Typical American Lesson Plans and Teaching Resources

BECOMING AMERICAN: The Chinese Experience
Becoming American: The Chinese Experience is a PBS companion site to Bill Moyer’s television special. The link below is to the Eyewitness section of the site and an interview of Gish Jen. (Click “Full Transcript Interview” to read the entire interview.) On the same page is a link to a two-minute video about the childhood experiences of Chinese-American writer Shawn Wong.
The Becoming American site also includes a timeline of the Chinese American experience from 1800 to 2000; from it you can access select video clips from the show. (These could be projected in class or assigned as homework.) Also from the timeline you can access several first-hand accounts of the Chinese-American experience, including an account from the 50s.

The 12-page viewer's guide for BECOMING AMERICAN: The Chinese Experience is aimed at high school teachers and provides program summaries, timelines, and bibliographies. It also features a variety of historical photographs and other primary sources. Questions and activities accompany these materials “to aid viewers in an exploration of the complicated relationship between individual, ethnic, and national identity.” Pages 15-18 of the guide focus on the Chinese experience in the United States from the end of World War II to the 1980s.
Download the guide from the link below.
http://www.pbs.org/becomingamerican/ap_viewersguide.html

You can watch a trailer of the series from the BECOMING AMERICAN home page. The DVD costs $99.95.
http://www.pbs.org/becomingamerican/index.html

Voices From the Gaps: GISH JEN
Voices From the Gaps is a World Wide Web project from the University of Minnesota that focuses on the lives and works of women writers of color in North America. Each author page presents biographical, critical and bibliographical information about the writer, as well as images and quotes pertinent to her life and works. Each page also includes links to other resources on the web that provide information about the writer.

Gish Jen
From Georgetown University, a brief overview of teaching strategies and discussion questions for Jen's novels -- including a summary of the themes and issues that characterize her work.

Angel Island: Immigrant Journey of Chinese Americans
From 1910-1940, Chinese immigrants were detained and interrogated at Angel Island immigration station in San Francisco Bay. At this site you can read brief accounts from several detainees at Angel Island.

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