Accompanying slides for this lesson may be found here: https://ucdavis.box.com/s/cmjbaz4tggw0he180vatgj06fk4w2b21 

1. Warmup (5 minutes)

• Ask students to think about what they enjoy and what they wish they could change about being their current age.
• Allow students to share with a partner, and have a whole class share out.

2. Making predictions (10 minutes)

• Students will preview the New York Times (1985) headline and accompanying images and make predictions. 
  • Note: Students will only be analyzing the headline and photos; they will not need to read the article.
    • Photo available here: https://ucdavis.box.com/s/pku2bolsrv9sqxi614x580qj75orikjl  or original website source: https://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/10/nyregion/boat-children-from-vietnam-are-getting-a-s-in-assimilation.html 
  • Prompt: Based on the headline and images, what is your prediction of how life was like for Vietnamese refugee youth in the 1980s? Without reading the entire article, do you think that this newspaper will be an accurate portrayal of all Vietnamese youths’ experiences?
  • Teachers can provide content warning: gangs, violence, prisonment, trauma, criminalization.

3. Shared Learning (20 minutes)

• Teacher will share a presentation contextualizing conditions of working-class America in the 1980s and the experiences of Vietnamese refugees. Recommended for teachers to share the presentation with discussion. Teachers can screencast the presentation so students can pre-watch and re-watch or interact with them independently. Ask students to explain what the content means after each slide. It is recommended that students are given a note-taking guide to help them process the presentation.
• Slide deck: https://app.box.com/file/1535231517537?s=cmjbaz4tggw0he180vatgj06fk4w2b21 
• Potential questions for a class-wide or small-group debrief discussion:
  • What patterns did you notice about the information that was shared?
  • What predictions do you have about the causes and effects of what we learned today?
  • What similarities and/or differences can you observe between the 1980s-1990s and today?
  • Why do you think this information is not commonly shared in the discussion about Vietnamese refugees?
  • What was the experience of Vietnamese American refugee youth in the 1980s-1990s and how did these experiences contribute to marginalization and criminalization?  

4. Cultural Production: Correcting the Narrative (20–30 minutes)

• Introducing the activity: Students will correct the narrative by writing their own newspaper article using interviews from Vietnamese refugees and their notes from the previous lessons. 
  • Alternatively, students can create a fictional news report video. The final product can be open to a written, visual, or audio narrative. 
• Directions:
  • Students will be using primary sources to learn about the experiences of Vietnamese refugees who engaged in criminality. 
  • Students will use these primary sources to write an informational article answering the question: What was the experience of Vietnamese refugees in the 1980s-1990s and what led to many youth’s involvement in criminality?
  • The article should include quotes from Vietnamese refugees (taken from primary source materials) and synthesized historical context referencing notes from any previous lessons, or the slide deck.
  • Sources are provided in a mix of formats and allow students choice. Students only need to utilize two sources for this assessment.
  • Optional: Teacher can allow for collaboration on newspaper articles, it can be done independently or with a partner(s). Newspaper articles can be created digitally or on paper.

5. Scoring Guide:

• Students should incorporate quotations from Vietnamese refugees (interviews, oral histories, writing directly from Vietnamese refugees).
• Should address the lesson prompt: What was the experience of Vietnamese American refugee youth in the 1980s-1990s and how did these experiences contribute to marginalization and criminalization? 
• Students should support the quotes with information about historical context using notes from the previous lessons.
• Writing should demonstrate strong sentence structure, proper grammar, etc.

6. Materials:

• Oral history with Lan Phương Dương (see handouts) 
• Bi Ket/Limbo film with Tung Nguyen
  • This is an excerpt from the film Bị Kẹt/Limbo, a bilingual documentary in Vietnamese and English that tells the story of Tung Nguyen, a man who was brought to the US as a refugee of the Vietnam War, but is now awaiting deportation as a result of the challenges faced by refugees struggling to integrate into American society. You can access the full film here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=948uIZfz7Lg&ab_channel=LANNGUYEN 
  • Permission for use granted by Lan Nguyen, director of the film.
  • Excerpt: From 1:10 to 5:40, the film shares Tung’s perspective and explains his experiences growing up as a young Vietnamese refugee and how these conditions led him on a path to criminality.
• “An Thanh Nguyễn & Tin Nguyễn: 'Freedom is to be there for my family when they need me.”, https://www.advancingjustice-alc.org/news-resources/perspectives/an-thanh-nguyen-tin-nguyen 
• “US State and Federal Prison Population, 1925-2014” Graph: https://ucdavis.box.com/s/mo7d8y1k0irokdvsfpgx34g0tzdtn90t. Graph produced by The Sentence Project using data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics Prisoner Series. Source: Incarceration and the Right to Vote: An International Comparative Study. (n.d.). Center for Hartford Engagement and Research. Retrieved September 18, 2023, from https://www.trincoll.edu/cher/blog/emma-hersom-incarceration
• President Ronald Reagan’s Address to the Nation on the Campaign Against Drug Abuse on September 14, 1986. Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj8gAQ_cQ7Q&t=120s&ab_channel=ReaganFoundation (Excerpt: 1:00 - 1:50)
• “Persistence of US child poverty since 1967” Graph: https://ucdavis.box.com/s/cgh3ga3k4par54fbki0yghwe5rtwaq3i 
  • Source: Graph produced by The Conversation using data from the Census Bureau. https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/05/23/the-persistence-of-childhood-poverty-in-the-us/ 
• “Over the Decades, American Public Generally Hasn’t Welcome Refugees” Graph: https://ucdavis.box.com/s/qscgl0vn1pgahaqe4zspisd82lx04pev 
  • Graph produced by Pew Research Center: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/11/19/u-s-public-seldom-has-welcomed-refugees-into-country/ 
• “Unemployment Rate, 1960-2019”: https://ucdavis.box.com/s/u82z2pcawbfvfvcybacnwd4lc1cbze3z 
  • Graph produced by Bureau of Labor Statistics: https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/articles/unemployment-rate-falls-lowest-level-nearly-50-years-u-s-economy-adds-263000-new-jobs-april/
• Southeast Asian Americans and the School-to-Prison-to-Deportation Pipeline, https://ucdavis.box.com/s/uqcabpuitm4ifatvzg8016y8os89dmq5 
  • Provided by Southeast Asia Resource Action Center https://www.searac.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SEAA-School-to-Deportation-Pipeline_0.pdf 
• “The Forgotten Asian Refugees Fed Into The US Prison System”, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/southeast-asian-prison-deportation-pipeline_n_5a1dd48ee4b0569950233065#:~:text=A%20great%20many%20refugees%20have,250%20percent%20in%20the%201990s. 
• “From Gang Life to Professor -Thảo Hà PhD” Video Link: https://youtu.be/NiYiOumBxQU?t=830 (Excerpt: 13:50 - 18:00)
  • Dr. Thao Ha is a sociology professor who has first-hand experience with street gangs. She is a Vietnamese refugee and professor of Sociology at MiraCosta College. She earned her doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin. She's published in the areas of race, immigration, and Vietnamese Americans in the South. Her current project is focused on Vietnamese American incarceration. She serves on the Board of the Vietnamese American Arts and Letters Association, the Oceanside Promise, and the Asian Culture and Media Alliance. 
  • The selected video is from a podcast called The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen, in the episode “From Gang Life to Professor”. In the excerpt, Dr. Ha discusses her upbringing, her personal experience with gang life, and the reasons why she was attracted to gangs.

7. Conclusive Dialogue: Reflection- Answer one of the following questions (10 minutes)

•  What was an ‘aha’ moment from this activity? How can you connect what you have learned to current events?
• If time permits, allow for sharing of newspaper articles or in format of gallery walk