The International High School at Prospect Heights, Brooklyn NY
Study the legacy of the Vietnam-US War in Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Philippines by experiencing former refugee camps, volunteering with community development projects, and collecting interviews to center the Vietnamese experience for recently arrived immigrant and refugee Multilingual Language Learners.
Visiting The War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City was a powerful experience as it reaffirmed that museums are not neutral. I documented how countries around the world (including where my students immigrated from) protested in favor of Vietnam.
Pulau Bidong, Malaysia- the first refugee camp where my mother and most of her siblings resided upon their exodus from Vietnam in 1979. I cannot wait to integrate these visuals and videos into my unit to humanize the refugee experience.
The Philippine Refugee Processing Center (PRPC), was the last refugee camp my mother and her family stayed at before coming over to the U.S. The Filipino government has revitalized the area surrounding the PRPC- now called Bataan Technology Park.
The province of Quang Tri experienced nearly 40% of all explosive ordnance used during the Vietnam War. The NGO PeaceTrees Vietnam has been conducting explosive ordnance removal for almost 30 years. It was a privilege to witness how the team worked.
After Vietnam began its economic reforms during the 1990s, the number of motorbikes grew from 500,000 in the 1990s to almost 14 million in 2005. The motorbike is the most ubiquitous form of travel. Here I am about to ride with my aunt and uncle.
I took a spontaneous expedition to learn about the green sea turtles in Malaysia. I got to dive near these gentle creatures near Redang Island. I also learned about how climate change and habitat loss has made them critically endangered.
Củ Chi tunnel was a network of tunnels outside of Saigon used by Vietnamese guerrillas in their fight for liberation against French colonial rule and U.S. imperialists. I marveled with shock and awe as I struggled to navigate through the dark tunnels. Pulau Bidong, Malaysia- the first refugee camp where my mother stayed. By June 1979, there were 40,000 people living at a small camp no bigger than a football field. As I toured the island, I reflected on how my mother felt as a child refugee.
Going to different museums has helped me understand the politics of representing Vietnamese history. Through conversations with tour guides, family members, former students and colleagues, I realize that the global Vietnamese identity is complex. How people living in Vietnam self-identify differs and clashes against how members of the Vietnamese diaspora identify. Being Vietnamese American is to fully grapple with these contradictory narratives and hold that they are all truths.
I was expecting to meet with and interview family members in Ho Chi Minh City and Quy Nhon about their memories during and after the Vietnam War. Through interviewing my aunt, I found out about my cousins in the city of Pleiku, helping me reconnect with them for the first time in over 23 years. When I visited them, I was able to see the home that my mother grew up in as a child. I also learned about how different family members were affected by Agent Orange. This experience was very emotional.
My journey has helped me trace the ongoing repercussions and legacies of colonialism / imperialism, further solidifying my belief that everything is political. This gives me greater confidence in supporting my students in their sociopolitical awakenings. I will have students examine political cartoons and statistics produced by the Vietnamese government during the Vietnam War and compare that with how American textbooks typically discuss the impact of the war.
I plan to splice the recorded footage and pictures I have of the different refugee camps I visited into one large video. Students will then be tasked to examine this crafted material and write down their initial impressions prior to reading an article about the history of the Vietnamese refugee experience. Then they will be tasked to reflect on how the video and article helped them learn. If feasible, they will then draw parallels between their journeys to the U.S. and the Vietnamese refugees.
Given that my Fund for Teacher fellowship focuses on expanding the narratives regarding the Vietnam War, I have been collaborating with Professor Christian Lentz of the University of North Carolina due to his research focus on Vietnam. Along with several other teachers, we will be submitting a piece to the American Historical Review. Our piece, scheduled for March 2025 publication, will focus on how high school teachers integrate scholarly sources and fieldwork to produce innovative pedagogy.