Teacher’s Note for Content Warning: This lesson will be talking about traumatic events and the impacts of trauma. It may be necessary to give a disclaimer to students that this lesson will discuss topics that may trigger an emotional response. Emphasize that having an emotional reaction is more than okay, and if at any time during the lesson they may step out of class to process what they are learning or hearing.

Accompanying slides for this lesson may be found here: https://ucdavis.box.com/s/y8i0mqyp3nc8ulwm6x3rkec3lxcl075a 

Warm-up: (15–20 minutes)

1. Ask students: Show this image of a Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand. https://southeastasiaglobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/000_ARP2288771-scaled.jpg  
   1. Pose the following questions: How do you think living in these areas felt about their situation?
   2. Prompt students: Write down at least five words that describe how you think people in those situations were feeling? Provide explanations to why you chose those specific words. 
2. After five to seven minutes, call on students to share their answers. 
   1. When you call on students, ask them to share the word they choose first, then ask the class if anyone also chose that word.
   2. Ask the student to then share the reason they choose that word and respond accordingly (affirm their choices).
   3. Expect to hear words like scared, worried, sad, confused etc.
   4. Ask more students to share words, and repeat the process.

Vocabulary Building: (15–20 minutes)

1. After the class share-out, the teacher should say to students: The words you all chose are very reflective of how anyone would be feeling during such traumatic experiences like.
2. Teachers will present the following terms to students and ask for them to identify familiar words and define them with a peer: trauma, generational trauma, and generation. 
   1. Call on students to answer and respond to their answers accordingly.
3. Provide students with a formal list of the key terms with definitions and review as a class:
   1. Trauma: An emotional response to a terrible event like a life-threatening accident, or natural disaster. (Psychology Today)
      1. Teachers can elaborate on the definition of trauma in the following ways: Traumatic experiences can make a person have a variety of emotions, and can impact a person in very serious ways. In many cases, trauma impacts how a person acts in the future.
   2. Generational Trauma: The effects of a traumatic experience endured during childhood or as an adult that is transferred or passed on from parent to child and further generations. (Bombay, Matheson, and Anisman 2009)
   3. Generation: A generational group, often referred to as a cohort, includes those who share historical or social life experiences, the effects of which are relatively stable over the course of their lives. These life experiences tend to distinguish one generation from another (Jurkiewicz & Brown, 1998). 
      1. Example: Baby Boomers (born between 1946–1964)
         1. Generation X
         2. Millennial 
   4. Cambodian refugee generations:
      1. First Generation - Those who experienced the Khmer Rouge regime as adults.  Most arrived in the United States between 1975-1979,
      2. 1.5 Generation - Refugees born in Cambodia and who resettled in the United States while they were children.  Most arrived after 1979.
      3. Second Generation - Those born in refugee camps or in the US after resettlement.

Tapping into Prior Knowledge: (10–15 minutes)

1. Have students get into groups of three to four and ask them to create a list of traumatic events experienced by Cambodian Americans that may have impacted their communities across generations.
   1. Share-out:
      1. Call on students to share their ideas. Guide them to these issues:
         1. Loss of land and their resources
         2. Family members being killed for no reason
         3. Not being able to practice their religion
         4. Loss of language and cultural practices
         5. Being taken away/separated from family
         6. Punished for any small “wrong-doing”
         7. Being anxious about leaving your home in fear of something bad happening
2. To bring students to the main idea, say: “All of these things that happened many years ago still have an impact on Cambodian Americans today, but in a much more serious way, than just not being able to visit certain locations or participate in certain activities. The ways the past generations coped with these experiences have been unconsciously passed down to other generations.”
   1. Share the following quotes with students:
      1. “The transmission of trauma may be particular to a given family suffering a loss, such as the death of an infant, or it can be a shared response to societal trauma.” (Psychology Today)
      2. “Sometimes anxiety falls from one generation to the next through stories told.” (Psychology Today)
      3. “Adult offspring of Holocaust survivors showed significantly higher levels of self-reported childhood trauma, particularly emotional abuse and neglect, relative to comparison subjects.” (Yehuda, Halligan, Grossman 2001)
   2. For more information, visit:
      1. https://centerforhealthjournalism.org/fellowships/projects/ptsd-cambodias-killing-fields-affects-kids-who-were-never-there#:~:text=And%20their%20children%20have%20borne,and%20activity%20to%20clinical%20depression. 
      2. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/classroom/2015/08/can-trauma-be-passed-to-next-generation-through-dna/ 
      3. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/well/mind/trauma-may-have-fallout-over-generations.html
   3. Allow students to have a discussion about these quotes. In the same small groups, prompt them to share what thoughts are provoked by these quotes. 

Interaction with video source with multiple views: (15–20 minutes)

1. Show the following video and have students take notes while watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAt8YqE0VlU
2. After the first view of the video, have students discuss the following with a peer:
   1. What was your reaction to this video?
   2. Is there anything that stood out to you?
   3. Did you learn anything new?
   4. This is an opportunity for students to share their reactions. There are no right or wrong answers, but encourage them to be respectful and thoughtful. Teachers may want to share their thoughts first just in case students feel nervous about responding. 
3. After the second view of the video, have students discuss the following with a peer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAt8YqE0VlU
   1. Describe Dorothy Chow’s upbringings and how Cambodian history has influenced her journey.
      1. How has trauma played out in Dorothy’s life, and that of her father’s?
      2. What role does her podcast have in trauma and healing?
   2. Describe Phung Huynh’s art work and how she honors Cambodian history. 
      1. Note to teacher, Phung Huynh created the main artwork for the Cambodian American Studies Model Curriculum.  You can view here artwork here: https://ucdavis.box.com/s/z5w3k0bodcxt1g8j8jae5lrpyngh6cpr
      2. What narratives from Cambodian refugees were highlighted in Phung’s donut box artwork subjects?
   3. How do both Dorothy and Phung try to capture the stories of Cambodian history and culture? 
      1. What goals and hopes do Dorothy and Phung have for all refugee community members for healing?