This lesson is recommended to follow the “Overview of Refugee Policies & Hmong Resettlement” lesson, where students learn about the chronology and an overview of the refugee policies, refugee dispersal, and Hmong resettlement. 

WELCOMING RITUAL/CULTURAL ENERGIZER 

As a cultural energizer, start out by asking students to reflect and share about a time or experience when someone else has supported them in accomplishing something of importance or significance in their lives.

Write Compelling Question, Supporting Questions and Lesson Objectives on the board. Read it out loud with students.

• What were different kinds of sponsorships for refugees?
• What were different approaches to welcoming refugees?
• What are Hmong religious beliefs?
• How did religious sponsorship impact Hmong religious belief?

Step 1: Warm-up Question: The teacher will write down the warm-up question: What do you know about Hmong religions? What religions are they, and what specific cultural practices do you know?

• Students will take one to two minutes to write down their answer to the question. After writing, students will have one to two minutes to share with a partner what they wrote down.
• The class will then come together for a five minute sharing session. The teacher should let students share their responses.
• After sharing, the teacher will briefly introduce the traditional cultural practice of animism, shamanism, and ancestral worship using “Spirituality/Cosmology” provided by Stanford Medicine (https://geriatrics.stanford.edu/ethnomed/hmong/introduction/spirituality.html). 

INTERACTION WITH FIRST SOURCE 

Step 1: Number students off from one to three. Assign students two reading sections from “Belonging: The Resettlement Experiences of Hmong Refugees in Texas and Germany” to learn about the process of integrating Hmong refugees: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/belonging-resettlement-experiences-hmong-refugees-texas-and-germany. 

• #1 - Section 1: Introduction and  Section 2: The Resettlement Context
• #2 - Section 3: Different Approaches to Welcoming and Section 4: Differing Local Roles and Visions of Membership
• #3 - Section 5: Refugee Perceptions of Membership and Section 6: Structure and Agency in Social Inclusion
• As they read, they should make note of the following questions: What were the approaches to welcoming refugees? How did the different processes impact Hmong refugee experiences and ability to assimilate?

Step 2: Ask and Discuss: Have students form small groups of three, with one member from each assigned reading section. Have them share their responses to the questions based on their assigned reading.

• Then, have a whole class discussion. Be sure to seek input from students of all assigned sections.

SHARED LEARNING 

Step 3: Next, have students learn about Hmong refugee resettlement experience through the oral stories (interview transcript provided by the Hmong Oral History Project) of Mai Lee and Long Yang. Have students work in pairs to read the two stories. 

• Student A: Vang, M. N. 2005 "Interview with Mai Lee." Hmong Oral History Project. 12. https://ucdavis.box.com/s/cjh15uvr4t417owy1epztj5122j06qov (focus on pages 16–18)
• Student B: Vang, P. C. 2005. "Interview with Long Yang." Hmong Oral History Project. 11. https://ucdavis.box.com/s/wl70hicw5m52yz60uxxc3mysgda99d8y (focus on pages 11–12)
  • Either provide a Venn Diagram or have students draw out the diagram to compare and contrast the experiences of Mai and Long.
  • Once each student is done reading their assigned oral history, have them share about their individual, while completing notes for the Venn Diagram. Together, they will complete the center of the Venn Diagram.

Step 4: Have a class discussion on what were some of the similarities and/or differences in their refugee resettlement experiences. 

Say: Mai and Long came to the US in different ways:

• Mai: “We had sponsors in California and then they said since we had relatives here [in Wisconsin], they told us to come here, so we came.” “Well, our sponsor was just one of our sons.” “Yes, our relatives [from my husband’s side] were in Madison, so that’s why we came here.” (18).
• Long: “We came to Indiana in America, but we first landed in New York, and stayed there for six hours, then we came to Indiana. We lived in Indiana for nine years.” “A sponsor. A church called St. James Lutheran Church picked up my family.” (11)

Note. Teachers are encouraged to learn about the Hmong Oral History Project here: https://digitalcommons.csp.edu/hmong-studies_hohp/. 

COMMUNITY COLLABORATION 

Step 1: Say: When they resettled in the United States, Hmong refugees experienced religious changes that were the direct consequence of government policies. 

Step 2: Say: Refugee resettlement happened through a public-private, church-state effort in which US resettlement services contracted voluntary agencies to aid refugees by providing food and clothing upon arrival, helping them find housing and jobs, and facilitating their assimilation through language and other skills classes. Most of the voluntary agencies were religious organizations such as the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Catholic Charities, Church World Service, and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops as well as other agencies such as the International Rescue Committee and the International Institute of Minnesota. Eventually, family members who arrived between 1975-1980 were able to sponsor their extended family who resettled between the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s.

Step 3: Ask students to remember their number, one, two, or three, that was assigned at the beginning of the lesson. They will read about how different sponsorships impacted Hmong resettlement experiences in various communities using the assigned reading sources below. As students read, they should make note on sponsorship impacts on Hmong resettlement experiences. 

• #1 - Start out with “The New Way”: How American Refugee Policies Changed Hmong Religious Life”  https://www.oah.org/tah/november-5/the-new-way-how-american-refugee-policies-changed-hmong-religious-life/.
• #2 - Next, have students read the online article on Cultural Survival “A Change of Faith for Hmong Refugees”  https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/change-faith-hmong-refugees.
• #3 - Last, have students read this chant by Paja Thao in “I Am a Shaman: A Hmong Life Story with Ethnographic Commentary” focusing on pages 20 and 24: (Teacher Note: In this chant, Thao expressed the grief he felt as he attempted to practice Hmong rituals in almost impossible circumstances, and as he witnessed his relatives abandon traditional Hmong ways for “the new way,” Christianity.)
  • Page 20
    • “Now I come to America 
    • All of my cousins change to Christians 
    • I do not change to Christian 
    • Because even though my father died 
    • My mother is still alive 
    • I shall call to feed the spirits of my father and mother 
    • So I will not change to Christian 
    • After I am gone It is up to my grandchildren 
    • But my way is to keep calling and feeding 
    • My father and mother 
    • My grandfather and grandmother 
    • That is why I still keep Hmong religion” 
  • Page 24
    • “Now some of my clansmen come to America
    • None of them knows how to feed these spirits
    • They do not know these spirits
    • All my clansmen change to Christians
    • Now there is only my family
    • I, all alone, am not sure how to follow this way” 

Step 4: Once students complete their assigned reading source, have them group up into threes again to share about their source, and learn about the other sources. As they share, they should be discussing the impacts. 

Step 5: Wrap-up with students choosing one of the the following questions to answer as a prep for the Problem of Praxis activity for the final culminating activity:

• What were different kinds of sponsorships?
• What were different approaches to welcoming refugees?
• How did religious sponsorship impact Hmong religious belief?

CULTURAL PRODUCTION 

After gaining background knowledge of refugee policies, resettlement programs, settlement patterns (from previous lesson), and religious sponsorships, the class will engage in the Problem of Praxis (POP) Activity, which is an adaptation of Philosophy for Children developed by Dr. Lipman and Dr. Jackson.

Background Knowledge of Problem of Praxis for Teachers

Overview: This Problem of Praxis ​protocol introduces students to a variety of discussion-based inquiry that are based on the theoretical foundations of Philosophy of Children (Jackson, 2001; Reed & Sharp, 1992). This can be used with students at any grade level and within any discipline. It seeks to develop students’ ability to think for themselves and to learn to use that ability in responsible, caring ways. It ​is ​also ​an ​active learning ​strategy creating intellectually safe communities where philosophical inquiry can flourish. Participants ​are ​asked ​to ​actively ​gather information from a text, book, article, etc. and begin to ask qualitatively different sorts of questions; they persist in seeking to scratch beneath the surface of a text or lesson, or personal situation. 

Developing a Community of Inquiry:

Discussion-based inquiry is not about having a particular answer in mind beforehand. It begins by developing a context within which dialogue and inquiry unfold. Certainly, classrooms must be physically safe places. For dialogue and inquiry to occur they must be emotionally and intellectually safe as well. An important detail relevant to intellectual safety is proper acknowledgment of the diversity of views that emerge in the course of various inquiries. The goal is not to persuade anyone to any particular answer, but rather for everyone to reach a deeper understanding of the complexity of the issues involved and a greater ability to navigate among these complexities. 

The source of the P4C Inquiry: 

Whenever possible, the inquiry arises out of the questions and interests of the community, begins where the community is in its understanding, and moves in directions that the community indicates. There are a wide variety of possible triggers, occasions, and topics for inquiry. Plain Vanilla is one strategy or “how to” for finding a trigger and then giving shape to an inquiry.

Follow these Steps to facilitate a Problem of Praxis:

Step 1. Read - A paragraph or two, an episode, a chapter, or a whole story. In the primary grades, the teacher may do the reading, or she may write the story on chart paper for everyone to read together. Alternatively, students could look at paintings, especially those by the students themselves; watch a video; read a poem; listen to a piece of music; or select a topic from a 'wonder box' into which children have placed things they wonder about. 

Step 2. Question - Ask the students for questions or comments they have about the story. Write them down on chart paper with the child's name next to their comment. For older students, you may choose to use a shared Google document or sheet for them to type out their questions.

Step 3. Vote - As a class, the community votes for the question or comment they would like to inquire into first. Note this beside the question. Write NQP beside the question with the next highest number of votes. 

Step 4. Dialogue/Inquiry - Inquire into the question selected. If the students lose energy for the question selected, the group can then vote to focus on the question marked NQP. The discussion ideally takes place as a whole class, but can be modified for group or partner discussion. Teachers can also choose to make modifications for verbal discussion by hosting an equivalent discussion on an online platform.

Step 5. Evaluate - Use the criteria suggested in this chapter, some subset thereof, or other criteria you select to reflect on the session.

As an alternative to a verbal discussion, teachers can facilitate an online discussion forum using applications such as Padlet or equivalent. 

CONCLUSIVE DIALOGUE 

REFLECTING ON THE INQUIRY

Finally, it is important that the inquiry community reflect on how well it has done on any given day. The following criteria are suggested, which the teacher can present to the group prior to beginning the inquiry cycle and again at the end of each session. The criteria fall into two categories, those dealing with how we did as a community and those dealing with the inquiry itself.

How did we do as a community? 

• Listening - Was I listening to others? Were others listening to me? 
• Participation - Did most people participate rather than just a few who dominated?
• Safety - Was it a safe environment?

How was our inquiry? 

• Focus - Did we maintain a focus? 
• Depth - Did our discussions scratch beneath the surface, open up the topic, orotherwise make some progress? 
• Understanding - Did I increase my understanding of the topic? 
• Thinking - Did I challenge my own thinking or work hard at it? 
• Interest - Was it interesting? 

Points to Consider: At some point it is important for the group to discuss more fully what each criterion means. What, for example, counts as participation? Does one need to speak in order to participate? What does it mean to scratch beneath the surface? At an appropriate time, the teacher can introduce the notion of three types of progress and the use of the various tools as indicators of scratching or its absence.