APA Studies in K-12 Classrooms Workshop

Michigan’s Asian American population doubled between 1990 and 2000, bringing many new students into Michigan schools. However, Asian Americans are underrepresented as teachers and are typically invisible within the curriculum. In April 2010, the APA Studies Program presented a one-day workshop for K-12 teachers in order to help them serve Asian American students more effectively and to support teachers’ efforts to incorporate more Asian American content into their classrooms.

The workshop covered a broad range of areas, including psychology, anthropology, history, language arts, film and popular culture. It is a sign of the increasing strength of MSU’s APA Studies program that, when a similar workshop was mounted three years ago, only a couple of the presenters were from MSU. This year, every presenter except for our keynote lecturer was from MSU… and they are leaders in their fields!

The day’s activities started with a plenary session by Desiree Qin, in which she explored the ways that stereotypes about “model minority” Asian American students lead to their educational needs being overlooked. Despite (or perhaps because of) this stereotype, Asian American students often have higher rates of depression than other students, with young Asian American women having the highest suicide rate among any ethnic group. Such information is very important for teachers working with Asian American children. In the morning and afternoon sessions, teachers broke out into small workshops that reflected their areas of teaching.

Our keynote lecturer was Dr. Leslie Wong, President of Northern Michigan University, who spoke about the need for expanded APA leadership in education and the ways to achieve such leadership. The day-long workshop concluded with a panel of Asian American MSU students discussing their school experiences.

Teachers highly rated the workshop, with every participant noting that it met or exceeded their expectations. Some comments included “This is one of the best workshops that I have attended. It really has me thinking,” “Outstanding!” and “Thank you for a thought-provoking and substantive learning experience.” The program is currently developing a website, based on the presentations, to provide much-needed resources to teachers interested in Asian American Studies.