Lesson Plan

Introduction/Days 1 and 2: Cartographies of Experience:

Mapmaking, or cartography, is a graphic representation of the physical, political, or other conceptual properties of the earth using signs, symbols, and other graphic means. Mapmaking marks the beginning of the journey of this unit, in identifying the use and making of maps to identify movement of individuals within a place.

• Motivation: Read or show “How I Learned Geography” by Uri Shulevitz. While a picture book, the story is relevant to migration and cartography. Shulevitz wrote an autobiographical account of his life, his family fleeing Poland at the start of WWII bound for southern Soviet Union.
  • Why did the author move from his home in Poland?
  • What allowed the author to travel all over the world?
  • Shulevitz also created maps of places he hadn’t experienced when he was young. Then, based upon memory, he recreated his experiences of his youth as an adult. How does memory and time affect our recollections?
• Mapping
  • What is a map?
  • When have you used a map?
• Use a world map to show the journey that Shulevitz took in 1939, from Poland to what is now Kazakhstan.
  • What obstacles in traveling do you think Shulevitz and his family encountered on the way?
• Show various examples of maps, such political, climate, physical, topographic, and street maps depicting the world, country, state, regional, city. (Digital examples are easily found through a search on the Internet or visit your local visitor’s center for actual local and state maps. You can also toggle between different types of maps in Google Maps or use Google Earth to zoom into the globe)
• What do the maps depict?
  • What do the symbols mean?
  • How have the mapmakers made the map easy to read and understand?
  • Compare the maps. How are they different?
  • Which type of map is easiest to understand?
  • Would you consider these maps art? Why or why not?
• Introduce the term cartography. View examples of hand drawn cartography (Digital or actual examples).
  • How do hand drawn maps differ from the other maps seen?
  • How are they similar?
  • Would you consider hand drawn cartography art? Why or why not?
  • How is cartography considered art?
  • Why do you think people make maps?
• Students will be making a map as well to document their own sense of place and movement. Use the book “Personal Geographies” by J. K. Berry to reference making personal maps. The first section contains maps using traced hands as a structural form and conceptual framework, filled with physical and conceptual symbols depicting personal journeys.
• Students will trace their hand(s) on a sheet of watercolor paper with a pencil. Fill the hand with signs, symbols, and text that represents a journey taken. Trace with extra-fine black Sharpie marker and paint with watercolor.
  • What journey will you represent? Is it a real experience based on memory? Or is it an imagined journey you wish to take?
  • What stories will you tell? Will it represent a struggle you had?
  • What places are important in your journey?
  • What are the important graphic depictions seen and experienced in your journey?
  • How will color be used?
• Optional techniques:
  • Use embossing metal to create a sculptural hand. Use pencil or a metal stylus to draw into the metal, creating depressions like a bas-relief. Color using permanent markers.
  • Use canvas (roll or framed) and trace hands with pencil. Paint with acrylics.
• Discuss the hand maps.
• What stories do they tell?
  • Was it difficult to draw a personal map?
  • Consider Shulevitz’ portrayal of and connection with maps. How did he use maps? How does memory of past experiences relate to the maps?

Days 3/4: The Power of Autobiographical Experiences: Movement, Migration, and Exile:

In the first lesson, the focus was on cartography and documentation of experiences remembered or imagined in map form. In this lesson, the focus is on autobiographies of the migration/refugee experience in pictorial form from two artists, Allen Say and Andrew Romanoff.

• Begin this segment with the work of children’s book author/illustrator Allen Say. Say and his family’s migration stories have alternated between Japan and the United States since his grandfather first moved to the United States in the late 19th century. In the Caldecott winning book “Grandfather’s Journey,” Say provides a biographical account of his grandfather’s movement from Japan to the United States back to Japan, returning again to the US where Say’s mother was born and before settling down in Japan for the rest of his grandfather’s life. Say was supposed to travel to the US as a little boy, but plans become delayed due to WWII. Read the book to students and discuss.
  • Have you ever felt that you wished you were someplace else, but then realized you missed the place you called home? How did you feel?Why do you think you felt that way?
  • When were your own plans to travel/move changed because of something else? What happened?
• Prince Andrew Romanoff, grandson of the last Tsar of Russia Nicholas II, was born in 1923 in London. After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1918 when his grandfather was murdered, his family had fled their homeland and was sheltered by the British Royal Family. While Romanoff grew up in the safe and upscale environment of Windsor Castle, he and his family were still refugees, forced from their homeland. In “The Boy Who Would Be Tsar,” Romanoff created his artwork using Shrinky Dink as a medium and depicts moments from his life. The artwork is approximately 2 ½”x 3 ½”. Since Romanoff is not a formally trained artist, he is considered an outsider artist.
  • Look at some of these memories of Romanoff’s life. What experiences did he select? How do you think he felt about growing up in London?
  • Consider the material he used- Shrinky Dinks, a plastic film that shrinks and gets thicker by baking it in an oven. Why do you think he used that material? What effect does this material give the artwork? What if Romanoff used a more traditional material, such as oil on canvas?
  • The size is also small for a work of art, and it incorporates text. How would the work be different if the artwork was larger in scale?
  • How does Romanoff’s work differ from Say’s?
• Map the movements of Say (Yokohama, Japan where he was born to Berkeley, California where he attended college) and Romanoff (Moscow, Russia where his grandfather was tsar; Windsor Palace, England where he was born; and Marin, California where he now lives).
• Discuss classroom stories of movement, migration, and perhaps immigration.
  • Where did you move (or travel)?
  • What did you bring with you?
  • What did you miss about home or the place from where you moved?
  • What experiences in your new place did you like to do? What experiences did you not like?
  • How has your family shaped your experiences?
• Create an autobiographical series using Shrinky Dink as the medium. Cut the Shrinky Dink sheet into four equal parts (it should be approximately 4 1/4” x 5 1/2”). Roughen up one side of the plastic with the extra fine sandpaper. Work in one direction only.
  • Think about three or four memories from your life.
  • What memories will you include?
• Optional subject matter: choose one of the books located in the resource section (or choose another immigration story) to base the work on. Choose three events from the story to draw.
• Using the extra-fine Sharpie marker, draw this memory on the slick side of the plastic. Draw as many details as you can, including scenery, people, what you did. You may include text either in the drawing, or you can cut one of the four pieces into three long rectangles and write your narrative there.
• On the other side of the plastic, the side roughened up with sandpaper, use colored pencils to color in the details.
• Use an oven or toaster oven to shrink the film. Follow the package directions to do so.
• Mount on mat board.

Days 5/6/7: A Box of Memories:

Experiences of Japanese-Americans in WWII Internment Camps

The heart of the lesson is the discussion of experiences of Japanese-Americans in internment camps during WWII in the United States. In camps such as Tule Lake in California, thousands of American citizens of Japanese heritage were imprisoned as precautionary measure after the bombing of Pearl Harbor during WWII. This lesson focuses on the memories, narratives, and artwork of those who were imprisoned, such as Mirikitani.

• Introduce the term traveling voices.
  • Why is it important to read the writings of those who have been displaced and moved from their home country?
• Read documentation of the Japanese interment camp experiences. Children’s picture books include “So Far from the Sea” by Bunting, “A Place Where Sunflowers Grow by Lee-Tai, and “The Bracelet” by Uchida. Chapter books and books for older readers include “Sylvia & Aki” by Conkling, “Weedflower” by Kadohata, “A Jar of Dreams” by Uchida, and “No-No Boy” by Okada.
  • What struggles did the main characters have in the books read?
  • Why were Japanese-Americans placed in these camps? Is there a difference between being interned and being imprisoned?
  • Are there any similarities of the Japanese-American interment camps and racial profiling to current groups of people or events? Explain.
• Watch all or a portion of “The Cats of Mirikitani.” (The film is 74 minutes long.) The film is about “Jimmy” Tsutomu Mirikitani who was imprisoned in Tule Lake Camp for over 3 years. The documentary filmmaker who created “The Cats of Mirikitani” found him living on the streets of NYC making art. After 9/11, Jimmy was once again displaced and the filmmaker took him home and discovered more of his life story. It is a fascinating look at how one man became separated from his family and used art to merge his experiences and depict his memories.
  • What is the subject matter of Mirikitani’s artwork?
  • Mirikitani’s life has not been an easy one, yet he remains incredibly optimistic. How do you think the creation of his artwork helped him?
  • The artwork of Tule Lake was created about 50 years after his experience there. How have time and memory shaped these images?
• Flo Oy Wong is a Chinese-American artist who uses mixed media and installation in her visual storytelling. In the exhibit 1942: Luggage from Home to Camp, Wong interviewed six Japanese-Americans on their experiences in internment camps and created individual sculptural pieces using actual luggage from the camps.
  • Look these works and analyze each one. How has Wong given voice to each of these six camp detainees?
  • What stories do they tell?
  • Wong created this project in part because of her concern for what may happen to Arab Americans after 9/11. What do you think her  concerns were?
  • She says she is “aware of how 1942: Luggage From Home To Camp, an art project, weaves identity, culture, and history into a legacy of remembrance and healing.” How do you think these pieces can heal by remembrance?
• Students will create a memory box based upon the journey, the migration, and/or displacement of another. This person can be a relative or an immigrant who now lives in the community. Interview the person.
  • What journey have they taken?
  • Where did they grow up?
  • Why did they move?
  • Who did they move with?
  • What memories do they have of their home town or country?
  • What or who do they miss from their move?
  • What readjustments did they need to make upon their relocation?
• Use photos, drawings, found or sculptured objects, and other pieces to create an assemblage that visually tells the narrative of this im/migrant. Use glue to secure objects into a box.