Cherry Hill school gearing up for launch of Asian American Pacific Islander studies this fall

Cherry Hill West High School expects to be among the first schools in New Jersey to teach Asian American Pacific Islander studies this fall.

The move comes after New Jersey made Asian American Pacific Islander lessons a requirement last January.

Christy Lee, an Asian American English teacher at Cherry Hill West, is helping to plan the curriculum. Lee said she barely learned about the contributions of Asian Americans growing up.

“It’s just really a dream for me personally, having grown up in this country, and the only time that I’d hear about Asian American people is a tiny paragraph about Japanese internment,” Lee said, referring to U.S. government detainment of Japanese American residents during World War II.

With the new course, administrators are hoping to strike a balance between siloing the curriculum into its own standalone course and infusing Asian American Pacific Islander studies across the curriculum as a whole.

“It’s hard to fit the entire Asian American Pacific Islander history into one year: walking students through the history going back to when Asian Americans first came, the struggles they faced in this country, the different roadblocks, but then again the resilience and overcoming…the things we’re seeing now with AAPI hate,” Lee said.

Grassroots organizers in Cherry Hill fueled the movement to enact the course.

Cherry Hill was also the first school district in the Garden State to make African American studies a graduation requirement in 2021 — another grassroots campaign.

Administrators said they used a similar process to craft the course.

“There’s great interest in it,” said Allison Staffin, district supervisor of curriculum and instruction for Cherry Hill Public Schools. “We put a survey out to the students.”

“Regardless if we have enough kids to take it or not. [The course] will be ready,” Staffin said.