This Asian Pacific American History Month, we invite grades 7-12 teachers, education administrators, and community members to join us as we explore the necessity of solidarity in Ethnic Studies implementation and preview UCLA's ongoing project: Foundations and Futures: Asian American and Pacific Islander Multimedia Textbook.
Ethnic Studies is an academic discipline that arose in the 1960s as a result of organizing from an interracial student coalition including the Afro-American Students Union, the Latin American Students Organization, the Pilipino American Collegiate Endeavor (PACE), the Asian American Political Alliance, the Native American Student Alliance (NASA), and the Mexican American Student Confederation (MASC) at San Francisco State. Since then, with the support of educators and activists, Ethnic Studies has spread nationwide to college campuses and high schools.
With the passage of California Assembly Bill 101 in 2021, districts statewide have been making a concentrated effort towards the implementation of an Ethnic Studies graduation requirement in their high schools. Our goal at the UCLA Asian American Studies Center is to support these efforts through the development of Ethnic Studies materials and curricula that are faithful to the diverse students and communities we serve.
Foundations and Futures: Asian American and Pacific Islander Multimedia Textbook will be a comprehensive, open-access anthology of Asian American and Pacific Islander histories and perspectives available for college and high school students. Our textbook will feature chapters written by academic and community scholars with corresponding lesson plans developed by classroom teachers.
The textbook team has been hard at work, and we are excited to share an advance look into our textbook this May 11th. The event will offer workshops facilitated by Ethnic Studies educators and a demo of the textbook's first chapter prototype with the author, Stan Yogi. We are also excited to announce that attending LAUSD teachers can receive a 3-hour certificate that can be used towards building salary credit.
Further information about workshops, speakers, and more to come.
