AAPI Heritage Month: Let’s Learn, Appreciate, and Act.
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, and while we want to be inclusive and celebrate diversity year-round, we also want to take this opportunity to spotlight the AAPI community.
Tutor Corps shares resources with our tutors so that they can further customize the learning experience of our students, and we’d love to share the following resources to support all students, teachers, and parents/guardians seeking to learn about, appreciate, and take action for the AAPI community.
Learn
Examine the term “Asian American” at Vox to understand how this term came to exist, where the AAPI label came from, and the positive and negative impacts this label can have on members of the AAPI community.
Read about AAPI History on the History website! The history of the AAPI community is specific to the experience of being Asian and Pacific Islander in America. By learning about AAPI history, we can have better context and understanding of current events affecting the AAPI community.
Screenshot taken from the History website.
Appreciate
Open up the Care Package, curated by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center to find poems, meditations, videos, recipes, and more.
Explore AAPI art and culture, as well as visually compelling AAPI history-makers’ profiles and online exhibits about AAPI history at Google Arts & Culture.
Screenshot taken from the Google Arts & Culture website.
Watch videos on making origami, learn about Japanese American incarceration during WWII, try activities inspired by museum collections, see video interviews, and find a printable curriculum at the Japanese American National Museum website.
Act
Over the course of the pandemic, we witnessed a rise in hate crimes and incidents against AAPI community members, and particularly Chinese Americans. Stop AAPI Hate’s most recent National Report indicated that 10,905 hate incidents against AAPI individuals were reported to them between March 19, 2020 and December 31, 2021. For anyone seeking to take action, you might consider attending a free bystander intervention training, hosted by Right To Be and Asian Americans Advancing Justice, to support the AAPI community.
Screenshot taken from the Right To Be website.
Finally, you can speak up! Tutor Corps believes in the importance of empowering students to self-advocate, and this skill can be used to make a difference within your spheres of influence. Once you have taken the time to learn about AAPI issues, you can make a difference by speaking up when you notice anti-AAPI racism or discrimination. Learning for Justice offers the Speak Up Guide and printable Pocket Guide as resources for educators seeking advice on how to respond to discriminatory remarks and how to support students in learning how to do the same.
Let’s learn about, appreciate, and act on AAPI matters this AAPI Heritage Month.