Program for Teaching East Asia

U.S. teachers explore Taiwan with CU �Ǹ�Թ� faculty and outreach program

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 16:04:03 +0000

U.S. teachers explore Taiwan with CU �Ǹ�Թ� faculty and outreach program Rachel Sauer Mon, 09/28/2026 - 10:04

Educators from CU �Ǹ�Թ� and the �Ǹ�Թ� Valley School District at the Lady Linshui Temple in Tainan, Taiwan.

Katherine Alexander and Lynn Kalinauskas

CU �Ǹ�Թ� East Asia scholars partner with �Ǹ�Թ� Valley School District teachers to delve into the history and culture of Taiwan

Summer 2026 saw the �Ǹ�Թ�’s Program for Teaching East Asia (TEA) bring 14 secondary teachers from across the country to Taiwan to learn about the country’s history and culture. Included in the group of teachers was �Ǹ�Թ� Valley School District (BVSD) teacher Vanessa Carroll, who graduated from CU �Ǹ�Թ� with an MA in English in 2002.

Katherine Alexander (center), a CU �Ǹ�Թ� associate professor of Chinese, in front of the Grand Mazu Temple in Tainan, Taiwan.

The two-week program was a collaboration between TEA Director Lynn Kalinauskas and Anne Prescott, director of the Five College Centre for East Asian Studies at Smith College. Both were recipients of a Fulbright International Education Administrator Award to Taiwan, which helped build the ties for this summer study. They were accompanied by Katherine Alexander, associate professor of Chinese in the CU �Ǹ�Թ� Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations, who received a Fulbright Student Grant while in graduate school that supported a year of doctoral dissertation research in Taipei, Taiwan. As the scholar in residence, Alexander shared her knowledge and love of Taiwan with the teachers and provided them with background on Chinese history and culture.

Working with the Fulbright Taiwan team, the CU �Ǹ�Թ� scholars created a program and itinerary aimed at increasing teachers’ knowledge of the island. The goal was to better equip them to teach about the complex history that has forged today’s Taiwan. The group circumnavigated the island by bus, train and boat, stopping at multiple cities along the way. They were introduced to Taiwan’s indigenous cultures and its historical and political past as well as its more recent transition to democracy and modernity fueled by technological innovation.

The group made its way through historical sites and multiple museums. They wandered through streets and night markets, tasting Taiwanese food, including mango shaved ice, beef noodle soup and dumplings. As they circled the island, they also encountered some fascinating Taiwanese people who helped them understand the impact of past and present policies. The teachers saw Taiwan not only as a place impacted by history but as an ever-evolving, vibrant economic and political locus.

Taiwan’s geopolitics are a hot topic in the daily news, so this is often the first thing that we think about when its name is mentioned. In light of this, on the first day of the visit, the program brought the teachers to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Taipei to meet with Liang-Yu Wang, director general of the Department of North American Affairs. Hearing from an official who handles that dossier daily was a wonderful opportunity for teachers who are now better equipped to handle their students’ questions back in the United States.

Educators from CU �Ǹ�Թ� and the �Ǹ�Թ� Valley School District at the Lady Linshui Temple in Tainan, Taiwan.

A fraught history

Taiwan’s modern democratic government owes a debt to the victims of its authoritarian past, and the stay took participants to many places that now commemorate the tragedies of the Kuomintang martial law period, which lasted from 1949-1987. While visiting Jing-Mei White Terror Memorial Park, the group was escorted by Fred Chin, who was wrongfully imprisoned in the facility and as a political prisoner on Green Island for 12 years. He stood in the room where he had been first sentenced to death and in the cell where he was confined before his commutation and transfer to Green Island, sharing stories with the teachers about his case and how he made it through horrible years of torture and persecution.

“We were all deeply moved by his generosity,” said Kalinauskas. “He took the time to walk with us and answer many questions. He accompanied us all the way back to the bus, waving goodbye until we were gone. He understood that these were teachers who would tell his story in their classrooms so that the horrors of the times would not be forgotten.”

As the group traveled south out of the capital, they first stopped in Changhua, where they met Wu Sheng, a poet, environmental activist and advisor to the president on his family farm. Wu Sheng’s love of his land was obvious from the moment he invited the group out of the hot sun and into the shade of his beloved trees. Alexander, who translated for the meeting, was especially touched by this chance to meet him, as she has a personal connection to him through an old friend from college, another Taiwanese environmental activist who had been on the front lines of protests with Wu Sheng to defend their precious ecosystem.

�Ǹ�Թ� Valley School District educator Vanessa Carroll (left) biking in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, with Theresa Illgen (right), a program participant from New Mexico.

“Once he learned this, he welcomed me like a family friend, making me feel right at home again in Taiwan after too many years away,” she reflected. Participating teacher Vanessa Carroll noted after the trip, “Inspired by our day with the Taiwanese poet activist Wu Sheng, I've written a unit called Poetry as Green Activism: Finding Eco-Inspiration in Wu Sheng’s <My Village> which I really look forward to teaching!”

Continuing south, the group spent some time in Tainan, where Alexander guided the group through several places of worship, including two temples established in the 1600s where devotees have worshipped ever since. Alexander remarked, “Teaching teachers about these places was so gratifying because of how excited they were to apply their new knowledge and visit other temples on their own in Tainan the next day and in each new city after that. I can see how they’re always learning, just like their students.”

Exploring Taiwan

Further south in Pingtung County, the group visited the Maya Farm cocoa plantation, where they explored the tree-to-bar process. Cocoa farming is an emerging agricultural field in Taiwan. They tasted the fresh pods, smelled different beans and sipped one of the best cups of hot chocolate they ever had. The teachers learned from the farmers about the land that had been cleared of palm and beetle nut trees to make way for a new industry. They compared this experience with a more traditional farming experience in Maokong, near Taipei, where they visited a tea plantation at which five generations of the same family had worked the land for more than a century.

Caroll used every minute of her free time to explore even more: “I've lived in �Ǹ�Թ� ever since I graduated from CU, so obviously I'm into bikes. In Taiwan, at the end of each day, I'd try to find a bike to explore whatever new city we'd ended up at, and once, in massive and beautiful Kaohsiung in the far south, I was balancing between traffic lights and happened to look over and see an older gentleman wearing a University of Colorado polo shirt. We made eye contact, I gestured to my own chest, and it took him a moment, understandably, to realize I was referencing CU. He told me he went there many years ago; he studied civil engineering, and now he’s an architect. I half-joked, ‘Have you designed any buildings I'd recognize?’ and he immediately gestured broadly and turned around in a half-circle saying, ‘Yes, many here in Kaohsiung,’ as if I could throw a stone and hit one of his designs.

“The fact that I encountered this kind and possibly famous Asian architect wearing a Buffs shirt on a random, busy sidewalk roughly 7,000 flight miles from my home shows that the world can be so wildly small even when you least expect it to be, and that Taiwan really is a fascinating fusion of experiences, cultures, identities, and global interconnectivity.”

While indigenous groups, the original residents of Taiwan—before waves of migration from China began in the 1600s—now make up only 2% of the population, their histories and their contemporary ways of life remain important to building a complete picture of Taiwan’s present. Participants met with tribal elders from the Paiwan and Rukai peoples, who generously shared stories about their personal histories and how their communities continue to practice their traditions today in the face of cultural and economic challenges.

While on Taiwan’s east coast, students also visited the National Museum of Prehistory, which details with vibrant exhibits the many indigenous groups that shaped Taiwan's past and how, through these tribes, Taiwan is connected to Austronesia and global indigenous cultures even in the present.

The trip wasn’t always smooth. A typhoon hit the island while the group was in Tainan, closing most businesses and cultural sites. The ferry to Green Island was stomach-churning. And the heat and humidity were intense. But Taiwan is the birthplace of bubble tea, so there was always a way to hydrate and re-energize for yet another adventure.

As teachers start up a new fall semester, the experiences will make their way into AP world history, geography and many other classrooms where students will become more curious about Taiwan, its history and importance.

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CU �Ǹ�Թ� East Asia scholars partner with �Ǹ�Թ� Valley School District teachers to delve into the history and culture of Taiwan.

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Looking at the big picture (book) of East Asia

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 20:36:45 +0000

Looking at the big picture (book) of East Asia Rachel Sauer Thu, 02/12/2026 - 13:36

Lily Elliott (EBio, AsianSt'25) reads Rice to elementary school students. (Photo: Christy Go)

Alexandra Phelps

An innovative project in the Program for Teaching East Asia brings culture and history to Colorado K-12 students

Colorado students don’t need to book a flight or get a passport to experience East Asia, because a program from the �Ǹ�Թ� is bringing the region’s culture and history to them.

For the past two spring semesters, students participating in a CU �Ǹ�Թ� outreach program to K-12 classrooms have been using a favorite childhood medium: picture books.

The program is coordinated by Lynn Kalinauskas, director for the Program for Teaching East Asia (TEA); Catherine Ishida, assistant director for Japan and Korea Projects; and Christy Go, the program’s graduate student assistant. They have varied their program to involve many East Asian countries, yet the central goal of their program has always been to develop students' cross-cultural understanding.

Lynn Kalinauskas (left), director for the Program for Teaching East Asia (TEA), and graduate student assistant Christy Go (right), along with colleague Catherine Ishida, assistant director for Japan and Korea Projects, coordinate a CU �Ǹ�Թ� CU �Ǹ�Թ� outreach program to K-12 classrooms that uses a favorite childhood medium: picture books.

Building a program

Three years ago, Kalinauskas, who is also the co-director of the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia, envisioned a new classroom outreach program that would bring East Asia into K-12 Colorado classrooms via picture books.

In spring 2024, with funding support from the Office for Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship and the Freeman Foundation, the program used books that taught elementary and middle school students about natural science. Books in the program, such as Moth and Wasp, Soil and Ocean and When the Sakura Bloom, allowed students to see agriculture and plant cycles within an East Asian context.

“Picture books offer a wealth of information. You can look at an image and learn so much,” remarks Kalinauskas. Go noted in an article about the first run of the program that teachers were receptive to the medium that offered a beautiful window into another culture. One educator who is grateful for what the program has done for their classroom said, “The carefully chosen picture book prompted interesting reflections and questions. The artifacts enhanced children's understanding and appreciation of the topic. I appreciated how the presenter drew connections between the children's lives and the experiences of the protagonist of the story.”

As the program progressed, Kalinauskas and her colleagues expanded its scope to cover a new topic. In spring 2025, students learned about the geography of East Asia, and the spring 2026 semester will center on learning about the contributions of famous Japanese people.

Pictures of East Asia

The process of choosing which picture books will be used involves a number of factors. At CU �Ǹ�Թ�, the Program for Teaching East Asia is a coordinating site for the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia. This national organization administers the Freeman Book Awards that recognize quality books for children and young adults that contribute meaningfully to an understanding of East and Southeast Asia. Many of the books chosen for the project have won the Freeman award.

Excellence in Civic & Community Engagement Programming Awards

The Teaching East Asia through Picture Books program recently received an Excellence in Civic & Community Engagement Programming Award from Campus Compact. The award recognizes the many forms that effective on-campus civic and community engagement can take to address areas of need and make deep and long-lasting positive change.

In the spring 2025 semester, the five books chosen were The Ocean Calls: A Haenyeo Mermaid Story by Tina Cho, Warrior Princess: The Story of Khutulun by Sally Deng, The Sound of Silence by Katrina Goldsaito, Rice by Hong Chen Xu and Mommy’s Hometown by Hope Lim.

A book such as Rice can be an important addition to the curriculum as it highlights agricultural practices in southern China, informing the reader about the impact geography has on people’s daily lives, their environment and cultural practices.

Students teaching students

Organizers note that the program is innovative not because it teaches students through picture books, but because it gives an internship opportunity to CU �Ǹ�Թ� students of all disciplines and brings these new interns into Colorado classrooms.

Every fall, TEA staff begin recruiting for the spring outreach. Applicants have to submit short essays and participate in an interview. It is important that students selected be excited to teach about East Asia.

The process of working with the CU �Ǹ�Թ� students is individualized and collaborative. Go says she works as a mentor for the students, adding that the staff work with student interns on multiple levels from how they should dress when presenting in classrooms, school procedures and what to expect when teaching children. Students work with the staff to identify the important characteristics of their assigned book and develop a lesson plan. Because students may visit different grade levels, they also learn to adapt their lessons to different age groups.

Teachers participating in the program often try to align the book selection with the material they’re already teaching. “We had kindergarten and second grade classrooms that were learning about the life cycles of plants, so they chose When the Sakura Bloom because they wanted to talk about the connection (between the East Asian representation and their science),” reflects Go. “Tracing the life cycle of the Sakura (cherry blossom) tree in the story not only reinforced student learning of the plant life cycle but also engaged students in discussing cultural events inspired by these natural processes through the presentation of hanami (cherry blossom–viewing picnic events) in the story.”

Lily Elliott (EBio, AsianSt'25) reads Rice to elementary school students. (Photo: Christy Go)

In the classrooms, CU student interns provide background information for students. The CU interns each read aloud while pointing out cultural representations, key characters and concepts, location, relationships between characters and relevant context related to the themes, science or geography. One CU student teaching The Ocean Calls introduced different sea life and later asked students while they were reading to point out the animals. This is followed by a lesson plan and an interactive activity. For one student teaching Sound of Silence, a book about a boy trying to find silence in the city of Tokyo, “our student found sound clips of different places in Tokyo and had students listen and guess where they were,” remembers Go. “Students loved it!” The presentations are like “a traveling show,” says Kalinauskas, who oversees each step of this process.

Beyond their involvement in coordinating with teachers, choosing books and mentoring student interns, staff take their commitment to the program one step further by driving student interns to schools all around Colorado.

More than a cup of noodles

In the first year, 64 classrooms participated; the following year, interns presented in 49 classrooms. The classes are usually in the Denver-�Ǹ�Թ� metro area but have reached as far as Greeley. While mainly aimed at elementary classrooms, program organizers have also brought their CU interns to middle schools and one high school classroom. Additionally, if a school is too far to be reached by car, like one school in Grand Junction, interns have done interactive Zoom presentations.

This program has been enriching for Colorado K-12 students while simultaneously being a great educational experience for the CU �Ǹ�Թ� student interns. Kalinauskas and Go have found that through this program, many students have gained professional skills and experience that have expanded their career pathways. Two former graduate students in education are now teaching in local schools. Another student intern, who taught a book on Korea, was so inspired that she moved to Korea to teach English.

"Picture books offer a wealth of information. You can look at an image and learn so much."

For Colorado teachers, the program doesn’t end when interns leave their classroom. Although the presentations cover only one book, each classroom receives a copy of every book in that semester’s program for students to read for years to come. Teachers also receive cultural information and teaching resources to engage students in learning about all the books in the program. TEA also hosts a fall in-person workshop for Colorado teachers focused on the same books. Kalinauskas and Go note that although they aim to expand their program to many new classrooms, some teachers love it so much they have participated in multiple semesters.

TEA is bringing its program into Colorado schools next spring. The focus for Spring 2026 will be on the biographies of famous Japanese people and Japanese culture. The program features the story of a young female artist in Japan during the Edo period, the first woman to summit Mount Everest and a story about how Momofuku Ando created one of the world’s most popular foods, instant ramen.

“The picture book Magic Ramen not only teaches us about how instant ramen was created but takes us back in time to Japan post-World War II, where a young man was trying to feed people in Osaka,” says Kalinauskas. “We don’t always think about that historical context when we are just having our cup of noodles.”

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An innovative project in the Program for Teaching East Asia brings culture and history to Colorado K-12 students.