11 Resources for Teaching About AAPI Experiences

Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month each May is a great time to recommit to centering Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) experiences in the classroom. Check out the following resources from a host of cultural institutions including the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian American Experience, Japanese American National Museum, Smithsonian Institution, and California Museum to expand your pool of classroom offerings on the historical and contemporary experiences of AAPI peoples.   

The Wing Luke Museum of the Asian American Experience

This Seattle-based museum offers an Online Classroom through which they share a host of classroom-ready teaching activities and learning tools on the histories and experiences of the following four groups of Asian Americans:

• Japanese Americans
• Chinese Americans
• Vietnamese Americans
• Pacific Islander Americans 

Japanese American National Museum

This Los Angeles-based museum offers these classroom resources, as well as the following virtual events that you can book for you and your students at least three weeks in advance:

• Let Curiosity Guide You: Grades 4-6
  “This facilitated exploration of key artifacts, images, and documents from JANM’s on-going exhibition Common Ground: The Heart of Community provides students the opportunity to learn about and react to Japanese American history while honing critical thinking skills and engaging (verbally and non-verbally) in facilitated virtual discussion.”
• The “Stuff” of History: Grades 7-12
  “This facilitated exploration of key artifacts, images, and documents from JANM’s on-going exhibition Common Ground: The Heart of Community provides students the opportunity to learn about and react to Japanese American history while honing critical thinking skills and engaging (verbally and non-verbally) in facilitated virtual discussion.”
• Virtual Visit Add-On: Grades 4-12
  "Using a virtual video/audio conferencing platform, speak to a survivor of America’s concentration camps and gain insight into the first-hand experience of living through history. Trained docents and facilitators who lived through WWII will engage with your group to provide a rare, first-person glimpse this critical era of American history. Offered depending on speaker availability.”

Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center

The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center offers a host of virtual resources for educators and non-educators interested in thinking deeply about the historical and contemporary experiences of AAPI peoples. Below is one such resource that is specifically designed for classroom educators:

• We Are Not a Stereotype: Breaking Down Asian Pacific American Bias
  "This series explores and challenges the complexity surrounding the term Asian Pacific American, breaking it down into topics that span multiple timelines, geographies, and identities. Here you will find educational videos and resources about migration, occupation, racial and gender identities, cross-community building, and how to support student learning on these topics. We have also included links to collections in the Smithsonian Learning Lab that complement some of the themes in this series. Finally, to learn more about all of our speakers, you will find their biographies near the end of this page."

California Museum

This Sacramento-based museum describes their institution as one that “engages, educates and enlightens people about California’s rich history, its diversity and its unique influence on the world of ideas, innovation, art and culture.” Below is a description of one of their offerings in the words of the exhibition’s curators:  

• Indomitable: The Story of Tommy Kono
  "Through historic photographs, video clips and artifact images, the virtual presentation chronicles the journey of the Sacramento native Japanese American, who began weightlifting while incarcerated at Tule Lake and went on to set world records in four weight classes, becoming one of the greatest Olympic weightlifters of all time."
• Kokoro: The Story of Sacramento’s Lost Japantown Online
  “Based on a 2017 exhibition at the California Museum, this collection of photos explores a now-vanished and mostly forgotten neighborhood. Once the fourth-largest Japantown in the nation, the once-vibrant community was born out of racism and ultimately was destroyed by it.”