YCIS Collaborated with the Uberoi Foundation for Religious Studies and the History Project

Mrs. and Dr. D.R. Sardesai and teacher participants at the TeachIndia! Workshop.

During the summer and fall of 2012, the Yadunandan Center has collaborated with the Uberoi Foundation for Religious Studies and The History Project at CSULB to pilot a TeachIndia| project both to promote the teaching of India within secondary schools and to align this instruction with current scholarship in South Asian history and culture. Ten selected middle and high school teachers from Long Beach Unified School have attended a week of workshops where they met with a number of local scholars who presented lectures relating to Indian history and its religious and cultural traditions. The teacher participants also received a read a number of scholarly books and articles pertaining to the history of early and modern India. The participants met with CSULB History professors Arnold Kaminsky and Tim Keirn in a seminar-type format for deep and extensive discussion of these texts. Participants and historians also read and discussed a number of primary texts as well that ranged from the Ramayana to Khushwant Singh’s 1956 novel Train to Pakistan. The teacher participants also worked with David Neumann – the Director of the History Project at CSULB – to consider effective instructional practices to deliver the scholarly content and concepts that were learned into appropriate lessons for middle and high school students.

The ten teacher participants are continuing to meet with Kaminsky, Keirn and Neumann as they develop, modify and perfect the important curricular materials that are the product of this pilot. The teachers are creating a series of curricular maps in history at various grade levels that suggest means for the teaching of India within the perspectives of current scholarship and in broad alignment with the California state social science standards. The curricular maps also show teachers how and where to infuse the teaching of India into their curriculum where it does not currently exist in the state framework. The teacher participants are also creating a resource guide for teaching India at specific grade levels to assist teachers in finding materials and to teach beyond the confines of the textbook. The participants are also creating model lessons aligned to the curricular map for teaching India that provide teachers with all the materials and instructional guides needed to teach a particular topic as it relates to India and a specific grade level.

All these teacher-created curricular will be published at an open-sourced TeachIndia! Website linked to and supported by the Yadunandan Center. This site will be open-sourced and allow teachers from throughout the state and nation to access, modify and utilize the materials that have been created.  In addition, future lesson plans will be developed and published as the project expands to be offered on an annual basis with more teachers participating in the workshops and lesson design process. In addition, Professor Keirn and various teacher participants will be presenting their work and promoting the TeachIndia! Project at the following state and national conferences:

• The Northwest World History Conference (Portland, OR)
• The California Council for Social Studies (San Francisco, CA)
• The National Council for History Education (Richmond, VA)
• The National World History Conference (Minneapolis, MN)]

 The ten teach participants from Long Beach Unified School District are Anthony Arzate (Wilson High School), Sinammon Carbone (Renaissance High School Academy), Linda Cargile (Bancroft Middle School), Neal Cates (Hoover Middle School), Gail Hamilton (Bancroft Middle School), Gerry Morrison (Hoover Middle School), Tim Mulvehill (Millikan High School), Ann Sourn (Hughes Middle School), Emily Warren (Millikan High School), and Angela Wood (Lakewood High School).