VERONA, Wis.- The Verona Area School District Board unanimously passed a resolution Monday to provide learning materials on Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.
The Asian American and Pacific Islander population in Wisconsin– and the country as a whole — grew about 36% in the last 10 years according to the U.S. Census.
But when Verona High School junior Angela Miller was growing up, she said it did not feel that way.
“It felt isolating as a child to see other kids learn about their history, but then I got to watch Mulan and that was it,” Miller said. She’s also the Co-President of Verona’s Asian Student Association.
“The backbone of this country was made off of people of color. At the same time, I didn’t know all that my people contributed to the country, I didn’t know what Asian Americans had done,” she said.
Many others in that community also said they learned little to nothing about how their hands helped build America.
“Asian American history was absolutely missing, it was invisible,” said Kabby Hong, Wisconsin’s 2022 Teacher of the Year, at Verona.
“I didn’t think that Asian Americans achieved anything great in our country, I didn’t think Asian Americans wrote great literature,” he said. “It made me feel that I wanted to be anything but Asian American.”
Now, Verona is the first district in the state of Wisconsin to try to change that. “When you go to into a classroom you want to know that your demographics are valued,” Superintendent Dr. Tremayne Clardy said.
“We want our equity work to be far more than a statement, we want our equity to be a commitment to representation,” Dr. Clardy said.
Verona is one of the first districts in the state to do this after the Wisconsin Association of Schol Boards passed a resolution in January asking districts statewide to update their curriculum accordingly.
“I am really happy about it because as a young student, I didn’t see Asian American history or visilibity in our curriculum,” Miller said. “Knowing that younger kids, younger Asian American kids are going to learn about their history in school before they get to high school is so amazing to me.”
Currently, Wisconsin law requires school boards to provide learning material on Black Americans, American Indians, and Hispanics.
Senate Bill 379 is sitting in the Wisconsin Assembly’s Committee on Education, which would make it law for the AAPI community to be among those.
Miller, who spoke at the school board meeting Monday urging support for the resolution, said she wrote a strongly worded letter to Representative Jeremy Thiesfeldt, (R-Fond du Lac) voicing her anger that he didn’t issue a public meeting for the Bill.
“This bill is being silenced and pushing us out of view,” her letter read, “after hearing that bill 379 was not given a public hearing, I do not feel seen, I do not feel heard, I do not feel respected.”
According to Hong, leaving them out can have unfortunate effects outside of the classroom.
Last year there were 4,533 Anti-Asian hate crimes in the U.S. “And states like Illinois, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey are all passing laws because they understand the direct connection between intolerance and education and how important education is in fighting that,” he said.
Now the process can begin to make the education more reflective of Verona’s student body – made up of 38% students of color, and 4% AAPI students.
“I think its important to normalize humanity and excellence across all identities, not just one,” Hong said, “and that lessons aren’t just relegated to just one month that they occur throughout the entire school year.”
Dr. Clardy said it will take time, but he hopes to get started immediately.
“I don’t want anyone to think it’s just in social studies at all,” he said, “it’s through art, it’s through some of our history, it’s through literature — and there’s many venues for us to uplift the AAPI community.”
But Angela says this step forward is already leaving her uplifted — by hope. “So amazingly proud that’s what I would say.”
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