Overview
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Donuts and Pink Boxes: Form of Resilience
Authors: Katherine Khiev and Joy Okada
Grades: 9-12
Suggested Amount of Time: 120 minutes
Area of Study : Community Building and Healing
Compelling Question
How did Cambodians build communities to thrive and heal in the United States?
Lesson Question
How did many Cambodian Refugees find success in their new lives in California? How did donuts and pink boxes bring them hope?
Lesson Objective
Students will reflect on the life of Cambodians and Cambodian Americans in America, focusing on their journey of resiliency and the symbolic story of donuts and pink boxes.
Lesson Background
Students will need the background history of Cambodians and how they migrated and settled into the United States before this lesson. The refugee experience, specifically those who came to California, to learn the donut industry, will be studied in this lesson. The teacher can choose to use the documentary or have students read articles about Ted Ngoy’s legacy as the “Donut King.”
Image Citation: The Cambodian American reign of doughnut shops began in this La Habra shop. (2022, July 6). PBS SoCal. https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/lost-la/the-cambodian-american-reign-of-doughnut-shops-began-in-this-la-habra-shop
Materials
Supplies
- Crafting materials (i.e: scissors, construction paper, small boxes, glue)
Readings
- Resiliency Definition
- Dunkin’ and the Doughnut King
- Why are doughnut boxes pink?
- How One Cambodian Refugee Started Southern California's Doughnut Empire
- How doughnut shops became a sweet American Dream
- From Cambodia to Southern California
- The Doughnut Kids Are All Right
- The Big Child Labor Exception
Procedures
Step 1: Icebreaker for the Day
- In groups of two or three, students should share their favorite type of donut and where they get donuts from.
- Optionally, teachers can ask students to consider common donut shop names they see in their community. If the student does not like donuts they can share any other breakfast item they consider a treat.
- Allow students to share out to the whole class.
Step 2: Class Agenda and Objectives/Goals
- The teacher should go over the lesson objectives, goals, and standards for today’s lesson.
Step 3: Connecting to Prior Learning
- The teacher should have these three words on the board: Resilience, Donuts, Cambodian Refugees.
- Give students time to consider the three ideas and use their prior knowledge to make connections between the three. Have students generate ideas on how the terms can be connected and share their ideas to their peers, and then the whole class.
- The teacher should connect the definition of the word resilience to guide students to reflect on the experiences of Cambodian survivors of the killing fields. This can be done as small group discussions, whole class discussions, or reviewing past lessons’ notes if relevant and applicable. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/resiliency
- The teacher should then introduce the pink donut box and share the following: Today we will look into the lives of Cambodian immigrants in America and their journey of navigating and surviving in America, specifically in California. How many of you know the interwoven history of donuts for many Cambodian Americans?
Step 4: Shared Learning
- Number students off from one to six. Jigsaw read the following articles, where small groups of students read and annotate an article together, then share their findings with one another.
- https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-pink-doughnut-boxes-20170525-htmlstory.html
- https://www.foodandwine.com/travel/southern-california-donut-empire-origin-story
- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-doughnut-shops-became-a-sweet-american-dream/
- https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/from-cambodia-to-southern-california-telling-the-story-of-a-king-of-donut-shops/
- https://la.eater.com/2022/6/1/23064652/los-angeles-cambodian-doughnut-shops-next-generation
- https://story.californiasunday.com/ted-ngoy-california-doughnut-king/
- Present the below questions to students prior to reading their article. During their reading, students should answer the following questions:
- What did you learn about the Cambodian Refugee experience from your article?
- What are examples of resiliency you have read/observed from the readings?
- What were some of the positive and negative impacts on children growing up in donut shops?
- Optional: For more information review this short article: https://www.marketplace.org/2022/03/31/the-big-child-labor-exception/
- Once each student has read their assigned article and answered the questions, have them form groups of six, so that there is a member from each article. Students will then take turns sharing about their learnings; they can use the reading questions to guide their sharing.
- Encourage students to add new information to their notes as their peers share.
Step 5: Cultural Production - Thinking Outside the Box
- Task: Students will be encouraged to ‘think outside the (donut) box’ and reflect on their learning by making a physical artifact. Advise students to find a small box (i.e: donut box, mail package cube, tissue box). Teachers can also help supply students with the box by collecting recycled (tissue) boxes from other classroom teachers, or from students' homes. It would be helpful if teachers are able to supply students with crafting materials (i.e: scissors, construction paper, glue, etc), and teachers should invite students to bring their own crafting materials too.
- Students boxes must address the following criteria in the form of text and/or visual representations (drawings, charts, symbols):
- How did many Cambodian refugees find success in their new lives in California?
- How did donuts and pink boxes bring them hope?
- What are ways the Cambodians and Cambodian Americans show resilience?
- Numbers and statistics about Cambodian refugees, donut shops, or any other pertinent information.
- Standout quotes from any of the assigned readings.
- Alternatively, students can find ways to create this utilizing digital applications. Or, they can create it digitally and print out their work.
- Once students have completed their project, teachers can conduct a gallery walk for students to view their peers' creations.
Assessments
Students will be encouraged to ‘think outside the (donut) box’ and reflect on their learning by making a physical artifact. Students will create a physical box that addresses the following criteria in the form of text and/or visual representations (drawings, charts, symbols):
- How did many Cambodian refugees find success in their new lives in California?
- How did donuts and pink boxes bring them hope?
- What are ways the Cambodians and Cambodian Americans show resilience?
- Numbers and statistics about Cambodian refugees, donut shops, or any other pertinent information.
- Standout quotes from any of the assigned readings.
Scaffolds
Engagement: Consider the following method to support with lesson engagement:
- Differentiate the degree of difficulty or complexity within which core activities can be completed
- Display the goal in multiple ways
- Before students begin working with their groups during guided practice, students will reiterate the directions. Ask students if there are any questions, comments, or concerns and answer any clarifying questions.
Representation: Consider the following method to support with multiple means of representation:
- Embed visual, non-linguistic supports for vocabulary clarification (pictures, videos, etc)
- Chunk information into smaller elements
Action and Expression: Consider the following method to support in presenting their learning in multiple ways:
- Provide models or examples of the process and product of goal-setting
- Embed prompts to stop and think before acting as well as adequate space
- Students are provided independent thinking time before group discussion. This should help students who need more time to think about free response questions.
Multilingual Learner Supports
Emerging: Consider the following method to support with emerging students:
- Writing: Provide sentence frames with word and picture banks
- Provide a word wall and sentence frames to support students when writing down their responses and ideas.
- In response to a prompt, the teacher offers a sentence frame orally and/or in writing to support expression of student thinking. Frames are adjusted based upon specific grammatical structure, key vocabulary, content learning, and language proficiency level descriptors, etc. Frames are a temporary scaffold that require modification.
Expanding: Consider the following method to support with expanding students:
- Writing: Provide rubrics and exemplars to scaffold writing assignments
- Students investigate how authors of stories invite readers to make inferences about characters by showing what the character does instead of simply telling how the character is feeling.
- Using mentor text - Text written by authors used to analyze craft, a particular writing style, word usage, structure, etc.
Bridging: Consider the following method to support with bridging students:
- Writing: Hold frequent writing conferences with teacher and peers
- Teacher works collaboratively with students to scaffold writing before they write independently. Teacher uses students’ understanding of narrative stages, specific vocabulary, and grammatical structures while questioning for precision.
- Write down students’ responses and ideas on the board when students are presenting their response during the discussion in guided practice.
For additional guidance around scaffolding for multilingual learners, please consult the following resources:
- English Learner Toolkit of Strategies, https://ucdavis.box.com/s/ujkdc2xp1dqjzrlq55czph50c3sq1ngu
- Providing Appropriate Scaffolding, https://www.sdcoe.net/educators/multilingual-education-and-global-achievement/oracy-toolkit/providing-appropriate-scaffolding#scaffolding
- Strategies for ELD, https://ucdavis.box.com/s/dcp15ymah51uwizpmmt2vys5zr2r5reu
- ELA / ELD Framework, https://www.caeducatorstogether.org/resources/6537/ela-eld-framework
- California ELD Standards, https://ucdavis.box.com/s/vqn43cd632z22p8mfzn2h7pntc71kb02
Enrichment
- As an optional assignment, in groups of three or four, students can create a pink donut box with 12 donuts in them, in which the donuts can include stories of resilience from 12 Cambodian Refugees that they will have researched. This can include previous lessons on famous Cambodians/Cambodian Americans, or survivor testimonies/stories. The teacher can guide students to appropriate websites, or open the opportunity for students to find their own stories.
- Another optional assignment, students can read Mayly Tao’s memoir, or excerpts from the memoir, to supplement their understanding of the significance of donuts to a Cambodian Refugee experience: Tao, M. 2022. An American dream, with sprinkles: The legacy story of the donut queen and the donut princess. Donutprincess LA.
Works Cited
Britt, K. 2020c, May 11. English learner toolkit of strategies. California County Superintendents. https://cacountysupts.org/english-learner-toolkit-of-strategies/
California Department of Education & English Learner Support Division. 2012. California English Language Development standards (Electronic Edition) kindergarten through grade 12 (F. Ong & J. McLean, Eds.). California Department of Education. https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/el/er/documents/eldstndspublication14.pdf
California Educators Together. (n.d.). ELA / ELD framework. https://www.caeducatorstogether.org/resources/6537/ela-eld-framework
CAST. 2018 The UDL guidelines. http://udlguidelines.cast.org
Chandra, G. 2022, September 29. How Ted Ngoy built Southern California’s Doughnut Empire. Food & Wine. https://www.foodandwine.com/travel/southern-california-donut-empire-origin-story
Chaplin, C. 2022, June 1. The Doughnut Kids ARE ALL RIGHT. Eater Los Angeles. Retrieved August 27, 2022. https://la.eater.com/2022/6/1/23064652/los-angeles-cambodian-doughnut-shops-next-generation
Gu, A. (Director). 2020. The Donut King [Documentary Film]. Retrieved August 27, 2022. https://www.hulu.com/movie/the-donut-king-bf928def-62db-4a06-a2f1-51ee76a6ddf8
Mowjood, S. 2022, July 4. How doughnut shops became a sweet American dream. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-doughnut-shops-became-a-sweet-american-dream/
Nichols, G. 2017, June 2. Dunkin’ and the doughnut king. The California Sunday Magazine. https://story.californiasunday.com/ted-ngoy-california-doughnut-king/
Phillips, C. 2021, May 24. From Cambodia to Southern California: Telling the story of a king of donut shops. PBS. https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/from-cambodia-to-southern-california-telling-the-story-of-a-king-of-donut-shops/
Pierson, D. 2019, August 14. Why are doughnut boxes pink? The answer could only come out of Southern California. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-pink-doughnut-boxes-20170525-htmlstory.html
San Diego County Office of Education. (n.d.). Providing appropriate scaffolding. https://www.sdcoe.net/educators/multilingual-education-and-global-achievement/oracy-toolkit/providing-appropriate-scaffolding#scaffolding
Team, E. E. C. 2022, March 31. The big child labor exception. Marketplace. https://www.marketplace.org/2022/03/31/the-big-child-labor-exception/
Tulare County Office of Education. (n.d.). Strategies for ELD. https://commoncore.tcoe.org/Content/Public/doc/Alpha-CollectionofELDStrategies.pdf