Asian-Pacific Heritage Month
You and your students can celebrate Asian Pacific Heritage month by taking a trip to Asia with a host of original EDSITEment lesson plans and reviewed Internet resources. Chart your course on this map of Asia available from the EDSITEment reviewed web resource National Geographic Society’s Xpeditions.
Students, teachers, and parents can begin their journey in the country of Japan. Many of your students may be fans of Japanese anime films and manga graphic novels. But before there were anime and manga there were ukiyo-e prints: it is thought that the manga style of storytelling has its roots in these woodblock prints. You and your students can investigate the ukiyo-e prints and what they tell us about Japan during the Tokugawa period in the EDSITEment lesson plan Life in the Floating World: Ukiyo-e Prints and the Rise of the Merchant Class in Edo Period Japan. You can learn more about the history and culture of Japan by visiting the EDSITEment reviewed web resource Asia for Educators. Access examples of ukiyo-e prints by visiting Nagoya Television’s online ukiyo-e museum, which is available through the EDSITEment-reviewed web resource Teaching (and Learning) About Japan.
Next, skip across the Sea of Japan and back in time to China’s Ming Dynasty where the construction of the Great Wall is moving ahead full steam! The Great Wall stretches more than 2,000 kilometers (over 1,000 miles) across China. You and your students can learn more about the history of the Great Wall, China’s Ming Dynasty, and about China’s relationship with its various northern neighbors by reading the EDSITEment lesson plan Following the Great Wall of China. You can also take advantage of some of the teaching resources on Chinese history and culture that are available from the EDSITEment reviewed web resource AskAsia. For example, you might introduce your class to the Chinese language by reading AskAsia’s essay The Chinese Language: Myths and Facts, or learn about one of China’s great philosophers in the essay on Confucianism. The website also provides a wealth of visual material for your lessons on Asia in their photo gallery, which features photographs taken around Asia, such as this photograph of a young girl in Hong Kong in the 1870s.
The Great Wall may be one of the largest construction projects ever undertaken, but if you fly south from Beijing to the nation of Cambodia you will have the chance to visit the largest religious building in the world: Angkor Wat. One of hundreds of temples built during the height of the Khmer Empire (between the 9th and 13th centuries) in the region that is today Cambodia, Thailand and Laos, Angkor Wat is an immense temple decorated with more than a mile of bas-relief sculptures. You can learn more about the monument and its history in the EDSITEment lesson plan Angkor What? Angkor Wat! Once you have finished your virtual visit to the temple you may want to take the opportunity to learn more about Angkorian art by visiting the EDSITEment reviewed web resource The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The museum’s collection includes a number of wonderful examples of Khmer art, such as this image of Avalokitesvara, the Buddhist bodhisattva (someone who forsakes reaching nirvana in order to help others) of mercy.
Having now been introduced to one of the Buddhist bodhisattvas, you and your students may be curious to know a little bit more about the lives of the Buddha. Explore Art, a recently reviewed website from Rubin Museum offers the opportunity to journey behind some works of Himalayan art which center on the Buddha, revealing the stories, ideas and beliefs that inspired them, and then consider how peoples of other cultures have expressed ideas on similar issues through their own artistic traditions. In Southeast Asia many of the Theravada form of Buddhism’s teachings are explained through the relating of events in the many lives of the Buddha before he became the Buddha. And since he had 550 lives before becoming the Buddha there are a lot of lessons to learn from those stories, which are collectively called the Jataka Tales. EDSITEment offers lesson plans on the Jataka Tales for students of almost any grade level. Elementary school students will have a chance to get to know the tales along with some of Aesop’s fables in Morality “Tails” East and West: European Fables and Buddhist Jataka Tales. Middle school students can add to what they have already learned about Buddhism in the lesson plan The Jataka Takes: 550 Lessons of the Buddha. And finally, high school students can delve a little deeper into the Jatakas with the lesson Haven’t I Seen You Somewhere Before? Samsara and Karma in the Jataka Tales.
From Southeast Asia you and your students can jump on a plane and head west for India, home to hundreds of languages, numerous cultures, and the second largest population on earth (after China). While in India you might choose to explore some of the religions of the country, such as Islam and Hinduism. You can access readings on these topics from the EDSITEment-reviewed web resource AskAsia. Or you might be curious to know about one of the legendary stories of kings, demons, and monkey armies contained within The Ramayana. Like the Jataka tales, The Ramayana teaches listeners and readers about many of life’s lessons. You can learn more about the Ramayana with the EDSITEment lesson plans Lessons of the Indian Epics: Following the Dharma, Lessons of the Indian Epics: The Ramayana, and Lessons of the Indian Epics: The Ramayana: Showing Your Dharma.
Finally, you and your students can consider how Asia changed the course of American art of the post World War II era. Outside the Frame an article from the latest issue of Humanities magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities reviews an art exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum of Art in New York City entitled “The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989”. The exhibit and its accompanying website trace how Asian art, literature, and philosophy had a profound effect on the philosophy of art with its greatest impact being in the development of abstract painting, beat poetry and the “chance controlled” music of John Cage.
Suggested Activity: Bon Voyage!
Asian-Pacific Heritage Month provides the perfect opportunity for students of all ages to celebrate the history, arts, and culture of the many cultures of Asia and of Asian Americans. The lesson plans listed above provide in-depth coverage of a few specific countries, and in this activity students will have the opportunity to learn a little bit more about Asia. Then, students, teachers, and parents can head out for a trip through Asia using EDSITEment reviewed internet resources such as AskAsia and Asia for Educators.
Students can use the LaunchPad for K-5 or the LaunchPad for 6-12, to gather pieces of information about each of the countries they will visit during their virtual journey. Encourage classmates or siblings to take their own journeys and to compare what they have learned when they have “returned.” A teacher’s rubric is included as a guideline.
Student Instructions
Students will use EDSITEment reviewed web resources along with the LaunchPad for K-5 and LaunchPad for 6-12 to conduct a scavenger hunt for information about several countries in Asia. Students will be asked to answer a number of questions on their quest. At each “location” they will have the opportunity to write down a brief explanation of the information they have gathered, and answers to the questions they have been asked. This explanation can then be printed out to be used as a discussion tool with teachers, parents, and caregivers.
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