I tend to focus on media - for better or for worse. I try my best to relate movies, photographs, and especially music to their lives. You'd be surprised and the wide variety of musical samples from Asian that are used in contemporary pop music or hip-hop. One song entitled "Ouchi Wally" by The Bravehearts, a Hip-Hop group from Queens, NY, sampled a track called Babooji by an artist simply called Gong. Although the reference is obscure and I would never play the hip-hop song with the lyrics, the instrumental version is very recognizable for students in urban environments and the link with the original shows a connection between their world and the Far East. I try my best in my class to look beyond the easy cultural references of Chinatown and Chinese food or Japanese Sushi. I challenge my students to look at their world and bring to the classroom what they already know about Asia, whether that be through film or through stereotypes. When the classroom becomes a forum for honest discussion about difficult topics like prejudice and our ideas that perpetuate it - students can grow as individuals and world citizens. As a social studies teacher, the focus is always on citizenship but we need to expand that citizenship to include the whole world. I think that there cannot be a true examination of material culture as long as we view people in Far East Asia as the other. It is through the active challenging of common myopic conceptions of citizenship that we can break the hold of nationalism and see world history as the history of humanity and part of our collective heritage as humans. Then we can examine commonalities and differences in the light of a holistic approach to world history that includes all populations and not just ours. Many inner city kids are stuck in there own 4 or 5 block radius and need to be shown that there is a wide world outside of their neighborhoods.

In the past I have stuck mainly to media when showing anything material from asia, mostly pictures or video clips. One idea I had this year is to discuss art in more detail. Specifically the wood block with students. I think that by showing these to students and talking to them about it would be beneficial. I will have to get my hands on one somehow, because I think having them create one would be very beneficial. Hands on would teach more about the culture, but also discussion on skill level, and how usefull they were. They will also have a nice reminder of the project when its all done.

You'd be surprised and the wide variety of musical samples from Asian that are used in contemporary pop music or hip-hop.