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Home › Forums › Summer Institutes › Crossing Boundaries in East Asia, Summer 2020 › Final Essay
Cindy Nguyen.
Mike HagiwaraGoing into my third or forth USC US-China Institute, I wasn’t sure what to expect since the previous seminars were quite dense, in a positive way, with information. To my pleasant surprise this several of the sessions touched on issues which are currently encompassing not just the nation, but the entire world. Though I found all the speakers, and their topics, very interesting and informative, I especially enjoyed Professor Jung-Kim’s lectures and readings. It is obvious that the “Korean Wave” isn’t going anywhere soon. Our students, across all grade levels, have become experts in Korean music, food, and even dramas! It is vital that we use this interest to our advantage to really push our students to learn more about not only Korean history and culture, but other cultures as well.
When teachers go through their pedagogical classes during teacher training we are taught to engage prior learning and to use anticipatory sets to hook our students into learning about the subject matter; this is not an easy feat as it is difficult for students to engage in historical content. Teachers then have to find more creative and modern solutions to this obstacle. Professor Jung-Kim addresses the somewhat-recent popularity of Korean culture with a focus on Korean pop music. In my dozen-plus years of teaching at two inner-city schools, I would never have imagined how popular Korean culture, especially music, would become among my Latino/a and African American students. Anytime we would begin our unit about Korea or Japan, I would get questions about pop music, food, music videos, or anime. When Professor Jung-Kim posted the reading (https://theconversation.com/rethinking-the-k-pop-industrys-silence-during-the-black-lives-matter-movement-141025) during the summer I was actually surprised to find that 1) K-pop was influenced by hip-hop, rap, and R & B and 2) K-pop’s popularity can be credited to the small minority audiences of people of color. With this knowledge in mind, I would definitely focus on the importance of communities of color in propagating culture, as well as their role in raising social awareness about issues such as Black Lives Matter. For a more advanced class, or even an elective, I would also want to use the reading from The Guardian about the relationship between K-pop musicians, who are “the face” and those that write/produce the music-many of whom are Black. It would be an interesting discussion to have the students engage in and even debate over, especially in this very unique time in our world history.
Juana EvinkCrossing Boundaries in East ASia, has been one of the most interesting seminars I have participated since 2015. I enjoyed the broad range of topics and periods. I teach 6th grade Social Studies, and in the unit on Ancient China I teach about the Silk Road and the spread of Buddhism. Crossing Boundaries, provided some great resources on the Silk road and Buddhism. It was difficult to choose from the variety of resources available through his seminar.
For the curriculum project, I decided to concentrate on the Silk Road's role in spreading Buddhism across East Asia. Also, on comparing the rise of Buddhism in Ancient India and Ancient China. Students like learning about the Silk Road, but I also wanted them to think of the many things that were spread besides goods. Most students don’t have knowledge of East Asia, except maybe for China and Japan from movies they have seen, but they don’t know the rich and long cultural history of Asian cultures.
Crossing Boundaries was an excellent opportunity to expand my knowledge of East Asia. The lectures and discussions by the many amazing professors like professor Dube, Young-KIm, and Meeks were truly great. I learned alot from them, I just wish the standards didn't limit what I can teach students about East Asia, to just Ancient China. This concept of crossing boundaries as well as that the world is interconnected, it has always been and still is. I’m excited to teach the lessons I created for this seminar and to continue to expand my students’ knowledge of Asia.
I particularly enjoyed how this seminar dealt with many different topics, and the common theme was crossing boundaries. Asia and Europe have been crossing boundaries for hundreds of years, the Silk Road is just another example.
Juana EvinkCrossing Boundaries in East ASia, has been one of the most interesting seminars I have participated since 2015. I enjoyed the broad range of topics and periods. I teach 6th grade Social Studies, and in the unit on Ancient China I teach about the Silk Road and the spread of Buddhism. Crossing Boundaries, provided some great resources on the Silk road and Buddhism. It was difficult to choose from the variety of resources available through his seminar.
For the curriculum project, I decided to concentrate on the Silk Road's role in spreading Buddhism across East Asia. Also, on comparing the rise of Buddhism in Ancient India and Ancient China. Students like learning about the Silk Road, but I also wanted them to think of the many things that were spread besides goods. Most students don’t have knowledge of East Asia, except maybe for China and Japan from movies they have seen, but they don’t know the rich and long cultural history of Asian cultures.
Crossing Boundaries was an excellent opportunity to expand my knowledge of East Asia. The lectures and discussions by the many amazing professors like professor Dube, Young-KIm, and Meeks were truly great. I learned alot from them, I just wish the standards didn't limit what I can teach students about East Asia, to just Ancient China. This concept of crossing boundaries as well as that the world is interconnected, it has always been and still is. I’m excited to teach the lessons I created for this seminar and to continue to expand my students’ knowledge of Asia.
I particularly enjoyed how this seminar dealt with many different topics, and the common theme was crossing boundaries. Asia and Europe have been crossing boundaries for hundreds of years, the Silk Road is just another example.
Jonathan TamI feel as though I will always find these seminars incredibly useful - perhaps not always directly to my classroom, but in ways that I think affect my perspective and allow me to approach my practice differently. Having gone through a lot of the seminar materials more than once, I think that there are certainly some urgent topics that can be effective topics to address this year (namely the role of Kpop in the BLM movement and the belt and road initiative). I hope to use the lesson that I designed with at least the 9th grade seminar classes that I lead, but I will see if I can convince other grade levels to pursue the subject. Regarding some of the other materials introduced, I will need to continue to think about how to best use them moving forward (namely the western classical music and buddhism materials) based on the notes that I have with each.
I found the website review to be the most difficult part, probably because I was looking for a really niche topic from chinese sources. But, the films that were recommended to me and reviewed by me were by far the biggest highlight of the seminar because I feel as though with quarantine, they’ll have the largest impact on students based on access and quarantine. I think that there’s definitely a certain education that only these films can bring but I liked some of the discussion points that I brought up in each film review that can push students’ understanding beyond the initial viewing of the film.
Natalie Lau-ChienI greatly enjoyed this seminar and found all of the topics to be very fascinating and enlightening. I gained a greater understanding of the interconnections between Asia and the world, including many topics with which I had zero or minimal familiarity. The theme of crossing boundaries was a well chosen topic that has numerous connections that can be interwoven into any content curriculum throughout the year. As an ESOL teacher, I have some flexibility with the topics that I choose. This year I am moving away from a more basic grammar intensive book to thematic units that develop academic language (while also scaffolding and building social language). I plan to start the year with a unit about identity and what it means to be American. As I build their academic vocabulary and background knowledge on social studies topics, I plan to teach the unit that I developed on globalization and crossing boundaries, which includes many of the resources and topics that were discussed in during this seminar. These topics include the Uyghurs in China as well as K-pop and the black lives matter movement, or the spread of Buddhism around Asia. In a separate unit, I also hope to discuss soft power, propaganda and point of view by showing my students the BRI English language videos that Rebecca had shared on the forum page, as well as the soft power diagrams shows by Dr. Kim. In another unit, I hope to discuss stereotypes and mistreatment of minority groups, while drawing parallels between the treatment of minorities in China and the USA.
Thank you for this opportunity! I look forward to hopefully joining in other USC US-China Institute seminars in the future.
Cindy NguyenFirst, I want to thank all the presenters who graciously made time in their schedule to speak to us. I was able to learn so much from their lectures, Questions, and Answers zoom meetings.