Part 1: Invisibility of Vietnamese Americans in American Media and Schooling

1. Warm-Up (five minutes) 

1. Prompt students to consider the following prompt: What are some things you wish you could learn about in school? Consider various topics and skills that aren’t taught in schools. 
2. Have students share with a peer, then have a whole class discussion. 

2. Tapping Prior Knowledge: Ask students engaging questions to assess their prior knowledge. Create a K (What I Know), W (What I Wonder), and L (What I Learned) to record their responses. (10 minutes)

1. Ask the following questions: 

i.  What I Know: What do you know about refugees from Vietnam, and or Vietnamese Americans? Use your personal experiences, things you learned about in school, or from the community.

ii. What I Wonder: What do you want to know about Vietnamese Americans and refugees from Vietnam?

iii. What I learned: (Students still save this section until after the introductory video). 

3. Share-time: Each group will briefly share “K” and “W” sections. 

1. After sharing, teacher can use the following questions to spark classroom discussion:
2. (Assuming many responses in the K section revolve around the Vietnam War) Why do you think most of the responses overly focus on the Vietnam War?
3. What are you taught or not taught in the American public education system that influence your knowledge about Vietnamese Americans? Are some histories of Vietnamese Americans, or some minority groups in general, ignored in our education system?
4. What personal experiences shaped your questions about what you wonder about Vietnamese Americans?

4. Interaction with a first source with multiple reads (15–20 minutes)

1. Teacher will show a short excerpt from the “PBS: Asian Americans” documentary that gives a short background of the Vietnamese American community and the narratives surrounding it from American media. The video can be found at: https://www.pbs.org/video/generation-rising-zl6u5c/ (timestamp 41:21–45:28) (5 min)

2. Students will take notes individually on a separate handout using the suggested prompts: 

• Make a list of all aspects of the Vietnamese American community that you see. Put a (*) mark in front of the parts that are new information for you.
• How does American media portray the Vietnamese American experience? How does it make you feel? How do you think your knowledge is affected by both media and education?

3. Share-time: After the video, students will come back into their groups and have a small group discussion. 

• They will then use their handout notes to add to the L section: “What I Learned”, new information that they learned about the Vietnamese American community or how the Vietnamese American community is talked about in American media. (5 min)
• The groups will present what they learned. The teacher will make brief reference to part two, focusing on how American media heavily skewed perceptions about Vietnamese Americans and the Vietnam War, and using question two as a segue into the next activity about education. (5 min) 

Part 2 - How to Counter Invisibility through Ethnic Studies and Vietnamese American Studies 

1. Making Connections (5 mins)
   1. Engage students by asking the following questions.
      1. Discuss the benefits of having additional Vietnamese American studies content in our history, social science, and literature classes. How would having a separate Vietnamese American studies course impact our public school system and students?
      2. Think-Pair-Share: After students write down their answers, the teacher will have students share with a partner for three minutes about their thoughts. In the last two minutes, the teacher will call on pairs to answer the first question together. 
2.  Shared Learning: Reading Articles and Taking Notes in Groups (15 mins)
   1. Students will get in the same groups of four to five that they worked with on for the K-W-L poster activity. 
   2. The teacher will hand out the following two news articles to each group: A “History of Exclusion, of Erasure, of Invisibility.’ Why the Asian-American Story Is Missing From Many US Classrooms” https://time.com/5949028/asian-american-history-schools/ and Vietnamese refugees are claiming space in Orange County’s school system https://prismreports.org/2023/05/17/southeast-asian-ethnic-studies-california-orange-county/.
      1. The first article details how the Asian American experience has been traditionally excluded in the US education system, while the second article shows how the Vietnamese American Experiences Model Curriculum (VAEMC) hopes to address the invisibility of the Vietnamese American experience in education.
   3. The group will divide into two note-taking teams: one for the first article and one for the second article. The teacher will instruct both teams that they have 10 minutes to take notes on their specific article - after the 10 minutes, they will have five minutes each to present to the rest of their team the themes of the article in answer to the central question in the warm-up: Is there a need for a separate Vietnamese American studies class somewhere in our public school system? Why or why not?
3. Discussion (5 minutes)
   1. After the presentations, groups as a whole will share their insights in response to the question using specific examples from the two articles. Possible questions the teacher can use in the discussion include:
      1. How might the VAEMC address the current level of coverage of the Vietnamese American experience in American media and education? 
      2. Name some examples of the history of Asian Americans in general being excluded from US classrooms.
      3. What parts of Asian American history are taught? What narratives about Asian Americans are reinforced?
4.  Research/Presentation Assessment Preparations (20 min)
   1. All groups will be given a handout by the teacher with this scenario:
      1. You are a curriculum writer for your school’s US history textbook who understands the need to bring more Asian American and especially Vietnamese American content into our history-social science programs. With your group, write an excerpt of at least one to two paragraphs in which you add a section to any part of a typical US history textbook that gives more depth to the Vietnamese American experience. You can choose to write your excerpt based on any information in the timeline handout about Vietnamese Americans provided to you. 
      2. Alternatively, students can draw a scene that best depicts the missing narratives of the Vietnamese American experience for the typical US history textbook. This drawing should be supplemented with a short caption description. The final product can be open to a written, visual, or audio narrative. 
   2. After your group finishes writing the excerpt, be prepared to give a four to five minute presentation as a group tomorrow explaining what the the following details: 
      1. What excerpt you wrote
      2. What details from the timeline handout you utilized?
      3. Why did you choose that particular information?
      4. What gap in traditional US textbooks regarding Vietnam and Vietnamese Americans does this address?
      5. How might an excerpt like this in our public education system help give Vietnamese American perspectives more representation?
      6. The students should still have the handout (Timeline of Vietnam and Vietnamese Americans After 1975) to present here. 
5.  Cultural Production Final Preparations for Research Presentation (30–40 mins)
   1. Teachers have the flexibility to find the best way to have all students present in small groups. For example: Rather than having to present one-by-one to the entire class, the teacher will instruct that each of the groups will present to each one of the other groups. This will give groups an opportunity to both fine tune their presentations as well as individually focus on specific topics and groups. 
   2. The teacher will use the following rubric to grade the students based on the following criteria. See the full rubric at the bottom of the lesson plan (titled: Research Presentation Rubric: Writing and Presenting a US History Textbook Excerpt on Vietnamese Americans)
      1. Is the excerpt completed and properly formatted, and does it give relevant information that would add Vietnamese American studies to a US history textbook?
      2. Does the group explain well the contents of the excerpt they wrote?
      3. Does the group explain what details from the timeline handout they utilized?
      4. Does the group explain why they chose that particular information?
      5. Does the group explain what gap in traditional US textbooks regarding Vietnam and Vietnamese Americans this excerpt addresses?
      6. Does the group explain how an excerpt like this in our public education system may help give Vietnamese American perspectives more representation?
6.  Reflection
   1. Celebrate success: Let each other know one thing they did well. 
   2. On a ticket out the door, have the students write one takeaway from listening to the different presentations.