On a sunny March morning at Georgetown Elementary School in Aurora, Rachel Mahmood’s fifth-graders were vying to make their voices heard, excited to show off their uniqueness by showing off the contents of the bags they’d packed themselves: bags filled with items they would take with them if, like the Vietnamese refugees of the 1970s, they were forced to leave the only home they’d ever known.
The students gathered up the necessities and packed them up.
Kenny Huynh, 11, brought a Stephen Curry basketball jersey, Pokémon cards, a medal he won at the science fair and a book he reads to his newborn brother. Grayson Mather, 10, brought Legos, his favorite T-shirt, family photos and a book about tanks. And Aria Scott, 10,’s 10 treasured items include seven stuffed animals, a butterfly she made in fourth grade, her brother’s favorite toy tiger and a photo of her and her dad at the father-daughter dance.
The “bag lesson” is one example of a project that Mahmood regularly incorporates into her lesson plans under the Teaching Asian American Community History (TEAACH) initiative, which will be required by law to be taught in Illinois public schools starting in 2022.
Mahmood, who was named Illinois Teacher of the Year for 2024, has been a supporter of the TEAACH Act since before it was mandated, and she has assisted other groups with teacher professional development and curriculum for students in other areas, such as history and the contributions of all religious backgrounds.
On that spring-like day, Mahmoud was teaching a “bag lesson” alongside Vietnamese-American author Thanh Ha Lai’s award-winning novel, Inside Out & Back Again. Part of the TEAACH curriculum, the book follows Ha Kim and her family’s journey from Saigon to a refugee camp in Guam, where they eventually make their way to the United States. The book chronicles the author’s first year in the U.S. as a non-English-speaking 10-year-old girl in 1975.
“It’s not just teaching Asian American history, but also the universal refugee experience, such as the refugee crisis in Chicago and across the country,” Mahmood said. “Students don’t know it’s a curriculum, they just know it’s the way I teach.”
Mahmoud’s classroom reflects her teaching style.
Visitors and passersby can see a large bulletin board with Indigenous peoples at the center and a social justice vocabulary wall at the back of the classroom, where children learn terms like cultural appropriation and ethnocentrism immigrant refugee. Mahmood coaches students in writing historical fiction and frequently facilitates conversations about why people of color and marginalized communities have historically been relegated to the margins of textbooks or not featured at all.
Mahmood has taught students about Manilamen Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz, Filipino-American labor union activists who took part in the 1965-1966 strike and boycott against California grape growers, and astronauts including Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams.
As a leader of her school’s social justice club, Mahmoud also designs monthly community service projects for her students, such as collecting hygiene products for refugees in the Chicago area.
Mahmoud is a strong believer in ensuring that the next generation sees themselves and their identity in the school curriculum and is always available with cultural resources, which is a big reason why she became a teacher.
Mahmood says she grew up in a family with a Russian Jewish mother, an Indian Hindu father, a German-Italian Catholic stepfather and a Pakistani Muslim husband, and grew up outside of the education system, which is why it was so important for her to be involved in the creation and implementation of the TEAACH Act.
Rachel Mahmood is embraced by her fifth-grade students after receiving the Illinois Teacher of the Year award at Georgetown Elementary School in Aurora on May 2, 2024. Mahmood, a teacher for 20 years, was selected from among 13 finalists from across Illinois. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
“When you go off-curriculum, you learn a lot of lessons unintentionally from well-meaning people,” Mahmood said. “The lessons I unintentionally learned about my identity were very traumatic for me. Then I discovered multicultural education. I became a teacher because I was still searching for a sense of belonging in school.”
Mahmoud strives to be a teacher who normalizes the cultures, languages, foods, stories and histories of all backgrounds. “Our culture is one of the greatest assets we bring to our community,” she says. “It’s not an obstacle. It defines our identity and makes our amazing world complex and interesting. We all need to lift each other up so people can feel a sense of belonging.”
Grace Pai, executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice in Chicago (AAJC), was instrumental in passing the TEAACH Act in 2021. The effort began as the pandemic shut down the country, with the goal of combating discrimination and harmful stereotypes that lead to violence.
To date, Pai said, AAJC has trained more than 2,200 educators across the state on how to approach and teach Asian American history. The training begins with an introductory two-hour professional development workshop, followed by resources such as an education database that offers book recommendations, videos, lesson plans and articles that connect Asian American history topics to state learning standards.
Mahmood has been involved in TEAACH-related professional development through his education consulting work, and Pai envisions more teacher training and engagement with Asian American curricula, as well as urging voters to demand proof from school officials that history is being taught — and to advocate for it if it isn’t.
Pai said the AAJC is one of a handful of organizations seeking additional funding from the Illinois General Assembly to expand an existing year-long professional development series on inclusive history teaching for educators that supports the inclusive history education requirement.
Jeremy Bautista, a Filipino American IT specialist at Westmont High School, partnered with the Berry Asian Foundation in September to bring educational resources and AAJC professional development workshops to his school. Bautista brought together teachers from Westmont’s English, social studies and science departments to incorporate Asian American curriculum into their lesson plans. Bautista, who has a master’s in education, sees the TEAACH Act as one aspect of a larger plan that is long overdue.
“Knowing some of that American history can help with classroom conversations and share different perspectives, which is what the TEAACH Act is about,” he said. “It’s good to talk about diverse backgrounds. This is not something to be trivialized.”
Rachel Mahmood and her fifth-grade class read a book about Vietnamese refugees in Aurora on March 11, 2024. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
Bautista is a co-sponsor of the Westmont High School student group CAPAOW! (Westmont’s Asian Pacific American Club).
“Kids understand the value of their teachers being educated. Students want their teachers to be more knowledgeable and understanding of their culture,” Bautista said. “We need people like Dr. Mahmoud and places like Westmont that are embracing that, so kids can grow up knowing that they are part of this process, that they are part of this society and this world, and that they can be themselves.”
Bautista has worked in his hometown school district for more than 25 years and said he was excited when he found out about the TEAACH Act.
“Everyone benefits from the resources,” he said, “including Asian American students, who can share with their friends… and that inspires other groups to do the same.”
He said that for refugees from Europe, seeing CAPAOW! and Asian American curriculum in classes shows them that they have a voice and a safe space to share their culture.
“It means a lot to us to normalize aspects of our identities that may be marginalized or completely invisible to our children,” Mahmood said.
Mahmood attended school in Downers Grove and remembers learning a bit about the Holocaust and Hinduism in sixth grade.
“If we don’t talk about Asian Americans, they learn that they’re not part of history,” she said. “Mexicans are not part of history. We learn unintended lessons through reading. We open our textbooks and Mexicans aren’t there, which means they’re not important. You may not realize it when you’re young, but 20 years later, like me, I tell my students that I learned all these negative things about my culture. I’m discovering all these things about my culture now, but I wish I’d learned them as a child, I’d be more proud and not feel ashamed. I don’t want it to take me 20 years to learn.”
Mahmood joined Indian Prairie School District 204 in 2005 and has spent the last nine years at Georgetown Elementary School. He has led diversity and equity teams across the district, encouraged interfaith discussions and worked to develop curriculum within and outside the district.
With her state Teacher of the Year award, she is taking a year of paid leave to share her culturally responsive teaching practices with educators and schools across the state, sharing her approach to education based on the concept of “belonging.”
“We need to create spaces where students, as well as faculty and staff, can feel a sense of belonging, and that requires allowing people to show up as their authentic selves,” Mahmood says, “and that also requires understanding people’s history, their contributions, their culture, and all the things that make them unique.”
Her culturally responsive teaching involves constantly observing her students and understanding their needs and concerns. Mahmoud plans to travel around the state next school year, interacting with people, listening to what they need, and responding to those needs.
Mahmood said the education system can change for the better by viewing students’ cultures as assets and tools that can be utilized in the classroom, rather than as obstacles to be overcome.
“You see the knowledge that students bring to the table, the cultural assets that they bring to the table, and then you adapt how you teach them, what you teach them, and you enhance everything that they bring to school so that it serves them,” she said. “You can do the same with teachers. We have diversity in our community, and all of that diversity belongs in education.”
