Winter Quarter 2005: Asian American Social Movements: Strategies for Community Education
Course Staffing
Instructor: Glenn Omatsu, 52974 (messages only)
e-mail: gomatsu@ucla.edu or glenn.omatsu@csun.edu
Office hours: before and after class sessions Fridays, 2:00 - 4:50 p.m.
Room 2135 Rolfe
Course Description Three decades ago, Asian American Studies emerged from student strikes and community struggles to advance a new, holistic vision of teaching and learning. The founding vision emphasized students' responsibilities to both learn from and contribute to the communities that nurtured them. Thus, the founding vision required students to redefine the mission of universities and to transform their own lives in the process. To carry out this new vision of education, pioneers experimented with innovative practices ó e.g., such as service-learning. The founding vision saw Asian American Studies beginning in universities but then rapidly spreading into K-12 classrooms and community settings. However, thirty-five years later, the vision guiding Asian American Studies has narrowed. Today, rather than the holistic vision of Asian American Studies redefining the mission of the university, the traditional university has redefined Asian American Studies, transforming it around standard academic practices. Thus, today, classes in Asian American Studies are, for the most part, not found outside universities, and most teaching and learning occur only within the four walls of a college classroom.
This service-learning class focuses on the key role that Asian Pacific American students can play today in recovering and then expanding the founding holistic and community-based vision of Asian American Studies, especially as it relates to teaching and learning. This class provides students with hands-on training to help them use campus resources, including their academic skills, to both contribute to and learn from the communities that nurtured them.
As a class project, students will organize an educational event in a community setting to reach people not able to take Asian American Studies classes in universities. |