Update on Asian American & Pacific Islander studies in CT

Make Us Visible CT is advocating for SB 678, a bill to include Asian American and Pacific Islander studies in the Connecticut high school social studies curriculum. If you're interested in supporting the initiative, fill out this quick form.

At a town hall on March 6, public school teachers, scholars and students shared comments on the bill, and discussed why it’s important to incorporate Asian American studies material and Asian American analytics into K-12 classrooms. 

"We're not just trying to add one more group to the multicultural menu,” Pawan Dhingra, author and professor of American studies at Amherst College, said. "That does matter— representation is fundamental. But beyond that, we'd better develop critical thinking skills about our own place by understanding the experiences of groups who don't fit our standard version of history. We're doing a benefit to all of us when we think about our history, our culture, our nation, through the experiences of groups who typically aren't in that conversation."

 Isa Zou and Jason Lee, ARTLC research interns, presented the ARTLC’s in-progress Asian American and Pacific Islander curriculum resource database. It currently includes more than 110 lesson plans, with information on grade level, content area, and standards. It also includes websites, books, and films to use in the classroom. The database will eventually be hosted in a searchable online format. Access the working spreadsheet here. If you have any comments or suggestions for resources to add, please email isabella.zou@yale.edu and jason.j.lee@yale.edu.

Learn more about the bill and its proponents in this Courant article. Read more here about efforts in Connecticut to address rising cases of individual, explicit acts of anti-Asian racism.

Written by the ARTLC Team