United States History Toolkit

Items

• Who Killed Vincent Chin: Civil Rights Activism
  From the website: "In this lesson, students will: (1) investigate evidence to determine how the killing of Vincent Chin was racially motivated, (2) demonstrate how to stand up for a civil rights issue, and (3) analyze the mistakes of the American justice system" The lesson takes place over two 50-minute class periods with optional homework in between. PBS and History Toolkit Cautions: Please be advised that this lesson plan contains material that may be sensitive for some students. Also, referring to anyone of Asian descent as “oriental,” a Japanese or Japanese American person as a “Jap,” or that someone might be "handicaped" because they are Chinese is inappropriate and racist.
  Creator"Freda Lin is the co-director of YURI Education Project, a business that develops curriculum and professional learning with a focus on Asian American and Pacific Islander stories. She began this work as a student activist leader for Asian American Studies at Northwestern University. This led her to become a middle and high school teacher to integrate these and other marginalized stories in schools. She taught history and leadership at Chicago and San Francisco Bay Area schools for 16 years. After leaving the teaching field, she facilitated social movement history tours with Freedom Lifted and consulted with the Center for Asian American Media and UC Berkeley History-Social Science Project. She also served as the education program director of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute, where she implemented new programming to promote awareness of the World War II Japanese American incarceration experience and its connection to current issues. Freda currently serves on the National Council for History Education Board of Directors." - PBS About the Author Page

  PublisherPBS
• Integrating Asian Pacific Islander Desi Americans (APIDA) in Your Everyday Teaching
  These slides are from a webinar by the Asian American Education Project aimed to help teachers integrate APIDA histories into their existing teaching. The slides share examples of APIDA inclusion into existing curriculum, pedagogical strategies to do so, and reflective questions to help K-12 history teachers probe their own teaching. Example teaching strategies/historical moments are: - Angel Island and Ellis Island - Japanese Incarceration during WWII, Treatment of Muslim Americans and South Asian Americans post 9/11, and U.S. Detention Facilities at the Border - Tape vs. Hurley and Brown vs. Board - Immigration Patterns of Southeast Asian refugees as a result of the Vietnam War - Lue Gim Gong saves Florida's Citrus Plants - Colonization of Hawai'i Standards for each example are below.
  Creator"In 2021, Stewart and Patricia [Kwoh] formed The Asian American Education Project, using the learning resources created in partnership with the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, Stanford University SPICE and PBS LearningMedia, in order to bring the history, contributions, challenges and triumphs of Asian Americans to students across the country."Click here to learn more about the people behind and history of the Asian American Education Project.

  PublisherThe Asian American Education Project
• Confidence and Crises: U.S. History Unit (1920-1948)
  Key ideas from the unit: "1. Major social, economic, and political shifts in this period forced Americans to once again question what it meant to be an American. 2. Women of all backgrounds continued to feel the tension between traditional expectations of domesticity and expanding opportunities in work, education, social interaction, and politics. 3. After the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, women activists lacked a unifying issue. Instead, they focused on an increasingly diverse array of social and political issues. 4. Although women’s experiences varied depending on age, race, ethnicity, geography, and economic status, women across all these categories actively contributed to reform and activated their citizenship in creative ways throughout the era."
  CreatorWomen & the American Story (WAMS)

  PublisherNew York Historical Society