I shared last week how I pair short primary source excerpts from American Yawp Reading & others with short secondary sources from places like We're History or @jstordaily.bsky.social Several peeps asked for my pairings, so I've added pairings from 1st & 2nd half U.S. history to my website 🗃️ #sschat

Rachel Michelle Gunter, Ph.D. - Pairing Primary and Secondary Sources

When choosing readings for assigned readings or class activities, I try to pair short excerpts of primary sources with secondary sources. There are 2 main ve...

rmgunter.com

History colleagues: for those of you who still have jobs (😢) & are updating your teaching notes/syllabi for the Fall, a reminder that free, open-access materials on teaching the Black Death are already available. Your students are pandemic survivors. Give them the narratives they need. Links ⬇️.

man I cannot overemphasize how many people I know fell into some form of madness because they could not accept that their kid got an autism diagnosis and that maybe that was just how life was going to be

Joe Stieb@joestieb.bsky.social · 4w ago

I sat down with a crank who doesn't know shit and she made some good points...

Can we just make it illegal for anything to be named after a living current or former president other than their library until 20 years after their death?

Evan Simko-Bednarski@simko-bednarski.bsky.social · last mo.

Trump Station? A letter from DOT Secretary Duffy to congressional leaders yesterday makes clear, he intends to re-name Penn Station. Read it first in the New York Daily News.

The DOE claimed the rules and scoring of a contest about the government “of the people” was “proprietary “ - not to be seen by the people. How screwed up is that? But it is oh so reflective of the current administration.

Charlotte Clymer@charlotteclymer.bsky.social · last mo.

This story is crazy. It would appear Trump admin officials rigged their nationally televised high school civics contest to keep a young man from a Sikh family out of the finalists. www.notus.org/national/ame...

Seen a few 'you can't accept growth in people!' takes on Platner. I'm all for people outgrowing their younger stupidities, but if you expect votes, that process should be concluded before your run. We have enough problems with Sinemas and Fettermans, we don't need those bad from the get-go.

What worries me about SCOTUS's decisions are how transactional it is. It goes beyond trying to cherry-pick justifications for their political ends. It treats the entire docket as something to be divvied up. "You got your birthright citizenship, now it's time for them to get their share."

A friend of mine is an undocumented immigrant and has been hiding at the Great American State Fair bc he knows no one is there.

‘Say yes and never do it’ Mel Brooks knew how to deal with the studios

So, because my insanity in always taking on new classes is continuing, I've agreed to teach pre-law this coming year for 11th-12th grade. So far the impression is that Streetlaw's material and books are the gold standards - any other recommendations on approaching this class?

Journalists have a duty to tell the public that the president and his aides are seriously considering suspending habeas corpus *when it is happening* rather than saving it for a book rollout over a year later

Kyle Griffin@kylegriffin1.bsky.social · 2mo ago

BREAKING: New from Haberman and Swan: Secret memos show that the Trump White House debated last year, to a greater degree than previously known, whether to limit a constitutional right — suspending habeas corpus rights for undocumented immigrants to accelerate mass deportation efforts.

One reason i think everyone should take an archaeology class is to internalise with tangible examples that there is no pure, natural past utopia and that antibiotics and vaccines are what stand between us and a 50% child mortality rate and scores of women dying needlessly during pregn and birth

Shaun Lintern@shaunlintern.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Leeds is now the subject of a major inquiry into maternity. I previously reported on its decade long pursuit of 'normal birth' ideology that saw it have the lowest number of caesareans while stillbirths and baby deaths soared to the worst nationally www.thetimes.com/article/f3af...

I wonder what it says about a school that they have decided to have faculty who retired years and years ago come back to make videos telling people to send their kids to that school now. As opposed to the 40% of their total faculty they RIF'd this year.

Fashion designer Jeremy Scott delivers commencement speech to Kansas City Art Institute graduates. Wait for it…

Alito’s logic in this case—that characteristics that correlate with racial identity, like partisanship, aren’t constitutionally protected and can be used to disenfranchise legally is *the exact thinking* that gave us poll taxes and literacy tests.

Nate Schenkkan@nateschenkkan.bsky.social · 4mo ago

In the paradoxical standard set forward by the Supreme Court, the only way to tell if districts were drawn for racism is if the people drawing them say so. But if the districts are drawn so that Black voters in the South get almost no representatives, that's not racism.

Anyone else have a problem that legislature driven redistricting goes through fine but voters voting to redistrict is never fine?

States Newsroom@statesnewsroom.com · 4mo ago

BREAKING from @virginiamercury.com: The Supreme Court of Virginia on Friday struck down the voter-approved redistricting amendment, upholding a lower court ruling that had declared the measure unconstitutional. www.newsfromthestates.com/article/supr...

In a landscape where the political parties are defined by their stances towards ethnic and racial minorities, there is no such thing as separating partisan and racial gerrymandering. Stating that action can only be taken on the racial if there is no partisan component is absurdism on its face.

I have to admit, I did not have OPEC imploding on my bingo card.

Given the petty love of theatre by the current administration, I would have expected their announcement on reclassifying marijuana to have come this last Monday. Wasted opportunity.

Let's all use this occasion to take a look at the many ways Tennessee Republicans have shown how much they value and respect the Traditional Nuclear Family™

The Advocate@advocate.com · 4mo ago

Gov. Bill Lee signed a resolution defining family as a man, a woman, and their children, a move critics say targets LGBTQ+ households. https://mrf.lu/HSG4

In medieval England, the Feet of Fines was a set of legal documents that among other things recorded fictitious legal disputes in order to publicly register money or asset transfers between two parties. No dispute actually existed - it was just a vehicle to justify payments. Sound familiar?

Anna Bower@annabower.bsky.social · 4mo ago

NEW: We obtained the government’s settlement agreement with Michael Flynn. As previously reported, DOJ agreed to pay $1.25 million to settle Flynn’s claims that he was wrongfully prosecuted. But docs suggest a separate settlement could be in the works: www.lawfaremedia.org/article/u.s....

There's nothing like a friggin' spam filter rerouting an important email that looks nothing like any actual spam you ever receive to ruin your day. And with so many spam emails now clogging the internet, finding that needle in the haystack again is one hell of a chore.

Péter Magyar, who unseated Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán Sunday in a landslide, shared a bombshell with reporters that the outgoing leader had diverted taxpayer funds to bankroll the American Conservative Political Action Conference. trib.al/ct7GGV3

I suspect the Pope sounds "woke" to many Christian conservatives because the US is steeped in prosperity theology, where the point of worship is to deliver health and wealth to believers. Thus, "feed the hungry" and "show mercy for the poor" sounds needlessly political and "woke."

The biggest problem people will have convincing Americans that bombing civilian infrastructure is evil is the mythic place World War II has in the American mind. Slagging the infrastructure of our enemies was a key strategy then, and so it must be acceptable, no? That is what you have to overcome.

If Federal agents from any agency can just be effectively transferred around to do anyone else's job at will, then arguing about which agency gets what funding is meaningless. The boondoggle of last year's mass funding of ICE simply created a huge police state regardless of on-paper boundaries.

It is quite telling that since the horrific story of Cesar Chavez re: sexual abuse broke earlier this week and calls to change the names of schools and other public spaces named in his honor, not one conservative voice has stepped forward to object that this would be tantamount to erasing history.

Just for fun, let me tell you about somebody you've probably never heard of, but who was once one of the most famous people in England, a national hero, a disgraced fraudster, and an astonishingly accomplished piratical maniac. He led quite a life. (1/53)

Watching all sorts of institutions this year make deliberate choices to destroy the very things that make them viable, sustainable, and in many cases profitable has been something else. This year really is full of groups having utter self-delusions about what they are and what makes them successful.

Sometimes, even in the darkest of moments, you find out that your students learned your lessons well. Have faith in your students, and they will have faith in you. #edusky