Asia & Pacific Islands
Lessons address stories, letters, and folk tales that focus on Peace Corps Volunteer experiences in Asia and the Pacific islands.
- A Single Lucid Moment Lesson
- Students will wrestle with resolving contrasting values between cultures.
- Asha's Village
- Asha, a young girl living in India, takes the reader on a virtual journey through her village. She offers a glimpse into aspects of her culture and daily life while introducing a variety of words in Hindi. By seeing components of a village in India, students can compare and contrast daily life in India with their own. In doing so, they can see that although people may have differences in country of origin, foods, or language, we are more alike than different.
- Breaching the Gulf Between Cultures
- Students delve further into the dynamics, the challenges, and the rewards of adjusting to a new culture, as illustrated by the author's account of his father's coming to terms with Sri Lankan customs.
- Celebrating Our Connections Through Water
- In this unit, students will reflect on the role of water in ceremonies and celebrations around the world. Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) vignettes will provide the basis for researching and collecting data to be organized into a class celebrations chart. As a culminating activity, students will set up learning stations and host a celebration of Water Day, leading younger students on a rotation of the stations
- China by the Numbers
ESOL language proficiency level: advanced
In reference to China's burgeoning population, Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Matthew Scranton ponders the question, "Can you conceive of 1.3 billion anything? In this lesson, students will learn about place value, exponents and how there's a number amount for everything.
- Coming to Terms With Cultural Differences
- Students will discover that it is possible to be challenged and "culture-shocked" by the norms of one's own culture when returning home from having been away and living in another culture. They will also examine and compare the customs of modern marriages with the customes of traditional, arranged marriages.
- Confronting Two Challenges—One Physical, One Intellectual
- Students will examine how the author confronted the challenges of a new language and a new culture.
- Encountering Very Different Ways of Life
- In a captivating and amusing account, the author shows just how challenging it is for someone to move from a familiar to an unfamiliar culture and then deal with adjusting to the new environment.
- Food Culture Photo Essays
- After viewing a slide show from a Peace Corps Volunteer in China, students will use Peace Corps' Mandarin Chinese language lessons to develop their own food culture photo essay.
- How Cultures Differ—Two Different Perspectives on the Same Event
- Students will examine the author's running race from two different cultural perspectives to see just how different the effects of culture can be.
- How a Writer Conveys Descriptions With a Wallop
- Students will identify strategies the author used to vividly convey qualitative and quantitative aspects of life in China, then use those strategies in writing of their own.
- I Had a Hero Lesson
- Students examine what it takes to make a hero.
- Just Like the Old Days
- Students will examine and experience roles and customs of rural Mongolians through role-playing, and they will compare unfamiliar roles from Mongolia with everyday roles in the United States.
- Linking Geography and Food
- Students will explore the ways that physical and human geography can contribute to the food culture of another world region.
- Living by the Book
- Reading for pleasure or cultural sensitivity? Guide your students through the cultural complexities of life on a Fijian island.
- Out With the Old, In With the New
- Students learn about China's cultural and economic complexities through a slide show that is written, read, and photographed by a Peace Corps Volunteer.
- Population and Agriculture
- Students will use information from Peace Corps Volunteer Amy Throndsen's slide show about her experience in China, as a springboard for investigating numerical relationships between population and agriculture.
- Protecting Philippine Reefs
- As fish populations plummet, Peace Corps Volunteer Tommy Schultz works with Filipinos to restore the sea life that the local people depend on for food. After watching the slide show, Protecting Philippine Reefs, students will recognize how intertwined human existence is with the health of ecosystems, identifying positive and negative impacts that people can have on their local environment.
- Reef Results, Problem-Solving and Solutions
- As fish populations plummet, Peace Corps Volunteer Tommy Schultz works with Filipinos to restore the sea life that the local people depend on for food. After watching the slide show, Protecting Philippine Reefs, students will recognize how intertwined human existence is with the health of ecosystems, identifying positive and negative impacts that people can have on their local environment. They will also practice reading fluency and new vocabulary in sentence construction and writing.
- Respect for Authority
- Students will examine just how a Peace Corps Volunteer working in a culture steeped in subordination encourages local young people to challenge authority and participate in their governance.
- Sea Turtle Math
- Students are introduced to a real-world conservation issue through Peace Corps Volunteer Sarah Klain's slideshow about sea turtle populations in Palau. Given data on the current status of Hawksbill Turtles, students use algebra to complete a mathematical puzzle, in which they predict how much longer Hawksbills will nest in Palau if their current rate of decline continues. Students discuss current conservation efforts in Palau and make recommendations for future strategies.
- Serious Doodling
- Students examine cartoons drawn by a Volunteer serving in the country of Jordan.
- Sleuthing a Writer's Skills
- Students will closely examine the author's lively text to determine how she achieved her many literary effects.
- The Blind Men and the Elephant
- Students will examine the importance of perspective in how people perceive things.
- The Rigors of Learning a New Language
- Students will consider the immensity of the the task the author undertook to learn Chinese.
- Tsunami! Examining Earth’s Most Destructive Waves
- Students will investigate just what a tsunami is, what causes it, how fast it travels, what it looks like, and its devastating effects upon landfall.
- Under the Tongan Sun
- Enjoy a day in the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer living in Tonga.
- Using Effective, Amusing Writing As a Model
- Students will use the author's writing as a model to achieve vivid description and engaging humor in compositions of their own.
- Waking Up, Stepping Out
- Students will focus on a rich and colorful description of a culture unfamiliar to most of them, and then compare the similarities and differences they find between Nepali culture and their own.
- Wall of Water: Tsunami!
- Students will learn what a tsunami is, what causes it, how fast it travels, what it looks like, its devastating effects upon landfall, where it occurs and why it occurs in certain geographic regions. The effect of a 2004 tsunami on the island nation of Sri Lanka will be closely examined.
- What Can Food Tell Us About a Place?
- Cuisine, agricultural practices, markets, and mealtime traditions can reveal a great deal about people and place. As they experience life in another country, Peace Corps Volunteers' daily experiences with food can provide important insights to the culture and history of the communities in which they live and serve.
- What's Integrity?
- What constitutes a "good" job? And what defines integrity? Students will explore both questions in relation to Steve Iams's writings about the subjects.
- What's Mongolia Really Like?
- Students will look at rural Mongolian nomadic culture through the eyes of a Peace Corps Volunteer and examine the dynamics of a people in transition.
- Where There's Smoke
- Students examine how people can effectively bring about positive change in another culture, focusing on the introduction of ventilated stoves in Nepali homes.
- Window Into Another Culture
- Students will examine a real-life confrontation of cultural values through the experience of a Peace Corps Volunteer in Papua New Guinea.