Lan Nguyen: Educator, Filmmaker, Community Leader
For Lan Nguyen, ’22 Teaching Credential, MA Teaching, documentary films have the potential to transform narratives about culture, history and power. Nguyen teaches ethnic studies at a high school in Oakland, as well as an Introduction to Asian American Studies course at SJSU. Before she was a teacher, though, Nguyen was a journalist and filmmaker.
“I see filmmaking as an outlet that helps mobilize people for community change,” she says.
The daughter of Vietnamese refugees with roots in the Cambodia Town neighborhood of Long Beach, California, she directed, produced and edited the 2019 film “Fighting For Family,” a 30-minute documentary that shares one family’s efforts to reunite in Vietnam after the father is deported from the U.S. following a criminal charge. She felt the impulse to tell this story while a graduate student at UCLA, where she pursued a master’s degree in Asian American Studies before becoming a teacher.
“At the time, one of the biggest issues that Southeast Asian people were facing was deportation, specifically formerly incarcerated people,” she says. “When people came to the U.S. in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s, conditions were really hard and [some] people got wrapped up in criminality. That was something I related to because when my parents came to the U.S., they were really poor. The conditions of poverty that our communities experienced [sometimes] led to criminality.”
Lan recalls when her father bought a used car, only to later learn that the car had been previously used to commit a robbery. Despite the fact that her father had not committed any crimes himself, his name was affiliated with the car, and thus made him vulnerable to police questioning. When she learned about other refugees and immigrants getting mixed up in the criminal justice system and facing deportation, she wanted to help tell their stories.
Shifting the narrative
The documentary was released during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing the film’s events and promotions online. Despite this, Nguyen and her team received honors such as the Loni Ding Award for Social Justice Documentary in 2020, the Best Documentary Short at Justice on Trial Film Festival 2021 and the Spotlight Award at Viet Film Fest 2021.
When she completed her graduate studies at UCLA, Nguyen realized that her true calling was in the classroom. She turned to SJSU in 2021 to complete the Ethnic Studies Teaching Residency program and credential at SJSU, as well as a master’s of art in teaching, where she met Luis Poza, associate professor of teacher education at SJSU.
“Even from her early days as a teacher candidate in our Ethnic Studies Residency program, Lan was a leader among her peers, a creative and brilliant teacher and a relentless advocate for students,” says Poza, who nominated her for the Connie L. Lurie College of Education’s Distinguished Alumni Award this year.
“I had the privilege of observing her teaching a few times when she was a student teacher, leading an ethnic studies class for students who’d recently arrived in the U.S. I was impressed by the innovative lesson plans she designed that invited students to draw from their experiences, the relationships she built with students that made the classroom a safe place to carry out this kind of self-reflection, and her attentiveness to helping students simultaneously develop rich understanding of course content and English proficiency. I’ve been so impressed and proud to see her maintain these commitments to students’ learning and holistic well being.”
Nguyen sees storytelling as an act of social change. Photo by Dannie Phan.
As an educator, she reinforces the importance of sharing counter-narratives — stories that challenge cultural stereotypes. That’s one of the reasons she shows “Fighting For Family” in her classes. The film wrestles with questions of American imperialism, exploring the impact of the Vietnam War on refugees seeking new beginnings in the U.S., and how formerly incarcerated immigrants and refugees can sometimes be vulnerable to deportation.
“I teach immigrant and refugee youth who are still learning English and who are new to the country,” Nguyen says. “My approach to teaching this population and ethnic studies is empowering students to love their cultures and their communities and take an anti-assimilationist approach. [Many of] these students come here with the American dream, which we as a class critique, but we also recognize that they came here for a reason. I want students to know that you do not need to become the oppressor to live the American dream. Yes, let’s pursue our goals, but let’s try to act in solidarity with other working class immigrants and communities of color.”
Nguyen assigns her students to examine some of the harmful narratives propagated about their communities, and encourages them to seek out community leaders with expertise on various subjects. “They interview community members and share written journalistic pieces from their community experts about their experiences. It is really powerful seeing them understand that their families and friends can be experts.”
In addition to her full-time work as a high school teacher, she lectures in SJSU’s Asian American Studies program. Nguyen takes counter-narrative storytelling one step further by challenging her SJSU students to create documentary films about issues related to Asian American Studies. She also is passionate about culturally-relevant education, and in that capacity has served as a curriculum writer for the statewide Vietnamese American Experiences Model Curriculum, the Ethnic Studies for Multilingual Learners Professional Learning Community and the AAPI Perspectives Oral History Project. She has also written curriculum to accompany “Fighting For Family.”
Nguyen hopes that her students see their own histories reflected at school — or that if they don’t, they have the confidence to speak up and share their stories.
“I grew up in a very working class, multiracial community in Long Beach,” she says. “Despite this, we never got to learn our histories. For example, in my culture, Lunar New Year is such a big celebration, but despite the fact that so many students at my school celebrated it, our schools never acknowledged [the holiday]. So now, even though I teach at predominately Latinx schools, I always plan a Lunar New Year celebration. I try to be the teacher I wish I had growing up, and that’s a very healing experience.”
