Know History, Know Self

Description: Many crucial historical perspectives are missing from classrooms all over the nation.  Specifically, Asian-American students are not properly represented in the curriculum, and in many cases, not represented at all. When a Chicago-based organization spearheads the TEAACH Act, the prospect of mandating Asian-American curriculum in Illinois schools finally becomes a possibility.

Transcript

Narrator: [00:00:00] Change Agents.

Huy M. Do: When Asian Americans Advancing Justice Chicago decided to spearhead the Teaching Equitable Asian American Community History Act, or the TEACH Act for short, in February of 2021, they knew the road ahead might be tough. Similar versions of this bill have failed in states across the country. But America's political landscape was shifting, brought on by the impacts of a global pandemic and a long overdue push for racial reckoning.

I'm Change Agents producer Huy Do. Join my co producer Emily Riley and I for Know History, Know Self, a look back at Advancing Justice Chicago's journey to make this monumental legislation a reality.[00:01:00] 

Christian Aldana: How can we begin to like reconcile America's past if we just are being completely erased from parts of it? 

Grace Pai: History is really, you know, is, is often hidden, which is what makes people believe and buy into these stereotypes, but that is actually like very easily explained if you just look at the facts.

Mary Manching: Even if you are not Asian American, I really do think that, you know, once we have these stories in our curriculum, we can take this as an opportunity to step back, reflect on these stories, and really try to learn from our past mistakes and try to do better so that we can move towards a more inclusive and just environment.

Huy M. Do: The [00:02:00] Asian American community is one of the fastest growing in the U. S. today, but very little about its history is actually taught in public schools across the country. Some educators have historically taken it upon themselves to create independent curriculum, but nothing has actually been required. But in 2020, a Chicago based organization set out to change the status quo by introducing the Teaching Equitable Asian American Community History Act, or the TEACH Act, which, if passed, would make Illinois the first state in the country to require a unit of Asian American history in every public school.

Christian Aldana: Um, well, my name is Christian Aldana. I use she and they pronouns, and I'm currently the youth organizer at Advancing Justice Chicago. I basically, uh, run and manage our youth organizing leadership development program called Kinetic, which is for immigrant and refugee high school students in Chicago Public Schools.[00:03:00] 

And also as part of my job as the youth organizer, I'm working on the implementation of the TEACH Act.

I went to a predominantly Asian school. In Asia, I did not learn any Asian history. Nothing. And I have learned more Asian American and just like Asian history period in my time living in America than I ever did that school. Which was, you know, a wonderfully well resourced school. I was very lucky to go there.

But even I didn't get to learn that. You know, I think about that sometimes and I think that that's, it's wild that I was in that environment and I didn't get to learn it. And I, and when I came here and I realized that, you know, Asian American kids who go through school also don't see themselves Often, I hear stories about racial bullying.

I [00:04:00] hear, you know, stories about like awful microaggressions that they've experienced. And I just think like, what if, what if our history was taught in schools? What if these kids, like all of them, not just the Asian American students that I work with, what if they all knew this history? You know, what difference would it make for, um, in terms of their empathy, the way that they can empathize with students of different backgrounds?

And what difference would it make to the confidence of a young person if they didn't feel like they'd been completely written out of, of the story? What a student of mine said to me just sticks in my brain is, um, so she's Filipino, um, she's in college now and she wrote an, she wrote a [00:05:00] essay about what TEACH meant to her and she opened with a quote, um, that General MacArthur said about Filipinos and I'm paraphrasing heavily here, but he said, he said something like, "Filipinos are basically like not smart enough to have independence."

In her essay, she said that was the only thing that she knew about Filipino history until she joined Asian specific groups. Youth groups. 

Mary Manching: When I went to high school, I took an a, um, AP US History class. Um, and I remember in the textbook there was one page that talked about how a bunch of nurses from the Philippines migrated to the US and then.

All the other narratives about the Philippines were about, they call it, uh, McKinley's decision to [00:06:00] colonize the Philippines because they thought the Filipinos were too unfit, too uncivilized, um, to govern themselves. And so it was his manifest destiny to save us. Um, and so When those are the only two narratives that I get about, you know, my community, it definitely feels very alienating and estranging.

Huy M. Do: That was Mary Manching, the student that Chris mentioned just a few minutes ago. As a high school student on the north side of Chicago, Mary was involved with two of Advancing Justice Chicago's youth organizing programs. And when the TEACH Act was being developed, Mary volunteered to be a youth representative on the TEACH Act Steering Committee.

Also, on the TCHAC steering committee is Laura Hoke Prabhakar, who is an educator and a representative of the Cambodian Association of Illinois. 

Laura Hoke Prabhakar: I, so I'm the daughter of Khmer Rouge genocide survivors. So I identify strongly with the Southeast Asian community, specifically the Cambodian community. [00:07:00] Um, I'm the first in my family to go through the American education system.

So, uh, growing up here, when I think back to like what it was, you know, having a childhood here, I honestly, I don't know. Was not as connected to the Cambodian community because as a way of processing their trauma, my fam, my parents disengaged our family from the community. Um, like from speaking the kamai language to even cooking the foods until we got a little older.

Um, so it was easy to kind of feel out of place over time. So I didn't quite fit in with the other Asians. I knew around me in Chicago, but I also didn't really. fit in with other Cambodians either. Um, so I just remember, you know, struggling with like grounding myself in my identity, uh, cause I didn't really learn about my own identity at home or at school.

So that eventually led to me feeling sort of this lack of pride in like my heritage and who I was. 

Huy M. Do: And so in the winter of 2020, Advancing Justice Chicago officially kick started the TEACH Act. Here's Grace Pai. The [00:08:00] executive director of Advancing Justice Chicago. 

Grace Pai: Something that we knew our community members would be interested in, right?

Like in terms of coalition partners that I think a lot of people have recognized this need, but that, you know, we had never really fully explored launching a campaign about it. 

Christian Aldana: And in 2020, we drafted a bill and we brought it to the Pan Asian Voter Engagement Coalition, which is a coalition of Like grassroots direct service organizations across the Asian diaspora community here in Chicago that we convened in, uh, 2010.

And, you know, the point of the coalition was really to, like, build power in the Asian community here in Chicago. And so naturally that was, you know, the first place that we went when we had this bill to see, What are people thought of it? So that was in spring of 2020. Um, a little bit after that, we were able to secure a main [00:09:00] sponsor for the bill in the Senate. That's Senator Ram Villavallam.

But of course, what happened in March 2020, we had, um, You know, the stay at home order came through in Chicago and just, we really started to feel the effects of this global pandemic, you know, in an ideal world, we would have introduced it into the Senate in the spring session and then had a vote on it.

But, um, because of COVID, the general assembly was only hearing bills that were around, you know, COVID relief and directly related to the pandemic. Uh, so that pushed our timeline a little bit in terms of getting the bill, Introduced into the general, uh, sorry, heard in the general assembly. 

Laura Hoke Prabhakar: I think the challenging moments were probably when, um, things kind of felt like they were at a standstill. So as you may know, like when you're on, 

Huy M. Do: That [00:10:00] was Laura from the steering committee, 

Laura Hoke Prabhakar: Like surprisingly, like it's just amazing how we were still able to get through, you know, like we were able to get everything done all like virtual, which is just like the, I guess it's like the blessing of, you know, technology working when it works.

Um, so just being like, I think. In a way, it allowed us to have more time, which is being able to, we knew that when we'd be reaching out to the community, like members, like a lot of people were usually on their phones. So like being able to call or text them and like being able to virtually build, you know, connections and relationships and support that way.

Like it really did work in our favor in that sense. 

Huy M. Do: Despite the challenges brought forward by an unprecedented pandemic, Advancing Justice Chicago spent months strategizing, rallying their community members, and eventually revitalized their campaign in the fall of 2020. 

Christian Aldana: By fall of that year, we were able to get a main sponsor for the bill in the House, so that is Representative Jennifer [00:11:00] Gongersiewicz.

Both she and Senator Rahm really championed this bill. Um, they really worked on their colleagues, and then we had people in the community, uh, meeting with their legislators, telling them why they thought, um, TEACH was so important to them. 

Mary Manching: As the youth representative on the steering committee, I was basically kind of like the intermediate, where I would update the youth members of our youth groups on what was going on with the TEACH and how they can encourage their own communities to kind of Support to teach, pressure their parents, pressure lobby, uh, pressure politicians, either through, like, writing letters or just making calls, ways that we can get youth involved.

Huy M. Do: That was Mary, the student. 

Christian Aldana: As all of this is happening throughout the year, we are getting folks to sign on. To support teach. So we had like a list of endorsers of all these organizations that would publicly support the bill, which included like everything from [00:12:00] unions to direct service orgs, to research institutes, to universities.

We were really like putting in the work to gather allies and then towards, I would say like in the fall of 2020. Going into winter is when we really kicked up a lot of the More public facing, narrative building work around TEACH. So, some of the folks in our, um, adjust shy community put together a workshop about TEACH.

Our youth put together a workshop as well that they did in the spring of 2021. Um, we had testimonies that we were collecting from community members across generations about what it would mean to them to have a bill like this passed in Illinois. 

Huy M. Do: So, by 2021, things were going pretty well for Advancing Justice Chicago.

In January, the bill was introduced to the House, and in February, to the Senate. On all [00:13:00] fronts, the campaign was coming together. Allies were gathered, bill language was drafted, and proceedings were in order. And yet, while this was happening in Chicago, in the city of Atlanta, a tragic event unfolded that would come to shake the nation.

Grace Pai: We had a, um, a hearing, a committee hearing with the House K through 12 Education Committee in March, and it ended up being the day after the Atlanta shootings. 

News Clip: 21 year old Robert Long charged with killing eight people in three separate massage parlors last night, six of them Asian women long telling police.

Grace Pai: So I remember, you know, I had a testimony written out and planned. Um, for the hearing and then got a text from our ED at the time, like that Tuesday night or whatever day of the week it was saying, you know, did you see what happened in Atlanta? And I just remember like, [00:14:00] just like the sinking, Feeling in the pit of my stomach just about the tragedy itself, right?

Like that eight people had died, six of them, Asian American women, right? Like just those early details when there was still not a lot of just media coverage of what had happened.

Laura Hoke Prabhakar: When I think of what happened with the shootings, it's like, it was very jarring, like, I think a lot of us went through that, like, shocking moment of, oh my gosh, like this [00:15:00] is happening like to us, but then in a way it's like, It brought light finally to just like everything that Asian Americans as a collective also within specific communities have been going through and enduring and just like how different like we, a lot of times like you know Asian Americans fall under this like model minority myth.

Christian Aldana: And then TEACH passed out of the house in, I believe, April of 2021. I believe in, um, the following months, it passed out of the Senate with no opposition. 

Grace Pai: We passed the House bill, then we made the revisions to the language in the Senate, and then the Senate passed the revised language, and then the House passed it again.

And so the second House vote happened on May 31st, which was the last day of session, the last possible day it could have passed.

News Clip: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I [00:16:00] rise to present House Bill 376. House Bill 376 

Christian Aldana: I heard the vote breakdown. I think that's when I was like, Oh my God, like this is going to pass. This is for sure going to pass out of the Senate.

Like this is going to be signed into law. It's happening.

News Clip: We're making Illinois the first state in the nation. Let me repeat that. We are making Illinois the first. First state in the nation to require that Asian American history will be taught in public schools.

Illinois just became the first state in the nation to require public schools to teach Asian American history. Governor signed the teaching equitable Asian American community history. It would require elementary and high schools to devote part of their curriculum to the history of Asian Americans in the U.S.[00:17:00] 

Christian Aldana: I felt I felt relieved, I felt happy, and I felt like, more than anything else, determined. I was like, okay, we're going to pass this, it's going to become a law, and then it is going to be taught well in every school in this state. So I was like, we put in so much work to get it passed, pardon me for putting it this way, but I was like, I'll be damned if folks aren't teaching this when they should, once it's a law.

Mary Manching: Oh my gosh, I was ecstatic. I, so I have this like huge group chat with, uh, I'm not huge, I am not that popular, um, I have this like group chat with some of my best friends and I truly like was all like caps exclamation points like this long rant about just like how incredibly like emotional this moment was for me like i truly did not think we would i mean i was hopeful obviously but you can never expect it to get [00:18:00] so far especially in one month there are a lot of bills that get tabled that even just like the house vote but we went so far as to get it signed By the governor, and that was a huge deal for me as someone who has from the get go grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood, didn't have many opportunities to learn about my community.

It was just really amazing to me, even as someone who won't have the opportunity to benefit from the implementation of TEACH it's still, it's still get knowing that younger generations won't have to feel the same alienation that I felt and my younger sibling and my younger sister, my younger brother, like they'll get to hear about their Filipino American his, like, history in our community and the stories that I really wish they knew about and we could talk about. And now they will. And that was just super moving for me, um, as someone who has been waiting my entire lifetime for something like this to arise.

Christian Aldana: I am really proud of the work that we did to pass [00:19:00] TEACH. And I just want to emphasize, like, this was a grassroots effort. Meaning that it came from the community and then got brought to legislators. It was not a top down situation. And You know, everyone has different theories of change, like this is our theory of change, that change has to come from the people that are most directly impacted.

So when you look at the folks who have been involved with the teach campaign, and also who are going to be involved with its implementation, we have educators from K through 12. Involved in this. We have people who have worked in school admin here. We have people who sit on local school councils. We have students, like the actual people who will be taught this involved along with like multi generational community members.

Like in the working group that I'm in, there are folks in there who have been part of Chicago Asian community for years and that are like, you know, compared to me like or the age of my [00:20:00] grandparents. And that to me is like, it's wild to be in this work and doing it with such a wide range of people. But it also speaks to like the care and intention of this kind of community organizing.

You know, it's not community organizing if we just like pulled one or two people that we were close to and we're like, hey, work with us on this. We community organizers make an effort to be out there in community and making relationships. With the people who will be most affected by these things.

Huy M. Do: Now that the TEACH Act has officially been signed into law, Advancing Justice looks ahead to the future and prepares for its implementation. 

Christian Aldana: Our priority right now is to make sure that Educators have the support that they need on all fronts to easily implement this curriculum, so that means that we are going to be launching, um, [00:21:00] free professional development trainings in 2022.

Here's Grace again to explain the TEACH Act's three working groups. 

Grace Pai: We have a curricular resource development working group that is working on developing a guidance document for teachers, a resource basically for teachers to be able to more easily connect, um, the existing learning standards that they have to meet to opportunities to integrate Asian American history and resources that they can use to integrate that history.

We have a school outreach working group that is working to do outreach directly to school districts and individual schools and teachers to be able to provide professional development resources and workshops, um, in partnership with schools to make sure that we're having kind of as broad a reach as possible, um, throughout all of Illinois.

And then we have a youth council, which is made up of current high school students, um, who want to help [00:22:00] spread the word about TEACH with their peers. And also hold their schools accountable to implementing this new requirement starting next year. 

Huy M. Do: To summarize, Advancing Justice Chicago has just one year to create adequate resources before this mandate is rolled out into all Illinois public schools.

And although one year feels like a long time, making the unprecedented TEACH Act a reality is still a huge undertaking. After all, with limited manpower and scope, Advancing Justice Chicago can only do so much before it's out of their hands. So, we spoke to Erica Thiemann, who is the Director of K 12 Curriculum and Instruction at the Illinois State Board of Education, to ask how the state board plans to implement a mandate like this.

Erica Thiemann: So in Illinois, when it comes to the mandates, we have regional offices of education, which we refer to as ROEs. [00:23:00] So they are regionally based, um, and they have, they are the ones that are tasked with monitoring for compliance for districts. So, um, The regional office of education staff will go into districts, um, that they are monitoring each year and they will do a check of the curriculum, um, to go down the list of mandates and ensure that districts are, um, appropriately addressing what the mandates require.

I, you know, I think it's always a challenge when a new mandate is put into place, especially when we look at the current context of being in a pandemic. So teachers have a lot of balls that they are juggling and so do administrators. But I do know that, you know, they all of the regional offices of education use the same tool.

When they go out and do compliance monitoring. Um, so everybody is being looked at from the same lens. Um, we, we [00:24:00] believe as a department that providing these resources, um, is really essential to the implementation. We do believe that when teachers have high quality. resources and it's, um, easy access to those that they will use them, um, just because it makes, it makes their job as a teacher, um, easier and better.

Um, so we're excited that we did have the opportunity to really provide these resources because I don't think that is always, um, I don't think that is always done. 

Huy M. Do: Meanwhile, in addition to the challenges of implementation, Kris also has some concerns about how the TEACH Act will be received. 

Christian Aldana: So, I have concerns because I am the type to always be thinking about what could happen in the future.

So I want to preface what I'm saying with like, I have not actually experienced any kind of opposition as of this [00:25:00] podcast recording. Um, but I do wonder if Asian American history, if teach will be swept up in some of this anti CRT, anti inclusive history, um, rhetoric that we're seeing. Um, I don't know if you saw like in Texas that there was something that passed around, um, Like how you teach about the KKK and that you have to try to be, um, both sides about it.

You know, things like that are not happening in Illinois, but I do know that there have been like meetings in other parts of the state around like inclusive education that have been overtaken by super conservative people. And so I'm like hoping that that doesn't happen. as TEACH is implemented across the state.

But it could. I know that there are people out there who wouldn't care for this history to be taught in schools. [00:26:00] And, you know, I do think about being prepared for that eventuality. 

Huy M. Do: These concerns about opposition, backlash, and compliance go beyond organizers and activists. Here's Dr. Mark Kleisner, the president of the Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents, sharing his thoughts about the future of TEACH.

Dr. Mark Kleisner: Um, you know, I would love to tell you that I had a magic wand and I could make sure that that happened. But you're right. And I think it's just honest to say some people will embrace the TEACH Act and it may be part of every single thing they do every day and other people may not do it at all. And we've seen that with other, with other curriculum areas.

And you're exactly right that our compliance system is largely at the district level. So, you know, [00:27:00] nobody has enough capacity or people power to get into every classroom and make sure it's being taught. But if we know that we connect with every single curriculum director and they can say, this is how we're doing it.

We know that's one step in the right direction. 

Huy M. Do: Although these issues certainly pose a challenge to the future of inclusive teaching, not just in Illinois. Grace actually sees it as a moment of opportunity. 

Grace Pai: I would say that, um, one of the really hopeful things about the TEACH Act is that we're the first, Illinois is the first state in the nation to pass a requirement to teach Asian American history.

in K through 12 public schools. I think it's really important that this happened in the Midwest and that it happened in a bipartisan way. As much as the national debate right now is about things like critical race theory, [00:28:00] I don't think that that is what your average, you know, voter or even politician at the local level is thinking about.

Certainly it shapes the broader context within people are making, within which people are making decisions. But, you know, how much is that really resonating on the ground? I think that, you know, it's really important that we had as much Republican support as we did because it provides that hope for other places that you don't have to be a Democratic trifecta to pass legislation that uplifts the history of marginalized communities. 

Huy M. Do: If you've listened all the way to this point, you probably already know that this episode is titled, Know History, Know Self. This phrase didn't actually come out of nowhere, Chris brought it up in our first ever meeting with her, and apparently this wasn't [00:29:00] just a cool turn of phrase, it's an organizing slogan that has moved through organizing spaces for over a century.

Christian Aldana: Jose Rizal is a, uh, Filipino historical figure who was part of the, like, independence from Spain movement in the Philippines way back. And he has a quote in Tagalog that basically, paraphrased in English, amounts to like, you need to know where you come from in order to know where you, where you are going, like to know yourself.

Hearing that when I was much younger really hit me. I was like, yeah, what do I know? about my people and my history. And, you know, then I started to learn and I really changed so many things about, like, the way I view the world, but also how I saw myself and, like, feeling rooted and connected in my identity and who I am.

[00:30:00] So instead of letting other people decide for me where I belong or who I'm supposed to be in, like, write a narrative for me, like, feeling rooted in my history made me have the confidence to be like, no, I write my own story, not y'all. Not white people.

Narrator: Thank you for joining Change Agents. Produced by Juneteenth Productions. Funding support from the Chicago Community Trust and the Field Foundation. Please subscribe to our series on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you find podcasts. Do you have a story to share? Join us in the ongoing conversation on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, And our website, changeagentsthepodcast.com [00:31:00].