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Home › Forums › Core Seminars › East Asia Since 1800, Fall 2018 › Final Essay
Lindsay Reiss.
cgaoPost your final essay here.
Lin KuangWhat I learned from East Asia Origins:1800 ( Srping & Fall) Semester greatly impacted my students. They are motivated to study more.
Ingrid HerskindWhat I Knew, What I Know Now, and How I Will Use It
In the fall of 2017, I started in a new position as the coordinator of Global Studies. As part of this job, I have been working to include both interdisciplinary global projects and student travel. This upcoming summer, we will be heading to China for the first time. Planning for this trip, I realized that I had a gap in my knowledge about East Asia and was excited for the opportunity to take this course.
The East Asia Since 1800 class opened my eyes to the past, present, and future of East Asia culturally, economically, environmentally, politically, and diplomatically. Before I took the class, I had a vague understanding of China’s development goals, but didn’t have any historical context to ground those assumptions. After the class, I have a deeper respect for the rich geographic history of East Asia and know that I can help my students make important connections between the major players in the region.
With more knowledge, resources, and connections, I feel confident in my ability to share this with my students in AP United States History, International Relations, and Global Studies. Moreover, I am excited to share these resources with other teachers at my school in all aspects of our curriculum. I have already been using some of the articles and lecture notes in my International Relations classes and have encouraged our library to purchase books that were discussed in the class. My librarian is ‘fleshing out’ our library resources in East Asia studies and has purchased some great fiction novels written by authors discussed by Dr. Dube and Dr. Miyake. Finally, I would recommend this seminar to teachers at my school and plan to participate in different seminars in the future. Thank you so much for an incredible experience.
Margaret SiryjThe current school year, 2018-19 marks the second year being asked to teach World History and Geography to high school sophomores. In the past, teaching Economics included curriculum that embedded the East Region of the World, but I realized that my knowledge was limited at best. Seeing this course advertised to my school department interested me because I could increase my content knowledge of this region of the world and share valuable information with all my students. Also, I am the Co-Advisor for the Asian Club on campus and we discuss current events and trends in club meetings. Quite a few of my students and club members are of Asian descent so, it is exciting that I can add and bring new information to them.
As a high school teacher, I find that my students are always fascinated with other cultures and parts of the World. In fact, a former student asked me to be the advisor for the Asian Club because she said there was a need that was not being filled. Our student body consists primarily of Hispanic students, but there are an equal number of Asian and Caucasian students. As a result of this class, I enjoy sharing new information about social, economic, cultural, and political views that we discussed in our classes and throughout the posts.
The highest caliber of Professors was brought to East Asia Since 1800, and I am truly grateful for all of the coordination and planning that went into creating and producing this amazing course. I plan to donate my copy of Ulrike Schaede’s, Choose and Focus to the Social Studies Department, and have discussed her ideas and research to my PLCs (Professional Learning Community) that regularly meets with all Economics and World History and Geography teachers. I am excited to continue my studies of this fascinating region, and look forward to gleaning more information to bring to my students.
Mario GalindoMario Galindo
East Asia Since 1800
January 3, 2019
Art as Art
East Asia Since 1800 has already been incorporated into the classroom. Since the first session the students in my classes have heard about the course and its many topics. Without specifically saying that I am a lifelong learner and student, the reading, writing, speaking and listening that guide and form my high school activities and lessons say it for me. An effective teacher is a performer of sorts. The subject matter and curriculum need life and genuine curiosity to captivate, then create life long learners. This is the basic goal: to help as many students to find their particular curiosity within Language Arts using as many aspects of East Asia Since 1800 as the overarching structure.
Teaching is an art and the brushstrokes of this unit in essay form delineates the first steps. Like all good storytellers the beginning, middle and end need very careful planning. How a lesson is structured is a story. Most teenagers have some type of knowledge of World War 2. The beginning of our lesson starts there. “What do you know about WW2?” leads to “How did Germany, Italy and Japan become allies?” From there to Pearl Harbor. Beginning, middle and end.
I teach in the Arts School of my High School where documentaries, Visual Thinking Strategies, music and cinematic activities are common, so to begin to fine tune a bit from the brushstrokes here are a couple of specific activities. Taking the first initial question of “What do you know about WW2?” and coupling it with cinema makes a powerful beginning. Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises follows the development and struggle to design and build the best fighter plane for the war. Presenting this topic from the point of view of design as art and love of craft and not adamantly political makes a truly unique beginning where students can create, research and/or design all within a World Literature survey class’s general topics of heroism, society, imperialism, and globalization.
Using propaganda posters from Japan, Italy, Germany and the United States leads into the middle of our story’s “How did Germany, Italy and Japan become allies?” Visual Thinking Strategies allow student inquiry by requiring them use visual evidence to create context through their own questioning. The teacher begins by asking them, “What is going on in this picture?” and then guiding them to focus deeper by asking, “What more can you find?” From the specific student answers the third part of our unit structure organically moves forward.
The scholarly articles from both Japan Society books provide specific Pearl Harbor history to compare and contrast with what the textbook and particular Pearl Harbor documentaries say highlighting the idea that there are multiple sides and views to history which brings us back to the goal of helping build student curiosity. Sampling both the American and Japanese viewpoint in their perspective beginning, middle and end of each particular country’s history sets-up many other possible lessons and activities, while, at the same time, starting in on a new curricular narrative. Another beginning, middle and end to whatever comes next by asking the next initial question: “How does one know whose story is true?”
Kathryn SutherlandI have thoroughly enjoyed learning about East Asia since 1800 and am excited to share my knowledge with my students. Although a lot of the material was a little heavy for kindergarten, I know that whenever I feel more knowledgeable about a subject, I’m more likely to teach about it, spark conversation about it, and plan lessons around it. Also, it was inspiring and eye-opening to be a student again--I’ve spent so long being a teacher, I forgot what it was like to be a student! I think it was particularly helpful for me to get outside of my loop and use my brain in ways that I haven’t in a while. I was surprised at how much I didn’t know about East Asia--I was a history major, but this is a whole block of history that I hadn’t learned! It made me motivated to ensure that my students don’t end up with holes in their education. East Asia is such an important part to our globalized world--my students need to be exposed to its history early and often.
I am looking forward to implementing my lesson plans to introduce my students to China, South Korea, and Japan, and I hope that my introduction to East Asia for them will spark their curiosity to learn more about it when they get older. In particular, I think my students will be really interested in the “When My Name Was Keoko” and the history of the Japanese occupation of South Korea. I think this will lead to more interest in books, music, television, and culture from South Korea, China, and Japan. But if nothing else, I hope that my students learn that although it is a big and complicated world out there, kids halfway across the world share a lot in common with them.
Christine MoguelIt has been a joy learning about East Asia since 1800- and I wiill definitely be taking what Ihave learned back to my classroom. I have always been facinated by East Asian culture and art, as I studied Asian Art in my Art History Major at UCLA many moons ago. What strikes me the most perhaps is the level of which the countires have remained essentially isolated until the 19th century. It intrigues me to think that these countries sustained and thrived on their own without the western influence, and when western thoughts and ideology came into play in international relations, trade, commerce, and military alignment these countries learned what they could and superceeded the level of western technological advancements twentyfold.
It is by no mistake that Japan is the technological super power it is. It is by no mistake that China is the biggest manufaturer in the world for all things that we utilize on a daily basis around the world. It is by no mistake that Korea is a force to be reckoned with with its capitalistic business deals and negotiations. I would like to take my students on a journey through time in East Asia. I would like to create a powerpoint presentation on each of the countires we learned about and create a project where they use multimedia- their in class ipads to save images of each country, and then have each of the students present one aspect of that country in each group. It is important for our students to go beyond what CNN student news shows about North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un, or the nuclear arms talks between the US, Japan, China and South Korea they see on the news. I would like them to connect with theses countries and build imaginary bridges of understanding about their culture, community, and society. I would like for the lesson to sustain that although we are thousands of miles away, we are more similar than we are different to these East Asian Countries.
Kim Leng“East Asia Since 1800” is a fascinating topic that has taught me much. Prior to attending this seminar I did not know that South Korea and Japan were in territorial disputes over the Dokdo Islands or Takeshima Islands. I also did not know that when the Japanese invaded Korea, the Koreans were mandated to have Japanese names. With such contact, the two countries have had many disputes over the years. This includes the painful history of Korean comfort women from 1932-1945. Girls as young as 14 years old were taken from their home to become sex slaves to Japanese soldiers. This seminar has been an eye-opening experience for me and I look forward to incorporating what I’ve learned back into the classroom when I collaborate with teachers.
As a school librarian, I collaborate with teachers on research projects and other assignments. One project that I want to work on is creating a book list of fiction and nonfiction books that focuses on East Asian History. I was inspired to create this after Professor Lynne Miyake’s lecture. I truly enjoyed her handouts about the various readings. One handout was titled “Meiji, Taisho, and Early Showa Readings” and I pictured creating a list of my own that will highlight the library collection according to various historical time periods. For example, under “World War II,” I would add When My Name Was Keoko by Linda Sue Park and Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa. Also, if students are curious about the Chinese Rebellion, I would add Gene Luen Yang’s Boxers and Saints under that time period.
Thank you for a wonderful fall semester of learning. Although our Monday sessions began almost immediately after a full work day, I looked forward to attending each class session. I can bring so many of the resources and ideas gathered during this fall session back to the classroom. Once again, attending a seminar with the USC US-China Institute has proven to be well worth my time.
Reynaldo MangabatASIANIFYING THE CURRICULUM
What can I say? The journey has been very enriching and truly gratifying for me as an Asian immigrant teaching the most culturally diverse population in America. The challenge is to improve my student’s American knowledge of East Asia thereby “Asianifying” my curriculum. I am so grateful with US-China Institute for its generosity of its wealthy resources and experts including its alliance to other organizations.
I was a political science and history professor in the Philippines for more than a decade before I migrated to the US and became a special education teacher and I thought I already knew a lot about East-China. I was astounded to learn more perspective of East-Asia history which I use to teach and experience the impact in my own region in South-East Asia. Professor Clays approaches and techniques on how to customize our history classes to different populations is in keeping with what we are doing in special education – accommodating and individualizing without modifying the content. I would continue to look forward to more opportunities like this and encourage my other colleagues to do the same.
I am now more excited and fired up to lead my students to their journey to history with more Asianified perspective. Finally, I wish to thank Catherine and the other staff especially Professor Dube and Miyake for the rich materials they selflessly shared to us.
Reynaldo MangabatASIANIFYING THE CURRICULUM
What can I say? The journey has been very enriching and truly gratifying for me as an Asian immigrant teaching the most culturally diverse population in America. The challenge is to improve my student’s American knowledge of East Asia thereby “Asianifying” my curriculum. I am so grateful with US-China Institute for its generosity of its wealthy resources and experts including its alliance to other organizations.
I was a political science and history professor in the Philippines for more than a decade before I migrated to the US and became a special education teacher and I thought I already knew a lot about East-China. I was astounded to learn more perspective of East-Asia history which I use to teach and experience the impact in my own region in South-East Asia. Professor Clays approaches and techniques on how to customize our history classes to different populations is in keeping with what we are doing in special education – accommodating and individualizing without modifying the content. I would continue to look forward to more opportunities like this and encourage my other colleagues to do the same.
I am now more excited and fired up to lead my students to their journey to history with more Asianified perspective. Finally, I wish to thank Catherine and the other staff especially Professor Dube and Miyake for the rich materials they selflessly shared to us.
Sophia KangInitially, I had come to this class with the intention of understanding the effects of colonialism on Asia. Through the East Asia Since 1800 Seminar, I came to recognize the complexities of this issue not only in terms of countries in East Asia committing acts of hostility against each other, but the many causes and categories of issues and divisions surfacing in times of hostility. The multi-faceted character of this class provides me with numerous opportunities to incorporate the attitudes, approaches, and materials to my eleventh grade American Literature class.
In my english class, we often write synthesis essays with articles presenting multiple perspectives and also look at a lot of graphics. Some essential questions that we extensively discuss are:
What does it mean to be an American?
How are groups of people affected by hysteria?
Is the American Dream still applicable to people today?
We also discuss mental health and immigrants’ narratives and have community builders centered on the importance of names; but most of all, we write essays in one form or another. Students often identify literary devices and discuss their effects on the meaning of literary texts.
The attitudes, approaches, and visual and literary texts gained from this USC Seminar can be incorporated among these segments of my class curriculum. For the first question, what does it mean to be an American, I can introduce it with the article from Session 5: Chinese Revolutions called “Things About America and Americans.” I found it engaging to read about how others who have grown up in different countries view ours. It is a catchy hook to the first essential question. I can also use the wartime diaries provided by Professor Miyake to humanize the historical event that separated Asian Americans from the rest of America. The internment camps have to do with how people are affected by the hysteria of communism and “foreign” threat. I would like students to understand the general picture of the Asian narrative, which is unified when we are in America, but is fragmented when we move out of America.
Since there are complex nuances to this narrative outside of America, I would also like to include snippets of the different perspectives during our community builders about names or smaller units about mental health. For the community builder, I think it would be interesting to use Dr. Jennifer Jung Kim’s short stories about forced name changes during the Japanese occupation. The articles Professor Dube provided about decreasing fertility rates and how some men cope with that--through creating fantasy worlds and playing video games--could be an engaging hook for the topic of mental health.
Personally, there is so much more that I would like to learn about this topic, especially Japan’s Business Successes and Challenges as presented by Dr. Schaedne. As an educator, the countless resources accessible through this program will make it easier for me to incorporate a narrative and topic that is often left out of classrooms that are not heavily Asian in demographics. Regardless, Asia is a growing interest among my students in this globalized society, and I hope to be a resource for my students as well.
Lindsay Reiss