HERB: Resources for Teachers

A Mill Girl Explains Why She Is Leaving Factory Life (with text supports)

Born on a Vermont farm, Sarah Rice left home at age 17 to make it on her own. Eventually she journeyed to Masonville, Connecticut to work in textile mills much like those of Lowell. Rice's first letter was written after she had been weaving in the factory for about four weeks. Her second letter was written after about nine months of mill life.

Tags: Reading Supports, Work
Item Type: Diary/Letter
Date: 1845

Supporting Claims with Evidence: The Second Amendment and Gun Control Debates Task Instructions and Worksheet

This worksheet provides students with detailed task instructions and a note-taking guide for selecting evidence from their documents for the activity Supporting Claims with Evidence: The Second Amendment and Gun Control Debates.

Tags: Constitution and Government, Reading Supports, Second Amendment
Item Type: Worksheet
Date: 2012

Supporting Claims with Evidence: The Second Amendment and Gun Control Debates Preamble Worksheet

This worksheet helps students understand what a preamble is and what it signifies when used in a law or constitution. It was designed to be used in as part of a close reading of the second amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Tags: Constitution and Government, Reading Supports, Second Amendment
Item Type: Worksheet
Date: 2012

Regulating Guns in U.S. History

Throughout U.S. history, governments at the local, state, and federal level have passed laws regulating the ownership and use of guns. This chart provides examples of such laws over time.

Tags: Constitution and Government, Reading Supports, Second Amendment
Item Type: Laws/Court Cases
Date: 2012

Active Viewing: Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl Vocabulary

These words and phases from the Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl documentary may be unfamiliar to students.

Tags: Active Viewing, Gender and Sexuality, Labor Activism, Progressivism, Reading Supports, Work
Item Type: Worksheet
Date: 2012

The Brooklyn Consumers' League Takes on Sweatshops (short version, with text supports)

During the Progressive era, some women believed they could improve conditions for workers through their power as consumers—how they decided what products to buy, and from which stores. At both the local and national levels, women organized consumers' leagues to boycott (not buy from) businesses that didn’t treat its workers well or pay them…

Tags: Gender and Sexuality, Progressivism, Reading Supports
Item Type: Newspaper/Magazine
Date: 1901

Progressive Era Activists Call for Trade Unions (with text supports)

Founded in 1903, the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) was an organization that brought together working-class women, reformers, and women from wealthy and prominent families. The WTUL believed that the best way to help women workers was to help them organize into labor unions so that they could bargain for fair pay and safe working conditions.…

Tags: Gender and Sexuality, Labor Activism, Progressivism, Reading Supports, Women's Trade Union League
Item Type: Pamphlet/Petition
Date: 1910

A Chinese American Describes Going to School in Chinatown (with text supports)

San Francisco's first public school for Chinese immigrants, known first as the Chinese School and then as the Oriental School, began operating in 1859. The school was designed to segregate (separate) Chinese children from white children in the city's public schools. In 1924, after years of protest by Chinese residents who found the name "Oriental…

Tags: Chinese Immigration, Immigration and Migration, Reading Supports
Item Type: Oral History
Date: 1993

Anti-Chinese Prejudice and the "Six Companies" (with text supports)

The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association of San Francisco (commonly known as "the Six Companies") was an organization of regional- and family-based self-help societies in Chinatown. They helped to get new immigrants housing, food, and jobs. In 1876, its leaders petitioned President Ulysses S. Grant and challenged the growing political…

Tags: Chinese Immigration, Immigration and Migration, Reading Supports
Item Type: Pamphlet/Petition
Date: 1898

The Theater Draws Immigrants and Tourists to Chinatown (with text supports)

During the 1870s and 1880s, San Francisco's Chinatown included as many as four theater companies that regularly performed Chinese operas and other entertainment. Tickets to evening performances usually cost 20-25 cents for Chinese (50 cents for non-Chinese); shows sometimes lasted until four the next morning. The actors were usually all men, but…

Tags: Chinese Immigration, Immigration and Migration, Reading Supports
Item Type: Book (excerpt)
Date: 1888

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