AAPI PERSPECTIVES THEME: Transformation and Change
GRADE LEVEL: 12
SUBJECT: U.S. Government
INTENDED UNIT: Unit 4 (American Political Ideologies and Beliefs) of the AP/US Government Curriculum
ESSENTIAL QUESTION:
How does racial formation influence political participation and ideology
Why are politics an important avenue for change in racial equity?
CENTRAL QUESTIONS/BIG IDEAS:
How do Asian American communities show us the power of advocacy and political mobilization?
How might we learn from Asian American communities to advocate for political topics of our own?
LESSON PACING:
This lesson is meant to be done in a 95 minute block period. It can easily be turned into 2 lessons, each with a 50 minute block period. As there should be one more lesson for this week, feel free to utilize that lesson for the concepts not covered by the past 3, notably polls and voting. The contents of this 3 part unit cover political ideologies, culture, and socialization.
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday/Thursday
Friday
CONTENT OBJECTIVE:
Knowledge: This lesson is intended to build off of the content of the past few lessons. As such, there is no new knowledge to cover and rather, this lesson serves as a summative project or major formative assessment to ensure that students have internalized the information from the past couple of class sessions. The following shown below are a compilation of information taught in the prior two lessons
Day 1
Political Ideology: A set of ideas, beliefs, values, and opinions, exhibiting a recurring pattern, that competes deliberately as well as unintentionally over providing plans of action for public policy making in an attempt to justify, explain, contest, or change the social and political arrangements and processes of a political community.
Political Socialization: The learning process by which people develop an understanding of their political identities, opinions, and behavior. Through various agents of socialization, such as parents, peers, and schools, the lifelong experiences of political socialization play a key role in developing the traits of patriotism and good citizenship.
Agents of Socialization: a combination of social groups and social institutions that provide the first experiences of socialization. Families, early education, peer groups,the workplace, religion, government, and media all communicate expectations and reinforce norms.
Political Culture: It encompasses the deep-rooted, well-established political traits that are characteristic of a society. Political culture takes into account the attitudes, values, and beliefs that people in a society have about the political system, including standard assumptions about the way that government works.
Hegemony: the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group
White Supremacy: The sociological ideology that there is a dominance of white, upper middle class culture and ways of practice in the U.S./the society of the world at-large.
Day 2
The Official Language of the United States: The United States does not formally recognize an official language, but note how some states will recognize English as their formal language, in spite of a variety of languages being spoken in this country
Multiculturalism: The understanding of the pre-existing power dynamics involved with having a multi-ethnic society with a variety of different values and ways of being.
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996: The United States implemented a law (over President Clinton’s veto) limiting the amount of welfare low income residents of the country can receive in order to encourage them to find jobs more quickly and reduce the unemployment rate
The DREAM Act: A part of a legal attempt to allow children at risk of deportation to receive legal protections and attain permanent residential status in the U.S.
Skills:
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
Key Ideas and Details
2: Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary that makes clear the relationships among the key details and ideas.
Key Ideas and Details
Habits:
Agency and self-advocacy for deep and impactful personal issues
Application of student-led activism in student communities
GRADE LEVEL/SUBJECT AREA STANDARDS:
CA ELD STANDARDS:
IEP/504 ACCOMMODATIONS:
INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS
Slides (link)
Connie Young Yu Oral History 2 (39:49 >> 49:36)
Ash Kalra Oral History (1:23:00 >> 1:27:11); (1:31:36 >> 1:36:39)
Mini Project Student Worksheet (link)
Mini Project Exemplar (link)
LESSON IMPLEMENTATION SEQUENCE:
Step 1: Do Now
Duration: 5-10 minutes
Purpose: This activity serves as a refresher for students, notably on the past lesson and the forms of political activism they might be interested in based on their personal lives/interests
Implementation:
Students will be asked to revisit the exit ticket that they completed in the last lesson and go over the one that stands out to them the most. They will be utilizing that topic to help them with their lesson/project today.
Resources/Materials: Slides 1-3
Assessment: N/A
Step 2: Instructional Activity
Duration: 15 minutes
Purpose: By using more familiar clips, the goal is for students to now analyze these interview clips from a different angle. Yesterday, they looked for the interviewee’s political affiliation, along with how they claim to have made a positive impact with their communities. For this lesson, students will be asked to analyze the processes and steps these interviewees took in order to have the impacts that they made. While there are ways to advocate immediately for political change, there are also many moments where lifetime political change and advocacy takes time and thought. This analysis is meant for that kind of context, where students can consider and think about how their lives can be a reflection of transformation for their communities
Implementation:
To begin, we will be analyzing the interview clips from yesterday again, but this time, analyzing and breaking down the specific steps each interviewee took in order to get to the place of activism and agency that they were at towards the end of the interview/their respective careers.
Challenge students to consider what one can learn from their experiences to advocate for a form of activism of their own
Resources/Materials:
Slides 4-7
Connie Young Yu Oral History 2
Ash Kalra Oral History
Assessment: N/A
Step 3: Project Introduction
Duration: 5 minutes
Purpose: This is when students will be provided with more tangible, grounded information on the requirements of this mini-project. For students, this offers detailed, concrete expectations of what they are supposed to accomplish, allowing them to feel and be more prepared for their independent practice.
Implementation:
In this step, students will be introduced to the transformative change project. In this one day project, students will be tasked with forming an activism plan/proposal in regards to how they intend on enacting the change that they were considering in the last class. How might they leverage their personal life’s relatability in order to enact systemic change in society?
Resources/Materials:
Slides 8-9
Student Worksheet
Assessment: N/A
Step 4: Exemplar Analysis
Duration: 5 minutes
Purpose: While this might conceptually make sense, an exemplar and frame of reference might be helpful for students to ground their thoughts in a concrete example. At this stage, it may also be beneficial to perform a “call back” to the prior lesson with your own story of activism and why you are an educator today. That way, students are able to make a connection between your example and the specifics of how it can be listed out in detail and expanded on.
Implementation:
Present to students an example of a type of agency that you have also created to show students what political activism looks like from a personal level. Present examples to students that reflect activism and transformational change that stems away from the traditional forms that they might be aware of (notably public protesting). How are different forms of activism (like legislative, career based, research based) bringing forth unique ways of change for different communities?
Utilize this opportunity to also go over any student questions about your exemplar (provided in the lesson plan) before you begin introducing the project to students
Resources/Materials:
Slides 10
Exemplar
Assessment: N/A
Step 5: Independent Work Time
Duration: 60 minutes-end of class
Purpose: Students will now be given time to research and work on their own political activism mini-projects.
Implementation:
Students will be released to start working on this Transformative Change Project. By the end of class, students are expected to have completed an overview/reflection of the kind of transformative change they want to enact in their communities. They will have had to include a thinking step that one of the interview clips mentioned within their plan, along with a tangible date of what a “first step” towards the advocacy of their topic of choice looks like.
At the end of the project document, students will be asked to reflect on what this project experience was like for them, challenging them to consider how their actions today have very possibly been the first of many stepping stones towards their unique political involvement and advocacy for their community.
This project can be extended to Friday to allow for students to work on their projects outside of class further.
Resources/Materials: Slides 11
Assessment: N/A
SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENTS
This project is considered a type of activism project for the sake of inspiring students to brainstorm how to enact positive societal change through championing political freedoms and civil liberties.