Teachers
Brockett, Oscar G.
The Essential Theatre
. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1989. Largely focuses on the history of European theatre and includes information regarding the dramatic structure of the script, critiquing, and technical roles in theatre.
Collins, John J.
Developing Writing & Thinking Skills Across the Curriculum: A Practical Program for Schools
. Andover, MA. The Network, Inc., 1992. A step by step writing methodology designed to motivate students (in writing and editing), and to streamline the role of the instructor from editor to facilitator.
Cook, Wayne D.
Center Stage
. Palo Alto, CA: Dale Seymour Publications, 1993. An excellent resource for games and activities, with a strong multicultural focus.
Flowers, Betty Sue, ed.
Bill Moyers: A World of Ideas
. New York: Doubleday, 1989. Addresses American Values in the New Global Society and includes 41 interviews with law professors, historians, ethicists, anthropologists, novelists, and others from various ethnic/cultural backgrounds.
Padgett, Ron, ed.
The Teachers & Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms
. New York: Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 1987. Seventy-four entries of poetic forms including definitions, historical summaries, examples and writing methodology.
Rico, Gabriele Lusser.
Writing the Natural Way
. Los Angeles, CA: J.P. Tarcher, Inc., 1983. An excellent resource for writing methodology that employs right-brain techniques.
Peterson, Merrill D., ed.
The Portable Thomas Jefferson
. New York, NY: Penquin Books, 1975. Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson.
Segal, Ronald.
The Black Diaspora
. New York, NY; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995. An historical account of African migrations from the early African kingdoms and the advent of slavery to present day.
Shohat, Ella, and Stam, Robert.
Unthinking Eurocentrism, Multiculturalism and the Media
. London: Routledge, 1994. Defines ideological, political and cultural aspects of Eurocentric hegemony and general cultural pluralism.
Solors, Werner.
Beyond Ethnicity, Consent and Descent in American Culture
. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1986. Explores American culture by assessing the role of ethnicity in American literature.
The Consortium of National Arts Education Association, ed. National Standards for Arts Education. Reston, VA: Music Educators National Conference, 1994.
Students
American Images on File: The Black Experience. Media, Inc., 1990. A collection of over 600 (8’ X 10’) photographs of prominent African-Americans in history, and a time line of events spanning almost four centuries.
Andrews, Sheila Brisken and Kirschenbaum, Audrey.
Living in Space
. Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1987. Addresses life on board the Space Shuttle eating, hygiene, working, wearing a space suit, and understanding ship’s operations.
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D’Aulaire, Ingri and Edgar. Book of Greek Myths.
Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1962. Greek mythology retold and illustrated for young readers.
Evans, Cheryl and Smith, Lucy.
Acting & Theatre
. Tulsa, OK: EDC Publishing, 1992. An illustrated book for middle school students that introduces them to acting and theatre, theatre history and the professional roles in theatre.
Gaarder, Jostein.
Sophie’s World
. Great Britain. Phoenix House, 1995. A young girl explores a 3,000 year history of western philosophy.
Hansberry, Lorraine.
A Raisin in The Sun
. New York, NY: Samuel French, Inc., 1959. The critically acclaimed Broadway play set in the late 50’s about an African American family struggling to improve their lives by moving from a Chicago ghetto into a suburban white neighborhood.
Kaku, Michio.
Visions
. New York, NY: Doubleday, 1997. The science of tomorrow, cyber future, decoding DNA, quantum physicists and the perfection of new ways to harness the cosmic energy of universe from molecular machines.@$:
Lee, Harper.
To Kill A Mockingbird
. New York, NY: Warner Books, Inc., 1960. a novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience over racial discrimination that rocked it. The play version of the novel has also been published by Samuel French, Inc., New York, NY.
O’Connor, John R.
Exploring American History
. Paramus, NJ: Globe Book Co., 1994. 8th grade Social Studies text; emphasis largely focused on African-American and Hispanic influences and correlations in American history.
Winer, Bart.
Life in The Ancient World.
New York, NY: Random House, Inc., 1961. A colorfully illustrated book that includes photography; piecing together the past of the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Palestine, Iran, Crete and Greece, and Rome.
340 B.C., Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher, realized that the Earth was round, which he wrote about in his book
On the Heavens
. Aristotle also believed that the Earth was the center of the universe and that the universe had always existed and would continue to exist forever.
2nd c. A.D., Ptolemy believed that the Earth was the center of the universe and that it was surrounded by eight concentric spheres that carried the heavenly bodies around it. The first sphere carried the moon; the next, Mercury; then Venus, the sun, Jupiter, and Saturn; the final sphere held the fixed stars, which did not move individually, but orbited around the Earth in a fixed group.
1514, Nicholas Copernicus did not believe that the Earth was the center of the known universe, but that the planets orbited the sun. He proposed a simpler model than Ptolemy’s, but circulated it anonymously. As a Polish priest, he felt he had to be careful since the Catholic Church at that time felt it necessary to punish people whose ideas might challenge their own religious beliefs.
1609, Galileo Galilei believed in Copernicus’ theory. With the new invention of the telescope, he observed that the moons of Jupiter orbited around the planet, which also meant that everything did not directly orbit around the Earth.
1609, Johannes Kepler suggested that the planets did not move in circular orbits around the sun, but elliptical (elongated circle) orbits. He was not particularly happy with this discovery because it was believed (since the time of Aristotle) that the circle was a pure and perfect form. Elliptical orbits seemed less perfect, but they did explain the pattern of planets that could actually be observed in the night sky far better than earlier ideas.
1687, Isaac Newton the author of one of the most important works ever published in the physical sciences, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica postulated (claimed as a principle of truth) that each body in the universe was attracted to every other body. The larger and closer the bodies, the more attracted to one another they became. This attraction is called universal gravitation and Newton was able to explain mathematically how planets and their satellites (moons) followed elliptical paths around the sun.
18th c, Kant & Laplace believed that our solar system began as a huge cloud of gas and dust called 2 nebula. In their Nebular Theory, they said that particles of dust and gas in this nebula were spread out evenly at first. As the cloud began to spin, the particles were drawn inward toward the center of the nebula. As the spinning nebula caused many particles to be pushed closer together, a large bulge began to form in the nebulas center, which became a new star (protostar), and eventually our sun. Less dense gas and dust surrounded the sun, which began to group together forming planets (protoplanets; taking between 10 million and 100 million years to form).
1916, Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity rejected Newton’s carefully ordered universe. Einstein’s equations suggested that if enough matter collapsed into a black hole, gravity overwhelmed other forces and formed a point with no dimensions, but infinite density.
1970s, Stephen Hawking & Roger Penrose are generally credited with proving that singularities are not just hypothetical, but probably exist. A singularity is a zone that seems to defy current understanding of the laws of physics. Singularities are believed to reside at the cores of the gravitational sump pumps called black holes. (A black hole is the core of a supermassive star that remains after a supernova; the gravity of the core is so strong that not even light can escape.
1929, Edwin Hubble made the landmark observation that distant galaxies were moving away from us. By observing that light from distant galaxies shifted toward red wavelengths, he found that the more distant a light source, the greater its red shift, which meant that the universe was expanding. With the knowledge that the universe was expanding, it could be reasoned that it had been doing so over a period of time, which also meant that at some point in the very distant past, it had been contracted into a very small, infinitely dense mass (since all this expansion had to come from somewhere).
1948, George Gamow coins the protosubstance ylem (a medieval English word for matter).
1950s, Fred Hoyle did not believe that the universe had a starting point and ridiculed the idea by labeling it big bang.
1965, Arno Penzia & Robert Wilson made the discovery that space is filled with background radiation, which led astronomers to believe that such radiation was residue from the big bang
Information Sources: A Brief History of Time by Steven Hawking (pp. 1-13); Exploring the Universe (8th Science text, Prentice Hall, 1994 (pp. 10-91); US News, Is Ours The Only Universe? July 20/98; Newsweek, Science Finds God, July 20/98
