Exploring our Sightlines: Integrating Local Stories across Subject Areas | Cultivating Learning

Join the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center’s Education Team to explore a new virtual tour experience based on the exhibition Sightlines: Chinatown and Beyond. During its run at the Smithsonian American Art Museum from September 2024 to November 2025, Sightlines provides visitors with glimpses into the complexity and depth of Asian American connections to Washington, D.C., across time. Through artwork, material culture, images, and other graphic material from Smithsonian collections and local D.C. community members, this session will address the importance of multicultural storytelling and emphasize how local places can be integrated into any school subject area. You’ll leave with actionable strategies to help students explore the importance of documenting local places and connect to national histories and movements. Session Collection Exploring our Sightlines: Integrating Local Stories across Subject Areas: https://learninglab.si.edu/collection... 00:00 Introduction 04:14 Opening question: What are your memories or impressions of Chinatown? 06:51 Sightlines: Chinatown and Beyond Exhibition Virtual Tour 08:12 Sightlines: Chinatown and Beyond Exhibition Virtual Tour (Map) 10:01 Sightlines: Chinatown and Beyond Exhibition Virtual Tour (Making Place, Friendship Archway) 17:57 Sightlines: Chinatown and Beyond Exhibition Virtual Tour (Making Place, Building on the Past) 21:56 Sightlines: Chinatown and Beyond Exhibition Virtual Tour (Transforming Tradition, Safety Jacket) 24:01 Sightlines: Chinatown and Beyond Exhibition Virtual Tour (Transforming Tradition, Simba Dojang & Martial Arts) 27:13 Sightlines: Chinatown and Beyond Exhibition Virtual Tour (Visualizing Identity, Cita Sadeli) 32:58 Sightlines: Chinatown and Beyond Exhibition Virtual Features 37:21 How to use Sightlines: Chinatown and Beyond Exhibition in the classroom 44:20 Exploring our Sightlines: Integrating Local Stories across Subject Areas: Learning Lab Collection 46:22 Closing & Reflections This interactive webinar, originally recorded on Zoom, is part of “Cultivating Learning,” a professional development webinar series focusing on techniques to use digital museum resources for learning. In this special 2025-2026 Cultivating Learning series, "Celebrating America at 250," Smithsonian educators share teaching techniques and resources that help tell the story of America's 250th. The series celebrates well-known people, events, and accomplishments of our nation and also provides opportunities to discuss lesser-told histories that together form our national narrative. Join us to explore strategies for using digital museum resources to support student learning at this milestone moment in American history. Check out “Cultivating Learning” and other Smithsonian Learning Lab webinars: https://learninglab.si.edu/about/prog.... Thumbnail Image: Thumbnail for a webinar that reads “Cultivating Learning: Exploring our Sightlines: Integrating Local Stories across Subject Areas,” overlaid on a photograph of the Friendship Archway, Streetscape at Seventh and H Streets NW, Washington, D.C. 1985–86. AEPA Architects Engineers PC.