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Notes for Those Responsible for Commemorating Asian Pacific American Heritage MonthSo, you've been drafted to program Heritage Month activities this year, and don't know where to start?
May 1, 2007 - Every year around this time, the AAV’s editors start getting a flurry of letters and sometimes even panicked phone calls from people – usually teachers, but often also parent volunteers, or various human resources-focused government or corporate types – who have been rather abruptly drafted to coordinate a class or organization’s commemoration of Asian Pacific American Heritage. They want to know where they can get novels, films, plays, events, posters, crafts, kids’ activity books, teachers’ lesson plans, networks for invited Asian American speakers, and more. Over the years, we’ve heard from college professors and assistant deans, grade school principals, parents of kindergarteners, government agency department heads, corporate HR managers, enlisted folk from military bases, newsletter editors of all stripes, and more. There is usually panic and humility in their voices because an assignment to organize programming for APA Month is almost always an afterthought – an unlooked-for deadline passed off on them. This becomes especially complicated for educators and Asian-American college student clubs, because although May is APA Month, schools must cram their activities into April – competing with final exams, pre-graduation activities, spring fever; unlike other months, they cannot rely on building lesson plans around, say, watching PBS screenings of Asian-themed programs during the real Asian Pacific American Month – the kids will already be out of school! Some seek reading recommendations for their book clubs. Others are more interested in videos or multimedia materials that can hold kids' attention. Others have admitted they had planned activities little more substantive than to have an office lunch catered by the local Oriental restaurant. “I don’t know anything about Asian cultures,” they often say. "I'm looking for a lesson plan," others might say. "Something out of the box with activities for 31 days. Have you heard of anything like that?" It’s not that we mind sharing what information we have with these well-intentioned folk. We like sharing our enthusiasms, traditions, knowledge about our histories and heritages. We appreciate that anyone who has inherited the task of “commemorating” Asian and Pacific cultural heritages is conscientious enough to undertake some research and ask for advice.
The thing is, as a publication, the site is not really set up to handle such inquiries. Sure, our editorial and office staff may have heard of some good resources or have a few ideas we’re happy to share. But, with the exception of a few editors and freelancers who have also worked or dabbled as educators, diversity consultants and the like, we’re not equipped to impart the sorts of lesson plans and event programming these inquirers seek. Further, many of us may “specialize” in a few areas – in Asian American literature, or Japanese American history, or Chinese and Chinese American cuisine, or multicultural Hawai’ian music – but in other areas and ethnic traditions, we too are learning new things every year as we go along. We can point them to our annual APA Month page, which we generally only really start updating in late April – after tax day. But this year, we’re getting started a bit earlier, and encouraging interested visitors who might be involved in some APA Month programming activities to do the same. We have posted some features this year that provide some insight into materials other people have found useful for coming to an appreciation of Asian Pacific Americans’ cultural expressions, histories, social views and political concerns, evolving traditions, and more. These include listings of the history-themed books, multimedia resources, activity guides, and more that people have purchased or written to us about. Of particular note to teachers will be the reviews by Frances Kai-Hwa Wang, a longtime contributing editor and families expert at the Village whose Multicultural Toolbox workshops have become popular classroom presentations in schools both in and outside her home state of Michigan. You’ll also see suggestions from people who have organized APA Month programming themselves in the past, sharing tips on what did and didn’t work for them. And as always, this year, if you have found a particularly helpful activity or resource, we strongly encourage you to share it with us and other Villagers in an email or better yet, on our new Asian American Village blog. Meanwhile, let's do what we can to start a movement, so that by this time next year, it might not be such a weird thing to hear someone say: Happy APA Month!
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