[Cristina Hernandez]

I agree with all the people responding to this post about the lecture of Professor Kurashige regarding discrimination agains Asians.  As an ELD teacher I deal with students who are themselves immigrants to this country and many times they think they are alone in their struggle.  However, sharing with them the information provided by this lecture really will make a difference because they will see that it is not something new and that there is hope to improve themselves by working hard and learning more.  I am looking forward to see how my students react to this information.  Also, it will be very useful to use this in a unit on immigration or as a single mini lesson on historical facts.

[Cristina Hernandez]

Every time I see an article that mentions foot binding it gets me thinking about our contemporary "foot torture." Nowadays it is so easy to criticize the old custom of foot binding, but we are not acknowledging the fact that we are still torturing our female population by encouraging the use of high heels.  I have hear the comment that high heels are more elegant and professional looking for women.  I tend to disagree with that statement.  Personally, I am unable to wear high heels due to medical conditions and many times I feel like I am not "elegant" enough because i do not wear high heels.  High heels are a way of binding our feet because those shoes do not comply with the natural shape of our feet.  Furthermore, our society celebrates the use of those shoes by women and it seems like it is necessary to wear those shoes in order to succeed in society.  Finally, I question the idea of what is really barbaric or chic.

[Cristina Hernandez]

Thank you Dr. Dube for sharing this information.  As I reviewed the information I was stunned to see how easily is to displace people who have not enough resources.  The sad part is that those people were the ones that worked to build the city and it is not fair to do that to them.  However, it is important to notice that regardless of political ideology any government will repress their citizens in order to accomplish thei goals.  We see this not only in China, but also in other countries including our own.  We have massive deportations of people who work the fields so we can be fed, or work doing the jobs that nobody else wants to do.  We send them back under the disguise that they are breaking the law, but what about their contributions to our society?  Interesting topic.

[Cristina Hernandez]

I agree with the assertion that China has tried to protect their political structure and in order to do that it has invested in heavy propaganda at various times on their history.  Also, it is a good reminder that they have allowed enough changes to keep their system working as it is, but at the same time they also use represion when it is needed and to remind their citizens that they are still a communist country.  As I observe more of this playing cards, I wonder how much influence this type of propaganda changed the minds of a whole generation of Chinese workers and their children in a positive or negative way.  Nevertheless, there is no doubt that China is a great country.

[Cristina Hernandez]

I think your idea of researching the background, history, ideology, etc, behind the design of a country's flag is a great activity for students and I am planning to use it this upcoming semester.  I begin my unit on China's cultural landscape and my first activity will be researching the flag.  I am looking forward to see what the students infer and what they find out about China in general as a starting point for our discussions.  I am planning to allow them to choose a specific topic they want to learn more about regarding China.  I am sure that some of the most popular will be Film industry, but i wonder if this activity will change their choices.  Thanks

[Cristina Hernandez]

One of the advantages of taking this seminar is that I become more aware of the influence China plays in our daily lives.  One of the aspects is the film industry.  I was waiting for a movie to come out and when I went to the theatre one of the biggest surprises I got was the fact that it was distributed by the company "H Brothers" a chinese brand.  Also, one of the main characters was a chinese actor and obviously he was representing a chinese character with a very positive role.  This movie was a teen movie and after that I got to pay more attention to the companies that distribute, or produce movies because I believe there is more influence from the Chinese companies in the western world.

[Cristina Hernandez]

I agree with you that this session was one of the most interesting and informative when it comes to ideas to implement information in an engaging way in our classrooms.  Having students role play historical characters is a great way to have them connect and understand information from the past.  I really liked this strategy and I am planning to use it in my class too.  

[Cristina Hernandez]

I agree that it will be a great way to implement this reading in the classroom by having the students compare and contrast the content of this article to the way of living in East Asia.  However, I will also show the students clips of documentaries about contemporary people's lives in those countries.  Furthermore, it will be a good experience for them to infer what could be the motives of East asian teenagers when they look up towards the future.  It will be interesting to see how teenagers every where in the world are pretty similar, when it comes to their dreams and goals.  I would like to focus more on education in China and on the big test (Gao Kao) the students have to take in order to enter the university and the tests (SAT) we take here in America. 

[Cristina Hernandez]

I agree that the movie "We the workers" was an interesting film.  However, when I discussed it with my high school students I realized that there are a lot of misconceptions surrounding China, communism and capitalism.  I teach reading and ELD so I have a lot of freedom to choose my topics, but some times I had to be careful not to step on anyone's toes when it comes to core subjects.  Most of my students believed that communist countries did not have Unions, workers' strikes, etc because they think that the workers are the leaders of the country.  Also, they believe that China is a place where everything is either easy or non-existent.  I had a long conversation with them trying to answer questions about their misconceptions and then I found a couple of contemporary movies to show them that China is just another country with the similar challenges as ours.

[Cristina Hernandez]

This is a funny video and the music makes it catchy.  However, I am not so sure that it will work with the people in Los Angeles, especially the population that the video is supposed to target.  The idea is great, but the character may have to be changed as well as the music genre.  However, we never know, it may surprise many of us the way the public react to PSAs

[Cristina Hernandez]

I totally agree with you that the use of cartoons in the classroom it is a great way to grab the attention of our students and to keep them engaged during class.  Also, I believe that the use of political cartoons while teaching historical context is an amazing way to help students understand different perspectives and ideologies with the support of visuals in the form of primary sources such as political cartoons.

[Cristina Hernandez]

This was a very interesting topic, even though many people might think this was barbaric, we in the western societies are still doing something similar which is wearing high heels.  It is an unspoken rule that women have to wear high heels in order to look more sophisticated.  I teach a unit for my Expository Reading and Writing class on the way looks control females in our society.  I think this will be a great way to see that this problem with looks has been going on for a long time.

[Cristina Hernandez]

There is no doubt that this film was a great eye opener to the struggle of the Chinese workers.  I was surprised by the fact that they have to organize in unions and risk many things, including their jobs, to achieve better treatment and wages.  I was thinking that China was more focused on helping its workers and instead I see that foreign companies are taking advantage of the cheap labor and the high tolerance for the bad working conditions of the factory workers.  It is a shame that we are buying products manufactured in China and we are not aware of what is going on there.  

[Cristina Hernandez]

During the lecture Dr. Dube mentioned the fact that we can't change history, but many times we are able to change the perspective of how events happened using new data and manipulating the facts according to whomever is retelling the story.  I think that this is the best way to explain to students many different topics such as historical revisionism, the view of the conquerors and the fact that history is mostly written by the ones who win the war.  The Japanese attacking and invading China may have two different perspectives according to what country tells the story.  However, it is also important to understand that it is always better to seek an objective view of history to have an unbias perspective. Cheers!

[Cristina Hernandez]

Professor Kurashige's lecture on the topic of discrimination and segregation against Asians in America brings to mind the fact that history repeats inself and nowadays we are seeing the same type of discrimination against immigrants due mostly in part to the rhetoric of divisiveness addressed by high profile politicians.  My students (ELD) found very interesting the lesson where I shared with them some of the ideas that I gathered from Professor Kurashige's lecture.  Furthermore, while learning the strategy of KLW using this topic, they were able to make connections with their own lives and decided how history if forgotten tends to repeat itself. Cheers!

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