew up. In high school, he was a star on his school’s baseball, football, basketball, and track teams; after two years at Pasadena Junior College, he became the first athlete to earn varsity letters in … Read more »

Reading “One Today”

Over at the New York Times Learning Network blog, Carol Jago, the president of the National Council of Teachers of English, provides a lesson plan for teachers to use with Richard Blanco’s poem “One Today” (text below). Blanco wrote the poem at the request of President Barack Obama and read it at the presidential inauguration earlier this month. 

As the Times points out, it was John F. Kennedy who began the inaugural poet … Read more »

Today in history: Happy birthday, Thomas Paine

On January 29, 1737, Thomas Paine was born in Norfolk, England. In 1774, he moved to London, where he met Benjamin Franklin, who suggested that he consider emigrating to America. Taking Franklin’s advice (and his letter of introduction), Paine arrived in Philadelphia on November 30, 1774. Soon thereafter he became a citizen of Pennsylvania and, in January of 1775, took up the editorship of Pennsylvania Magazine. 

On January 10, 1776, … Read more »

Today in history: Lincoln delivers Lyceum Address

Yesterday marked the 175th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Lyceum Address, which he delivered on January 27, 1838, to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois. The Lyceum was an educational civic organization that hosted public speeches and debates, and Lincoln’s remarks were informed by the recent lynchings of suspected gamblers and murderers (which he references in the speech) and the shooting of the abolitionist Elijah P. Lovejoy at Alton, … Read more »

Leon Kass and Walter Berns discuss Spielberg’s “Lincoln”

As Steven Spielberg’s film Lincoln continues to win accolades and Oscar nominations from movie critics, we bring you another review of the film—though instead of focusing on the specifics of Spielberg’s filming or Daniel Day Lewis’s performance, our critics are much more interested in Abraham Lincoln himself. In December, WSPWH editor Leon R. Kass joined AEI scholar and professor emeritus at Georgetown University Walter Berns … Read more »