Lowell High School Spring 2024
A quick survey of the recent history of the United States with your host J.M. Worth
Welcome to this course on the history of our country. I hope that it will help you to make sense of the strange and disturbing times that we are living in. The six weeks links contain the most useful information, but below is a general introduction to the course.
Links:
RESOURCES
Online books:
The American Yawp: a free and brief online US history textbook
Another US History Book available online (1865 on)
Essay Writing:
Citations:
WORTH STYLE
• If turning in work on paper, be sure that there is a heading at the top of the page with your name, my name and which assignment it is. If handwriting, be sure that you write neatly and legibly, neither too large, nor too small. Use blue or black ink. It is not a problem to cross out words. Single space to conserve paper. It is even better to print on both sides of the paper or to print on paper with text on the other side. If not using paper double space.
• You are young, so you can learn quickly. Learn to take full advantage of your word processing software.
• Use one inch margins so that there is room for our comments.
• Do not underline your title. Reserve that for the title of books.
GRAMMAR NAZI BOOT CAMP
If using a computer, there is no excuse for not using the spell and grammar check function. Turn it on to work in the background, and it will point out your errors. It will not catch all of them, but many. Below are some of the common student errors that really annoy me and thus can hurt your grade.
Before conjunctions such as “but” “therefore” “thus” or “because,” you nearly always need a comma.
Write out all numbers up to twenty or that you can write with only one word (forty, a thousand).
Start sentences with a capital letter. That means you can never start a sentence with an Arabic number (1918).
Always capitalize proper nouns, such as the names of countries, continents or ethnic groups. The one exception, which annoys me is the convention of writing “white” to denote European-Americans.
Do not use an apostrophe with dates, such as 1920s or 1800s. For centuries, it's better to write "the 20th century."
It’s = it is its = of it Do not confuse them.
Do not confuse “there”, “their” & “they’re” or for that matter “where” and “were” or “to”, “too” & “two.”
The past tense of lead is led. I wish I had a penny for each time a student writes that.
In history classes, you should nearly always use the past tense.
Ruthlessly cut out unnecessary words. In the year 1492.
Do not use verbalisms or colloquialisms such as “well.” They have no meaning.
Do not use the first person (I, me) unless you really need to.
If you are one of the many Lowell students who suffers from the terrible affliction of classroom shyness, do not give up hope. With consistent effort, you can get yourself to participate more. That will help you to overcome shyness as well as improve your grade in this class and increase your learning (studies show that the more students participate, the more they remember). Like many other things, participation is a habit. If you don't participate, you have acquired a bad habit. If you do participate you have a good habit. It is difficult to change habits. The key to doing so is to set clear goals and force yourself to achieve them until you have established a new habit. So write down questions that you have on the reading for class. Then push yourself to ask those. You might ask a friend who sits near you to nudge you to encourage you to ask your questions. You can also practice asking the questions at home alone in your room or to your family members or stuffed animals. Once you have rehearsed, it will be much easier to ask in class. Then reward yourself for good behavior. Pick a snack or activity that you really like. You can have that if you accomplish your participation goal. That will make you more eager to meet the goal for next time.
Write me an email: worthj@sfusd.edu. You are also welcome to stop by the history office in room 240 when I am not teaching. My schedule is on the syllabus.