my first workshop!

i just finished teaching my first 5-week workshop, "asian american experience," through asian arts initiative.  overall, i'm excited about how it went and i definitely want to keep teaching in this capacity.  at first, i was really nervous.  this workshop was something i felt i'd pulled out of thin air.  sure, my ideas were grounded in my interests, in my undergraduate studies, and in my community activism, but i felt so unsure of whether i could really do this.  still, teaching workshops is something i'd wanted to do for a long time and this summer, i knew i'd get my chance.

it started as just an idea.  i knew that i wanted to work with other asian americans in the city and teach asian-american history, literature, and experience.  when i met toni at asian arts initiative and talked with her about the possibility of doing a workshop, i found that it was work she felt was really important as well and that she wanted to help make this happen.  over the summer, she worked with other organizations like philly chinatown development corp (pdcd) to recruit interested youth and in the fall, we set up a date to get started.  i decided to design a 5-week workshop, did research in my own very small library, as well as at penn's library, and developed a syllabus.  then, toni found 6-9 high-schoolers who were interested in attending.

in october, we met for the first time as a group; we began talking and learning about asian american history, sharing our own histories, and making connections between the two.  over the course of the next few weeks, we covered a lot of history: early immigration, chinese and sikh railroad and mine workers' history, violence, anti-chinese immigration law, stereotyping, racial microaggressions, racism, violence, present-day struggle.  our workshop was held half in english and half in chinese, all guided by pcdc's xu lin, who acted as a translator, but also offered a lot of his own insights and experiences.  i don't think i could ever have imagined such a well-balanced dynamic as the one he created.  it felt as if not a single comment or idea was lost in translation and as if everyone was given opportunities to share their stories and ask questions.  i hope the students felt this way as well.

the last couple weeks of the workshop went kind of strange.  first, a storm and the flu prevented most of the kids from attending the fourth session.  the septa strike prevented our fifth meeting as well.  so, we postponed our last class to this past week.  still, the flu kept most kids from attending and the last meeting was just slightly anticlimactic.  only two students showed up, but the three of us (and my coordinator toni) had a great talk, focusing on the vincent chin case (and trials) and on present-day violence, including violence and misunderstandings that they deal with in their philadelphia schools (read more here: asian students under assault).  all in all, the workshop went well and i'm excited to continue this work in the future.