Asian American History and the Making of the U.S. Immigration System

Introduction

National heritage months began as ways to honor, celebrate, and acknowledge cultural and ethnic  groups in the United States and their contributions to American history and culture. Often, the months started as days, which became a week, and then a full month; finally being recognized via official presidential acts as heritage months. Groups began their celebrations to recognize their contributions to American culture and history because the American narrative that was so often told was that of Europeans and  European Americans. National Native American Heritage Month began as a day in 1916. Black History Month (BHM) began in 1926 as Negro History Week. National Hispanic Heritage Week began in 1968 and became a month in 1988. National Asian & Pacific Islander Month (AAPI) began in 1978. Often, as these heritage groups found a voice on the political front, they were able to pursue national heritage month status and gain recognition:

Heritage months in the United States… are deliberate, important, and usually take years, decades, even a century to be codified into law. While the origin may begin with a small group of passionate people who feel strongly about bringing awareness to historical facts regarding the contributions of a particular people, the process to become an official designation is long, serious, requiring awareness, and appreciation of the people and those in power.¹ (HHRC Maine)

As a teacher, these national heritage months allow for learning about the history and cultures of the students sitting in the classroom. While there are not often school district prescribed lessons in curricula that follow the heritage month calendar, there has been a decades long push for Current Events lessons to “transcend the curriculum" and have “students find meaning and relevance; practice critical thinking; participate in real, organic conversations; and leave with deeper questions than those you asked” according to Romano.² Furthermore LeCompte et. al explains that students “Civic learning curricula often fail to include controversial issues or issues that address current events in communities…in an increasingly global and technologically advanced world.”³

Celebrating heritage months can easily be identified as a way to correct that. However, without lessons readily available, it has been up to teachers to seek out such topics for teaching and find or create lessons. All this depends on whether or not the teacher is ready, willing, and able to do so. This curriculum unit contains resources for teachers to use repeatedly as they celebrate AAPI with their students.

A major objective in celebrating heritage months with young students is to build cultural understanding, sensitivity, and acceptance. That is on top of geography and other social studies standards. However, when the students whose culture is being celebrated are a part of the classroom, the opportunity for teachers to practice culturally relevant pedagogy presents itself. In order for teachers to do this, they must go beyond the lessons they teach their students to build a full and well-rounded understanding of the history and culture they are teaching. To that end, it will be imperative for teachers to be familiar with some of the history and current events that affect those cultural and ethnic groups: the good, the bad, and the ugly.  “Not only must teachers encourage academic success and cultural competence, they must help students to recognize, understand, and critique current social inequities. This notion presumes that teachers themselves recognize social inequities and their causes.”⁴

Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT)⁵ has been around for over 30 years. In Gay’s Culturally Responsive Teaching she explains that a guiding principle in the theory is "improving the school success of ethnically diverse students.”⁶  The work of Ladson-Billings and Gay stand as the foundation for how teachers should approach teaching today.

Culturally Responsive Teaching is a Best Practice

Ladson-Billings first coined the phrase “Culturally Responsive Pedagogy" in the 1990s, which later became known as Culturally Responsive Teaching as more strategies were added, in response to the fact that so many African American students were underachieving academically.⁷ She asked: “Why is it that Black children are struggling to get a good education?” When she began her research she found that there were teachers that never even expected their Black students to do well in school. She later concluded that successful teachers of Black students had high expectations for academic achievement, were culturally competent, with fluency and facility in their own, and had a critical consciousness.⁸

Gay suggests clear ways to improve the classroom experience for multicultural students.⁹ First, teachers need to know the cultural characteristics and contributions of ethnic groups. Second, they need to go beyond respect and move to “acquiring detailed factual information about the cultural particularities of specific ethnic groups (e.g., African, Asian, Latino, and Native American). This is needed to make schooling more interesting and stimulating for, representative of, and responsive to ethnically diverse students.”¹⁰ The third essential component to Gay’s shift towards better teaching practices is to learn and then teach about the contributions of different ethnic groups in history. These criteria can be met with thoughtfully crafted lessons during heritage months for certain.

Much of the early literature on CRT started with and focuses on African American teachers and students. Still, the principles developed along with the theory ring true for all teachers. In 2001, Gay reported that “Teachers may know little or nothing about the contributions of Native Americans and Asian Americans in the same arenas,”¹¹ In 2026, there is little evidence that that is no longer true. Teachers need to value students’ cultural identities, always have high expectations for students as evidenced by providing a rigorous agenda, practice nonexclusionary pedagogy, be determined to build strong relationships with all stakeholders, and empower students via skills acquisition to face and challenge injustices in the world.

In order to prepare teachers to become CRT teachers, Harmon suggests that college programs and school districts do more to prepare teachers with professional development, be taught by culturally aware professors and school leaders, and other learning and experimental activities, and districts need to recruit more African American teachers.¹² These suggestions, however, can apply to teachers and students of all ethnicities. Additionally, although much of the preparation would come from college or district initiatives and programming, teachers can play a part in building their cultural sensitivity and knowledge. Furthermore, it should be understood that attitudes and feelings can affect the outcomes for teachers tasked with being culturally responsive and therefore those who are not actively trying to engage in suggested practices have and will fail. In other words, when a school district decides to make CRT a part of its “Best Practices”, teacher buy-in is crucial for its success. Additionally, Abacioglu et. al suggests that in order to engage in CRT, teachers must be open to the perspective of others, while simultaneously having a greater awareness of and appreciation for other cultures.¹³  Their study shows that teachers need to be willing and able to learn before they can teach. Exposure is a key factor and teachers should seek out experiences that put them in direct contact with the culture of their students. While one’s awareness of and appreciation for other cultures may be rather easy to demonstrate, perspectives can be a little more tricky. A person can gauge their perspectives by taking one of Harvard’s Implicit Association Tests (IAT).¹⁴ These tests allow one to see where they are in terms of unconscious bias. Identifying the issue is the first step in tackling it.

Culturally Responsive Teaching looks like books, bulletin boards, posters, and the scenarios in word problems and reading passages which reflect the ethnicity and culture of the students in your classroom. Culturally Responsive Teaching looks like a teacher familiarizing themselves with different social norms that exist outside of their own culture so that behaviors aren’t deemed disrespectful when they are just expressing a different norm. For example, eye contact is something many teachers want when reprimanding a student, but many cultures do not approve of kids making direct eye contact with an adult. It is important to know this before concluding that a student is just “ignoring” you.

One more look at Culturally Responsive Teaching in practice shows us that the way students learn and engage with learning can be different across cultures. Although educators should be careful so as to avoid complications: “the application of broad national descriptors of learning style may lead to national stereotyping and the possible inappropriate use of certain learning, teaching and assessment strategies”¹⁵, recent studies have shown that it is better to at least know about some ways that different cultures interact with the learning process so that delivery of information can be varied and meet the styles of learners. When Lopez and Bobroff looked at Diné students of different tribal or clan affiliations, the Navajo cultural core value of community played a large part in best practices:

Community collaborations provide exciting experiential education opportunities for students that help improve positive sense of self, positive associations with peers, and healthy beliefs as well as establish clear standards for behavior, ultimately keeping kids healthy, decreasing dropout and drug use rates, and minimizing depression among our students.¹⁶

CRT ties into heritage month celebrations because not only do they connect to the broader ideals of the theory, they provide a chance for students of any heritage to learn about other cultures. These new aspects of culture are often interesting and engaging to students as they provide a deeper understanding of things they may have heard about only tangentially or only seen but do not fully comprehend. This peak in interest and engagement about a culture can translate into cross curricular engagement as well. Korosidoua and Griva found that when they worked with students in a multicultural classroom writing digital narratives as a way to improve writing abilities, students felt more connected to other students who had shared autobiographical stories.¹⁷

Teaching Asian American Studies Meets an Underserved Need

Asian American Studies in high schools is a relatively new program and looks different in different places. However, considering the United States has educated nearly 2.7 million ethnically Asian students a year since 2022,¹⁸ one could argue that these programs are late in coming. Additionally, Asian Americans are the fastest growing minority,¹⁹ so this number will continue to grow. In regards to elementary and middle school students, this unit can be a part of creating a bridge to high school learning for younger kids not quite ready for all the themes and elements for those higher level programs, such as stereotypes, imperialism, and institutional racism. Certainly it can be a starting point for teachers to engage with Asian American history as preparing for engaging in AAPI heritage month celebrations.