Final Essay

[Tiffany Chang]

It has been a privilege to attend my first course with the US China Institute, and it was all thanks to an email that I received, one week before the course started. I gained a new perspective from this course about East Asian history, and it was a pleasure to attend lectures by Dr. Dube and all the other professors. Thank you, Catherine for everything as well!

At first, I wasn’t sure how this could help my teaching in the classroom, since 5th grade curriculum mainly covers the beginnings of US history. However, as I continued to attend these sessions, I realized how it important it is for students to keep up with current events and how it could affect them. Granted, reading about current events isn’t the most exciting part of school in most 10-year-old’s minds, but it is truly valuable, and if I could make that relatable to them, then I would have achieved a great goal. One of the lectures that really stayed with me was Barbara Finamore’s Will China Save the Planet? Although I would like to teach more about events in history prior to 1800, I think this is the most prevalent topic considering how everyone’s decisions on this planet affects our planet environmentally. One introduction activity I would like to start out with for my students is for the students to document everything they do for a week, from the food they eat, how many times they get in a car, etc. Sometimes our habits are very conditioned, we do not think about the impact we make based on those decisions, no matter how small we think they are. Teaching students about human activity affects the environment and stressing how they are the ones who could be the ones to help solve these problems is crucial.

Starting in the fall, I might slowly introduce more Asian history through aspects such as art, music, fashion, dance, and food. These topics are what interest students most and capturing the students’ attention is sometimes difficult, when they think about “history” or “social studies”. I want to change that mindset that it is beyond reading a textbook. These experiences are what make an impact on their learning.

Based on everything I have learned in this session, I know that incorporating East Asia into our conversations, ours students’ minds and studies, will be a very valuable tool to have.

[Author]

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