At Aurora’s Georgetown Elementary School, on a sunny March morning, Rachael Mahmood’s fifth graders’ voices were competing to be heard; excited to show off what makes them unique given …
Rachael Mahmood and her fifth graders share what items they packed into a book bag to think about what they would take with them if they had to flee their homes as refugees, at Georgetown Elementary School on March 11, 2024, in Aurora. At Aurora’s Georgetown Elementary School, on a sunny March morning, Rachael Mahmood’s fifth graders’ voices were competing to be heard; excited to show off what makes them unique given the contents of bags they packed themselves.
As leader of the school’s social justice club, Mahmood also thinks up projects for students to engage their civic muscles monthly, such as conducting a drive for hygiene items for the refugee population in the Chicagoland area. “When you’re absent from the curriculum, you learn a lot of unintentional lessons from well-intentioned people,” Mahmood said. “I learned lessons about my identity that were unintentional that caused me a lot of trauma. Then I found multicultural education. I became a teacher, because I was still searching for that belonging in school.”
Mahmood has helped with the professional development around TEAACH through her education consulting practice. Pai envisions more teacher training and engagement with Asian American curricula, as well as asking constituents to ask school administrations for proof the history is being taught. And if it’s not, to advocate for it.
Rachael Mahmood and her fifth-grade class read a book about Vietnamese refugees on March 11, 2024, in Aurora. “The benefit of the resources is for everybody,” he said. “Asian American students, sure, but they get to share with their friends … and it’s inspired other groups to do the same thing.” “If you don’t talk about Asian Americans, then you learn that they’re not part of history,” she said. “Mexicans are not part of history … you learn unintentional lessons through what you read; you open a textbook and they’re not there. That means that they’re not important. You don’t realize it when you’re little, but 20 years later, like me, I tell my students I learned all these negative things about my culture.
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