National Council for the Social Studies

Resources

Chinese American History in California

"The Lonely Queue: The forgotten history of the courageous Chinese Americans in Los Angeles"
By Icy Smith
2002 Clarion Book Award, 2001 Independent Publisher Book Award Finalist

"The Lonely Queue" is an unprecedented pictorial history book which presents the vibrant and diverse contribution of the 150 years of Chinese Americans in the Greater Los Angeles area. It features bilingual text (English and Chinese) with hundreds of vintage photographs, drawings and personal memories depicting the struggle of Chinese Americans making America their home. The book is a recommended reading title for the California and U.S. history curricula.
"A bilingual book that celebrates the Chinese American community of Southern California in English and Chinese with the intimacy of a family album and the authority of a historical monograph." - Los Angeles Times
Hardcover, 9" x 12", 208 pages, $39.95, English/Chinese, ISBN 0970165412, 2001
Author Icy Smith lectures frequently on the history of Chinese Americans in schools, libraries and community groups. If you are interested to arrange an author visit and lecture, please contact East West Discovery Press at 310-532-1115, or visit http://www.eastwestdiscovery.com.

Project Look Sharp
Project Look Sharp is a non-profit organization committed to providing support, education and training to help teachers prepare students to survive in a media saturated world. Our mission is to promote and support the integration of media literacy into the classroom curricula at all grade levels and instructional areas. Project Look Sharp is a collaborative partnership between Ithaca College, regional school districts, and Tompkins-Seneca-Tioga BOCES in upstate New York.

Recent Publications: Media Construction of War: A Critical Reading of History (by Chris Sperry). Available through The Center for Media Literacy (CML)-GPN Educational Media. The kit consists of a teacher's guide, student handouts, CD-ROM, and video provides teachers with all the materials they need to engage students in dynamic and interactive process of reading and interpreting history. Through use of the slide, print and video materials in this remarkable multimedia curriculum kit, students develop critical thinking skills while learning core historical information required by state and national social studies standards. Sample pages can be found in pdf format at http://gpn.unl.edu/cml/ For more information on Project Look Sharp please visit our website at http://www.ithaca.edu/looksharp.

International Negotiation Simulation

The ICONS Project at the University of Maryland (http://www.icons.umd.edu) runs Web-based simulations every semester involving high-school students from around the U.S. and around the world. Student-teams take on the role of a country in the international system, work with classmates to develop positions, and then engage in a 3-week negotiation with students from other schools.

ICONS provides students with background information setting the context of the negotiations and data and resources on the countries they represent. Teachers are provided with these materials, sample assignments, a "bulletin board" to exchange ideas with other participating teachers, and advice and troubleshooting tips from ICONS staff. ICONS will monitor the simulation and provide teachers with feedback about their students' participation, as well.

For more information or to register for a simulation, visit http://www.icons.umd.edu.

Lewis & Clark: The National Bicentennial Exhibition Curriculum
A comprehensive online curriculum, available at http://www.lewisandclarkexhibit.org, supports the national bicentennial exhibition, which will be on view in St. Louis, Philadelphia, Denver, Portland, and Washington, D.C. The thematic units for grades 4-12 include topics like preparing for the trip, diplomacy, women, mapping, animals, language, soldiers and warriors, trade and property and curing and plants. Lessons focus on specific primary source materials in the exhibit, connect to national standards, and include assessment ideas.

Cultivating Democracy: New Book from Brookings Institution
CULTIVATING DEMOCRACY: CIVIC ENVIRONMENTS AND POLITICAL SOCIALIZATION IN AMERICA
by James G. Gimpel, J. Celeste Lay, Jason E. Schuknecht
Brookings Institution Press
https://www.brookings.edu/press/books/cultivatingdemocracy.htm

Drawing on extensive interviews with high school students from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds, this book explores how different political environments mold civic engagement, or the attitudes of youth toward government and politics.

Hardcover $ 32.95, ISBN 0-8157-3154-x
278 pages, October 2003

Race: The Power of an Illusion
Another exceptional film from California Newsreel @ www.newsreel.org

"By far the best documentary series on race of the last decade." - Troy Duster, President-Elect, American Sociological Association

The division of the world's peoples into distinct groups - "red," "black," "white" or "yellow" peoples - has became so deeply imbedded in our psyches, so widely accepted, many would promptly dismiss as crazy any suggestion of its falsity. Yet, that's exactly what this provocative, new three-hour series by California Newsreel claims. Race - The Power of an Illusion questions the very idea of race as biology, suggesting that a belief in race is no more sound than believing that the sun revolves around the earth.

By asking, What is this thing called 'race'?, a question so basic it is rarely asked, Race - The Power of an Illusion helps set the terms that any further discussion of race must first take into account. Ideal for human biology, anthropology, sociology, American history, American studies, and cultural studies.

The 3 part series is now available on DVD as well as VHS.

Race - The Power of an Illusion has a PBS companion website with lesson plans, interactivities and a wealth of educational content. Go to http://www.newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=CN0149 to learn more about this incredible film series.

Tides in Early Texas History - Texas Tides
The East Texas Research Center has recently completed a TIF grant called Texas Tides. Texas Tides is collaborative digital project between the East Texas Research Center, The Stone Fort Museum, the Sam Houston Memorial Museum, the Newton Gresham Library and the Huntsville public library. We created two web portals through Texas Tides. Half of our project is a web site geared for fourth and seventh grade Texas history students and teachers and the other half of the project is a database of over 5,000 digitized primary resources. Texas Tides may be accessed at http://tides.sfasu.edu/home.html .

Commemorating Brown v. Board of Education - The Road to Brown
The documentary film The Road to Brown has been rereleased on DVD. The film tells the story of the Brown v. Board ruling as the culmination of a brilliant legal assault on segregation that launched the Civil Rights movement. It is also a moving and long overdue tribute to a visionary but little known black lawyer, Charles Hamilton Houston, "the man who killed Jim Crow."

Moving from slavery to civil rights, this 59-minute film provides a concise history of how African-Americans finally won full legal equality under the Constitution. Its depiction of the interplay between race, law and history adds a crucial dimension to courses in U.S. History, Black Studies, Constitutional Law, Law & Society, Social Movements and Government. It opens up a discussion of the true significance of the Brown v. Board decision on the path towards racial equality. The example of Charles Houston's persistence and determination will inspire today's students to take America further down the long road to social justice.

To learn more about this inspiring film or to order a copy of The Road to Brown for your school or classroom, please visit our website at http://www.newsreel.org.

Recording of Songs and Dances from Colonial America
Professional studio recording of "Fair Liberty's Call: A Musical Story of Revolutionary America," an original musical theatre piece filled with traditional songs and dances that have been adapted for the stage. The story is based on little-known historical facts and takes place at a wayside inn located in the Colony of New York in 1775. Price $15. For more information: http://www.cdbaby.com/studiocast or http://www.fairlibertyscall.com.

Oral History and Digital Video

Telling Their Stories: Oral History Archives Project - www.tellingstories.org currently contains over 20 hours of professional-style video taped interviews with six Bay Area Holocaust surivors and refugees. The interviews were conducted by high school students at the Urban School of San Francisco using a professional-style digital video mobile studio set up in the homes of the subjects. Production teams of 3 students conducted background research, prepared questions, carried out the video-taped interviews, transcribed each 2-hour segment, and then matched text to the audio/video segments.
The result is a public website - www.tellingstories.org - that allows viewers anywhere to "read, watch, and listen" to small segments - or entire interviews.
Designed for teachers, professors, and researchers, the website is both an important growing archive of primary source history and as a model for future projects that enable viewers to read, watch and listen to compelling stories of the 20th century.
Please also be sure to visit the About the Project link for some fairly detailed descriptions and technical directions. There is also a link within the "Accolades/Press" section to the article, "Making History Come Alive: Students Interview Holocast Survivors on Camera and Publish Their Stories on the Web" published in the November edition of ISTE's "Technology and Learning" journal.

WhiteHouseTapes.org
This webpage allows visitors to access the private office tapes of six presidents- Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Nixon.
This is the only page on the web that allows free access to such resources. This is also a wonderful resource for the classroom, in a user-friendly format!
The tapes present historical events, such as the Civil Rights Movement, in a way that engages students and allows them a behind-the-scenes look at these presidencies. http://whitehousetapes.org can easily be incorporated into any presentation on the events of these presidencies, and make for a wonderful teaching resource.

The American President
This website, at http://americanpresident.org, is presented by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, the nation's leading research institute for the study of the American presidency.
Launched originally in 2000 as the online companion to "The American President" -- the six-part PBS television series produced by Kunhardt Productions --AmericanPresident.org is now an even more engaging and informative resource on the history of the presidency and the nature of contemporary policymaking. In addition to information on the Presidents themselves, we have added several new features, including:
-biographies of each first lady;
-biographies of each cabinet member;
-listings of presidential staff and advisers
-timelines detailing significant events in the lives of each administration.
The website is a great resource for Middle School and High School students to learn more about the presidents and the presidency in general!

Envision Your World
EnvisionyourWorld is an exciting new series of online lesson plans targeted for grades 4-6 that uses photography to enhance the learning of history. FREE to teachers and their students, these online, interactive guides makes make U.S. history vivid along with the study of American culture and the people and places of our towns and cities. This program --created by VayaVentures in conjunction with faculty at Teachers College, Columbia University and underwritten by Olympus -- is expertly designed to meet national standards. The site includes fully developed support lesson plans, appropriate and instructive links, a host of innovative activities for students -- and even discounts for teachers on an array of Olympus products.

Teachers are encouraged to share this program with their colleagues by sending them to http://www.envisionyourworld.com.

May Jul

National Council for the Social Studies
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