Remix – AAPI History Lesson Plan
The purpose of my Remix is to provide a tangible template for teaching AAPI history to older students while the purpose of the DIAC is to explain the context behind and implications of the Model Minority myth. However, both have a similar undercurrent: education (how we are taught to think and what we are taught to think) shapes our perceptions of others. Therefore, the lack of representation and misrepresentation of AAPI history in American school systems directly impacts how Asian Americans are viewed and treated, leading to harmful stereotypes and discrimination. That is their shared exigence.
In his book Asian: From Being Excluded to Becoming a Model Minority, historian Nicholas Hartlep describes how American schools teach history from a majority White perspective, thus establishing it as the default perspective. Consequently, any non-White perspectives are treated as a separate footnote, rather than included within the entire story of this country. Asian American stories in history are limited, sanitized, and omitted, so the American public, as Hartlep explains, is miseducated. He writes, “generations of students reproduce and pass on the stereotypes through the school system, bringing them into higher education, work, and society”, which then means these “stereotypes are then confirmed and solidified by those reports in the media, constructing an imagined, false history and reality about Asian Americans” (13). As I explained in my DIAC, the American education system is the primary way the public is taught history, so what is or is not included shapes how entire populations are viewed. As such, the Remix Project is both a continuation of and a small solution to the issues examined in my DIAC.
I remixed my DIAC into a week-long lesson plan. I figured one large, all-encompassing lesson (such as the timeline I had originally drafted) would be far too much to fit into a typical class period, so I spaced out major lessons across one full school week. Aside from the research for the introduction where I explained the Chinese Exclusion Act, the rest of the material in my DIAC could not be included in the Remix, at least not explicitly. While the required research was not as extensive as the process for the DIAC, I still had to spend considerable time finding concise but compelling media.
The primary audience of the Remix is high school US history teachers. In addition to relating most closely to the subject of the lessons, history and government are taught in greater detail and with more nuance at higher grade levels. The secondary audience would be high school students. Compared to younger students, older students know more about US history from their previous schooling and have more life experience, so they would be most likely to have preconceived notions about AAPI history. Simultaneously, high school students (at least in my experience) are the least enthusiastic age group in education. There is always a challenge in convincing people to read and learn, and feeling obligated to do so can build resentment. It was challenging trying to understand how my project would be received when passed through so many filters.
There were several constraints I encountered creating this project, some I expected and some I did not. My teaching experience is limited to tutoring peers, and therefore I have never created a proper lesson plan. So, I began by browsing through a few general templates on websites for teachers. I remembered how previous history teachers would structure their lessons, what students found most engaging in these lessons, and how primary, personal sources were utilized to better grasp broader themes. Besides the unfamiliarity with the genre, there was also a time constraint. The average class tends to last an hour, so the goal was to keep each lesson under an hour to allow for some leeway. I originally planned to organize the lessons chronologically, but that was complicated by some topics, such as Asian immigration, overlapping timewise with other subjects. Also, the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Japanese internment camps are grim topics, so I put some space between them. Also, I wanted to end the week on a positive note, so I put positive figures and achievements as the focus of the final lesson.
The biggest strength of my project is its comprehensiveness. There is enough information to learn something new, but not too much information to have trouble remembering. The biggest weakness of my project is the genre, that it is only a plan. Plans should be flexible and, ultimately, disposable. Teachers have unique teaching style and classrooms, so it it their decision on how to implement the lesson plan. The best way to remedy these shortcomings would be to test it in a real classroom.
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