After Touring

After your students have toured the “AM I AN AMERICAN OR AM I NOT” exhibition, we encourage you to support them in reflecting on what they experienced and learned.  Students will benefit from activities that give them opportunities for the following:

• Consolidating what they learned from the exhibition about the WWII Incarceration of Japanese Americans by the U.S. government.
• Making connections between this history and examples of belonging, exclusion, resistance, resilience, and solidarity in other moments of history and their own experiences. 
• Responding to the exhibition by taking meaningful action towards combating “othering” and creating a more just, humane, and inclusive country.

If you can devote only a short amount of class time to debriefing your students’ experience of the exhibition, we recommend using one or both of the following activities.

• In-Class Response Activity 1: What's the Story - Prompts students to go beyond the historical detail and chronology to articulate larger insights that reflect the relevance and significance of this history in our lives today.
• In-Class Response Activity 2: Taking Action - Students consider how “othering” or exclusion happen in the world around them and brainstorm actions they can take to prevent it or lessen its harmful impact.

If you have additional time, consider using the following activity or project.

• In-Class Response Activity 3: Exploring Universal Themes - Students explore and discuss how the exhibition impacted their thinking about universal themes in history, civics, and human relationships. Recommended if you used Classroom Activity #4 before touring the exhibition.
• "This is An American" Action Project - In this multi-stage, adaptable class project, students use their voices and creativity to create their own exhibit designed to inspire their larger community to work towards a vision of American society that is inclusive, just, and humane.