Explore a curated collection of resources designed specifically for educators teaching about East Asia and Asian America. Below, you’ll find links to primary sources, structured curriculums, comprehensive resource collections, and other classroom materials to enrich your lessons. You can filter your search by grade level, region, state standard, and resource type, or just search for a specific topic or keyword. Additionally, don’t miss the excellent content available through NCTA’s Partner Sites, tailored to support K-12 educators in bringing East Asia into the classroom.
Lu Xun presents a diary-style short story where the protagonist imagines being surrounded by cannibals. Through the protagonist’s delusions, Lu Xun delivers a potent critique of conventional Chinese society, specifically targeting the oppressive and dehumanizing aspects of traditionalist and Confucian values.
This resource examines the New Culture Movement in China, featuring primary sources from Chen Duxiu, Chiang Kai-shek, and Mao Zedong, which highlight the intellectual debates and ideological shifts that shaped China’s modern transformation from 1916 to the 1940s.
This resource explores the Boxer Rebellion, an anti-foreign and anti-Christian uprising in late 19th-century China, where martial arts-practicing peasants known as “Boxers” attacked foreign legations and Christian communities, prompting a multi-national military response and marking a pivotal moment in China’s history and its interactions with global powers.
Compiled by students in Dr. Zach Smith’s HIST 2310: Introduction to Asian History course at the University of Central Arkansas, this student-created resource guide examines the Tibetan Uprising within the broader context of colonial encounters in Asia. The guide provides historical background on the 1950 Chinese invasion of Tibet and the 1959 uprising, along with timelines, biographies, key texts, discussion questions, and suggestions for further reading. Designed for classroom use, this resource helps students and educators explore the political, cultural, and human consequences of Chinese expansion and Tibetan resistance.
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.
This pdf document is a fantastic resource for art, art history, and religious studies teachers who want to bring Korean culture into their classroom. Korean Art and Culture: A Teacher’s Sourcebook features the Korean Art Collection of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts and contains vibrant images and informative essays about the collection. This enlightening sourcebook details many diverse forms of Korean art and whether it be paper crafts, embroidery, or pottery, you will be sure to learn something new! Also included in this resource is a glossary of symbols that are abundant in Korean art. The Peabody Essex Museum has much to offer and will inspire you to share the art and culture of Korea with your students.
The World History Digital Education foundation features a lesson plan library with free resources to help students and teachers learn about Korea. The lesson plans cover a variety of subjects for grades K-12 including geography, religion, history, culture, economic development, and the Korean War.
Asia For Educators, at Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asia Institute, has compiled a collection of resources for K-5 teachers. This collection is centered around Korea and offers resources for a wide variety of subjects: geography, language, culture, history, science, math, literature, arts & crafts, and drama & music.
The Korea Society is a private, nonprofit organization that is dedicated to the promotion of greater awareness, understanding, and cooperation between the people of the United States and Korea. On their site they have a vast collection of resources for teachers that include: readings with background context for getting to know Korea, multiple engaging pdf documents that cover topics from the Silla Dynasty to the Korean War, and a large collection of lesson plans that contain all the information necessary for crafting dynamic and effective lessons. Educational resources from The Korea Society are free to use and make it easy to center Korea in your classroom.
This high school lesson from the World History Digital Education Foundation uses K-pop as a case study to help students understand globalization and cultural exchange. Students analyze how Korean popular music has been shaped by global influences and how it, in turn, influences cultures worldwide through media, economics, and politics.
From the book Hallyu! The Korean Wave (London: Victoria and Albert Museum), this introductory essay provides a concise overview of the emergence of the Korean Wave (Hallyu) in relation to pivotal points in Korean history.
“What is Korean popular music (K-pop) and how is it different from American popular music? How does it continue to attract new audiences despite linguistic barriers? In North America many people have only recently heard about K-pop, the genre-fluid industry that is taking the world by storm. As top stars have appeared on all the major American late night interview programs, and caused a sensation internationally K-pop has emerged as a cultural force far from its homeland. In this presentation I will sketch the history of this industry, from entertaining American troops in the 1950s and 1960s, through protest music and to the emergence of K-pop. I will outline how the Korean government changed its policy vis-à-vis the industry until it became part of policy level discussions for soft power and nation branding. Then through an examination of the adroit use of the internet to reach disparate audiences we will
