A University of California, Davis history program has won a $190,000 grant that will help improve the Chinese American history curriculum in California, The Sacramento Bee reports.
The National Endowment for Humanities awarded $250,000 to The History Project, a UC Davis program that provides professional learning for teachers in order to improve history/social science curricula.
“Building Community in California: The Chinese American Experience,” one of The History Project’s workshops, received $190,000 to educate 72 teachers in California on Chinese American history and help them design curricula.
Robyn Rodriguez, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Asian American Studies, and Stacy Greer, director of The History Project, will serve as co-directors of the workshop, according to UC Davis.
“There is this vast knowledge that’s been produced by Asian American Studies scholars that we think many educators may not have had access to,” Rodriguez told The Sacramento Bee. “We’re really excited to be able to have this chance to share among a broader audience, giving them this unique lens into the Chinese American experience, but really also the broader Asian American experience.”
Rodriguez and Greer told The Sacramento Bee that California history curricula often overlooks Asian Americans, African Americans, California indigenous populations and other communities of color.
“We tend to focus on (John) Sutter and the Gold Rush (in California’s history education),” Greer said. “But there’s so many other layers here. We always tell the same stories and we don’t get to the other communities whose stories haven’t been told. This is just one example.”
The goal of program is to help teachers tell those other stories. Workshop participants will even take field trips to California landmarks that are significant to Chinese American history like Angel Island and the Donner Summit.
The grant comes as other California educators push for history and social science curricula to reflect the state’s diverse history. California State University students and faculty have introduced a bill that would make ethnic studies a graduation requirement.
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