If you are an educator teaching about East Asia, these featured resources are designed for you. The websites linked below offer informative primary sources, organized curriculums, exhaustive resource collections, and other classroom materials aimed at bringing East Asia and Asian America into the classroom. In addition to the generalized resources on East Asia featured here, resource pages designated to specific East Asian countries (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan) are linked below. You can also find many other online materials on the Resources page at NCTA's website. Be sure to also visit NCTA's Partner Sites who provide excellent content on East Asia for K-12 educators.
Country-specific resource guides:
Other resource guides:
Mulan Lunar New Year Asia Across the Curriculum Silk Road Chinese Religiophilosophies The Uyghur Crisis
Asia for Educators (AFE) is an initiative of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University. This tool is designed to be used by students and educators at all levels. The provided teaching modules span many topics, including literature, art, world history, and more!
Education About Asia | Association for Asian Studies
Since the publication of its inaugural issue in 1996, Education About Asia (EAA) has been an invaluable teaching resource for middle and high school teachers. Featuring articles on all areas of Asia, with subjects ranging from ancient cultures and literature to current events; extensive print and digital resources including films, books, videos, curriculum guides, websites, software, and other useful educational tools; plus thematic issues on topics of particular interest. EAA is available in print or readers may access highly searchable digital archives of over 1,500 articles, teaching essays, and lesson plans for no charge.
Children's books are highly effective teaching resources for elementary students. Kids love the engaging language and the bright illustrations that children's books utilize to make literature accessible to young audiences. For this reason, NCTA co-sponsors the Freeman Book Awards to center works by Asian and AAPI authors and stories that center Asia or Asian diasporas. The Freeman awards spotlight outstanding works for both children and young adults.
The Asia Society Center For Global Education offers lesson plans with creative, formative activities to increase global competency among students from a variety of grade levels. These lessons can fit easily into tight curriculums as they tend to span one to three class periods, and they cover a wide range of cultures. Though not all of the resources are centered around Asia, each focus on global culture and allow for Asia to be a significant element in the lesson.
Lessons from Gay and Lesbian Activism in Asia
The right to equality for LGBTQ+ communities in Asia has been a constant struggle in modern history and activists today are working hard to secure impartiality, freedom from workplace discrimination, and marriage equality. With the importance of LGBTQ+ activism within the context of world history and key international issues, it is essential to include this activism in the narrative and learn from its wins and setbacks. This article, written by Ben Capell and Sherif A. Elgebeily, focuses on LGBTQ+ activism in the leading sinophone nations and the successes and struggles of these movements.
Visualizing Cultures is an image-driven scholarship platform developed by MIT in 2002. It's goal is to "use new technology and hitherto inaccessible visual materials to reconstruct the past as people of the time visualized the world (or imagined it to be)." It features a series of topical units focused on East Asia. Visualizing Cultures develops image-driven scholarship and provides the public with previously inaccessible visual primary sources, allowing teachers and students alike to visualize the past. Each unit in the Visualizing Cultures collection is interactive with essays split into sections and punctuated by related images that bring the history to life. MIT Visualizing Cultures can be used in grades 6-12 history classrooms.
Resources and Strategies for Teaching about Asian America and Responding to Anti-Asian Racism | NCTA
Now more than ever it is necessary for educators to know how to respond to Anti-Asian racism and to create curriculums that effectively teach about Asian America. This toolkit provides resources that offer teachers contemporary context, tools for teaching about Asian American histories, strategies for becoming anti-racist, and information on supporting the mental and emotional health of students facing anti-Asian racism. These resources include articles written by educators, activists, and sociologists as well as highly acclaimed video lessons that provide valuable historical context and information for teaching procedures. Many thanks to the Program for Teaching East Asia at the University of Colorado Boulder for this compilation of resources. For more information on this topic, please visit our page titled Teaching China in the Age of Covid-19.
Storytelling Through Asian Art | Detroit Institute of Arts
The Detroit Institute of Arts has developed a lesson resource titled "Storytelling Through Asian Art" which, through a blend of classroom and simulated museum experiences, teaches elementary students about East Asian art and the meaningful materials and symbols used therein. The materials available for download include: an educator resource in the form of a detailed lesson plan targeted for grades 2-5, a complete lesson slideshow in PDF format, an exhaustive list of artwork for the lesson along with sources, and a PDF with additional resources including artwork and activities. "Storytelling Through Asian Art" is available for download free of charge on the Detroit Institute of Arts website.
Teachable Indonesia: Grades K-8 | University of Washington Southeast Asia Center
The University of Washington's Southeast Asia Center has created a resource titled "Teaching Indonesia". This resource is engaging for grades K-8 and approaches Indonesian culture from many topics such as geography, language, politics, religion, social media, food culture, folk tales, music, and science. As "Teachable Indonesia" covers a variety of aspects of Indonesia, it can be used in classroom discussions of many subjects.
Teacher Packets on Asian American and Pacific Islander Arists | Asian Art Museum
Include AAPI artists in your art classroom using this guide created by the Asian Art Museum! Resources include artist biographies, interdisciplinary lesson plans, and hands-on art activities.
The Center for East Asian Studies | University of Chicago
The Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Chicago has a great list of digital resources for educators and learners. Included in this list are links to engaging lesson plans and classroom materials, as well as professional development organizations. Educators can reference this resource compilation for subjects ranging from contemporary issues to ancient history.
This unit plan, created by Asian Americans Advancing Justice, introduces middle and high school students to LGBTQ civil rights with an emphasis on the struggle for marriage equality. Students learn about ideas, events, and individuals that influenced George Takei and his decision to come out as an advocate for LGBTQ rights and contextualize the fight for LGBTQ rights as an extension of the Civil Rights Movement. The unit culminates in an essay assignment in which students analyze how the discussed events, people, and ideas influenced the struggle for marriage equality.
We are not a stereotype | Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center
We are not a stereotype is a video series made by educators for educators centered around Asian Pacific Americans and impacts of stereotypes.