Transcript Name of Project - University of Massachusetts Boston

Civic Engagement
in Boston’s Asian American Communities
Asian American Studies Program
University of Massachusetts Boston
Project Goals
• AsAmSt students’ production of communitycentered AsAmSt educational resources, such
as digital stories, children’s stories, and elders’
oral history documentaries;
• AsAmSt students’ intergenerational
engagement with children, elders, and AsAmSt
alumni in local Asian American communitybased and K-12 school-based settings.
Courses being redesigned, enhanced & created
1. AsAmSt 225L Southeast Asians in the US
The need for course content revisions to take full account of changing student/community profiles:
•
First offered in 1989 to respond to the growth of refugee populations from Southeast Asia at
UMB and in the local community.
•
Twenty-five years later: US-born children who often know little about their elders’ refugee
experiences.
•
Contemporary UMB refugee students from Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere also enroll.
CESI Spring 2013:
•
Peter Kiang adapts the project requirement to focus on producing children’s stories based on
refugee community themes.
•
Collaborate closely with AsAmSt alumni who are classroom teachers at the public elementary
Mather School in Dorchester.
•
Students in AsAmSt 225L create community-centered children’s stories and share them in Mather
School classrooms during spring break week.
Courses being redesigned, enhanced & created
2. AsAmSt 470 Asian American Film & Digital Media and Social Documentation
•
Will be designed as a more advanced follow-up to Shirley Tang’s AsAmSt 370 Asian American Media
Literacy course.
CESI Fall 2013:
•
AsAmSt 470 will examine film & digital media and social documentation approaches that critically address
historical and contemporary themes involving Asian American immigrant and diasporic communities, with
a primary emphasis on three kinds of social documentation via film & digital media production: family
history, social history, and political documentary.
•
This approach is consistent with the project-based work of AsAmSt 225L, albeit with much more advanced
technical expertise in production and narrative composition. Documentation of Asian community elder
stories here will be a special focus.
•
Tang will teach both courses in Fall 2013 (revised AsAmSt 225L and AsAmSt 420 special topics pilot version
of AsAmSt 470.
•
AsAmSt students become bridges of multi-generational, multicultural communication between children
and elders — addressing multiple aspects of CESI’s undergraduate civic engagement intentions.
Project Team
UMB Asian American Studies Faculty
Community Partners Model #1
Shirley S. Tang (PI)
K-12 Schools as Asian Community Sites:
Mather Elementary School (BPS)
Dorchester Vietnamese Community
Loan Dao
Karen Suyemoto
Haeok Lee
Peter Kiang
AsAmSt/CAPAY Alumni:
Ngoc-lan (Loni) Nguyen – Grade 3
Songkhla Nguyen – Grade 2
Tuyet Dinh – K2
Linda Nguyen – hopeful K2 in Fall 2013
The PI’s responsibilities:
Community Partners Model #2
•
Asian Community Elder Stories Sites
•
coordinate her course revision/development
process with other core teaching faculty in Asian
American Studies
lead an Asian American Studies Program
discussion each semester about the CESI process
that will facilitate program-wide decision-making
about how best to align our collective civic
engagement commitments, and how to respond
to future CESI proposal calls
AsAmSt Alumni:
Lola Tom, Multicultural Home Care, Quincy
Cydney Dang, South Cove Manor, Chinatown
William Wu, Chinese Golden Age Center, Chinatown
Diane Nguyen, Boston Senior Home Care, Dorchester
Kye Liang, Chinatown Lantern Reading Room
Project Outcomes
• Develop portfolios of work for each course, including
syllabi and assignments, sample student work, sample
reflections from students and community participants.
• Synergies resulting from offering two courses during
the same semester with possibilities for structured
intersections/interactions between project products,
community informants, and special events.
• Connections to (1) larger issues of social policy and
practice such as health care and wellness issues and
interventions with immigrant elders or (2) educational
barriers and interventions with English Language
Learners in urban public K-12 school systems.
Modeling Faculty-Student-Alumni-Community-School-Family Engagements in Asian American Studies Course Development
English Language Learner
Educational Achievement
Mather
School
Dorchester
AsAmSt/CAPAY
Alumni
AsAmSt Courses & Faculty
Metro Boston
Ecology
Immigrant Elder Wellness:
Policy and Practice
Boston’s
Asian
American
Communities
Elder
Services
in Quincy,
ChinatownBoston &
Dorchester
Spring 2013
AsAmSt 225 Southeast Asians in the U.S. 
new product development with Mather School
teachers
AsAmSt 370 Asian American Media Literacy
digital story producers
Fall 2013
AsAmSt 225 Southeast Asians in the U.S.
Intergenerational pedagogy/products
AsAmSt 470* Asian American Film & Digital
Media and Social Documentation
AsAmSt
Current Students
bridges of multi-generational,
multicultural communication
between children and elders
Workshops
• Access to resources
• Shared learning
• Opportunities for collaboration
• Publication venues