Fil Ams Rising is a series of five virtual workshops where speakers from our community introduced different parts of Filipino American history and helped guide discussion about the skills needed to help high school students become more effective leaders.
Hi, there! I’m Koa, and this is a how-to handbook in case you would like to organize a program similar to mine. It will include my lesson plans for each workshop, tips on how to gather speakers and publicizing, samples of activities, and an analysis of the pre-workshop and post-workshop surveys I had participants take. I hope you find this book helpful and have as much fun as I did with Fil Ams Rising.
Lesson Plans:
When I first thought about how I was going to organize my workshops, I figured I would have to base it on the historical content of each workshop. I wouldn’t have been able to capture the whole of Filipino American history in just five workshops, so I had to think of how to generalize all this information. Was I going to go chronologically? Should I start with the present and track back to when Filipinos first immigrated to the United States or the other way around?
With help from my historical and cultural advisors, I created an outline of how I want the workshops to look like and what specific topic or topics I would want each speaker to cover. It looked like this:
| Date | Work-shop # | History Topic | Speaker – History | Race Equity Focus | Leadership Skill | Speaker – Leadership | Activity | additional resources? |
| 10/10/20 | 1 | Pre-Colonial Philippines & the Spanish Era | Colonial Mentality | Introduction to Leadership | USC leadership style quiz | |||
| 10/17/20 | 2 | US Occupation & the First Wave of Immigration | Colorism | Confidence Building | ||||
| 11/7/20 | 3 | Migrant Workers | Racism | Personal Advocacy | Journey for Justice – the Life of Larry Itliong by Dawn Mabalon & Gayle Romasanta | |||
| 11/21/20 | 4 | 60’s and 70’s Migration & the Civil Rights Movement | Microaggression | Public Speaking | ||||
| 12/5/20 | 5 | Marcos and Post-Marcos | Solidarity & Coalition Building | Team Building |
At first, I didn’t have the columns for speakers and activities filled out because I had yet to find speakers for each of my workshops and determine what I was going to do. Of course, after much discussion and a whole lot of emailing, I finally filled the rest of the outline, which looked like this:
| Date | Work-shop # | History Topic | Speaker – History | Race Equity Focus | Leadership Skill | Speaker – Leadership | Activity | additional resources? |
| 10/10/20 | 1 | Pre-Colonial Philippines & the Spanish Era | Roumel Milo DeLeon | Colonial Mentality | Introduction to Leadership | me | pick 3 core words that resonate most with you | USC leadership style quiz |
| 10/17/20 | 2 | US Occupation & the First Wave of Immigration | Dr. Annalisa Enrile | Colorism | Confidence Building | Dr. Annalisa Enrile | Leadership strengths, apply to real life; write for 10 minutes abt what you’ve learned (really reflect) | |
| 11/7/20 | 3 | Migrant Workers | Dr. Ronald Buenaventura | Racism | Personal Advocacy | Ray Obispo | personal haikus | Journey for Justice – the Life of Larry Itliong by Dawn Mabalon & Gayle Romasanta |
| 11/21/20 | 4 | 60’s and 70’s Migration & the Civil Rights Movement | Mark Pulido | Microaggression | Public Speaking | Maria Inciong | public speaking practice | |
| 12/5/20 | 5 | Marcos and Post-Marcos | Jon Melegrito | Solidarity & Coalition Building | Team Building | Marlan Maralit | Fill out themed workshop in small groups & discuss |
I also created a rough schedule for each workshop because I didn’t want to spend too much time on a particular part of the workshop and have everyone on the call leave from the sheer boredom of it all. It looked like this:
| Duration | Activity |
| 10 min | Intro |
| 15 min | Opening Activity/Icebreaker |
| 10 min | Topic Intro |
| 30 min | Interactive Presentation |
| 5 min | Break |
| 20 min | Leadership Discussion |
I wanted to limit each workshop to about an hour and a half since I knew from personal experience that hour long presentations can be exhausting. Since I needed participants to come back to all five workshops, I needed to make sure that it wasn’t too boring, and my cultural advisor suggested that I should try to make the workshops as interactive as possible. I also made sure to include a five minute break to give the participants time to just get up and stretch. This is one thing I sent to any possible speakers, giving them a general idea of how the workshops are going to work and the estimated amount of time for their parts.
Tips on how to Gather Speakers & Publicize:
Tip Number One: make use of your connections
Most of the speakers for Fil Ams Rising are either close family friends or part of FANHS, one of my community partners. For publicizing, my parents called in favors and used a lot of their connections in the Filipino community to get people to spread the word of my workshops. I, for one, used my connection with the Filipino culture club at my high school, my friends, and another Filipino club on the east coast called FACS to help publicize. Our efforts amounted to over fifty people attending the first workshop of Fil Ams Rising. The results were absolutely incredible and way more than I had hoped for. My advice to you is to not be afraid to ask everyone you know, whether it be your family or friends, for their help. I’m almost sure they’d be willing to lend it if they truly care about you!
Tip Number Two: know how to email
I know this might sound silly, but emailing is a very important skill! It’s definitely not like texting because you have to make sure to use proper grammar and capitalization and be extra careful of your word choice. You can’t immediately take back what you’ve said in an email as easily as you can through text or Instagram. I’ve used email to communicate with pretty much all of my speakers, as well as over thirty of the participants who signed up for Fil Ams Rising. For example, when an adult emailed me, asking me about Fil Ams Rising, I responded like this:
Hi _____________,
Thank you so much for your support! I’ve attached a flyer with more information. I was wondering if you would like to talk about one of the historical or leadership topics for one or two of the workshops in November and December. Each workshop would be an hour and a half long, and I’ve attached an image of what the workshops are going to be about. I’ve also included a rough format of how they are going to proceed.
Koa DeLeon
Because this person would’ve been a perfect speaker for one of the workshops I made sure to attach and a screenshot of my original outline for the workshops (see pages one and two) and the rough schedule (see page four) I had created. I also attached a flyer that talked more about Fil Ams Rising:
In order to maintain participation for the rest of the workshops, I needed to keep up with communicating with the participants, so I made sure to send emails now and then, reminding them of the upcoming workshops and any new developments.
Here’s an example of one of these emails:
Hi everyone,
The 2nd Workshop of Fil Ams Rising is this Saturday, October 17th, at 4:30pm PST. Here’s the link. Please try to check if it works about two hours before the meeting, and email me if you have any problems. I can’t wait to see you all again!
Topic: Fil Ams Rising – Workshop 2
Time: Oct 17, 2020 04:30 PM Pacific Time
Meeting ID:
Password:
Once again, as an extra precaution, please don’t share this link with anyone. I’d like anyone else interested in attending to either fill out the registration form or the rsvp form on the Club Kaibigan instagram and get the link from me personally.
Tip Number Three: create graphics
One of the easiest ways to publicize, in my opinion, is creating graphics. They’re easy to edit, duplicate, and, most importantly, share. I went on a site called Canva, which is free of charge for the most part, and created graphics about the size of an Instagram post.
Here’s an example of one of mine:
For efficiency purposes, I had a specific template I used for each workshop’s graphic, so all I had to do was edit the information on it; all the suns and colors stayed the same. After I created the graphic for an upcoming workshop, I would share this with as many people as I could.
Samples of Activities:
To start each workshop off, I would lead a little icebreaker that would hopefully make everyone a little more comfortable. I had a little bit of fun looking up different games to play on Zoom, and here’s what I came up with:
For the first workshop, I had everyone introduce themselves by stating their name, grade, the city they live in, school, and their favorite Filipino food. It was really cool to see all the different cities everyone was from and just getting to know one another.
As for the second workshop, I had the speaker, Dr. Annalisa Enrile, lead an activity with breakout rooms. She split the groups based on the time periods that were covered in the first workshop (i.e. Before and After the Battle of Mactan, and we were told to recap three things we knew about the certain time period, as a way of reviewing the material before her presentation.
Then, for the third workshop, I called it: A Stay at Home Adventure Where You Go Forth and Find Things! Also known as a scavenger hunt. The activity required them to move from where they’re seated. There were two teams —boys vs. girls. Each round I chose two to three people from each team and they raced to find something that matches the description I said aloud and brought it back so we could see. For instance, I would say, “Bring me something blue,” and whoever shows a blue object first wins a point for their team.
Here’s my list of items that I had them grab:
- Item #1: Something green
- Item #2: Something soft
- Item #3: Something that represents your Filipino heritage
- Item #4: Something that represents where you’ve been
- Item #5: Something that represents where you’re going
For the fourth workshop, the aliens had invaded, and they didn’t speak English. I split the participants into breakout rooms and each group worked together to create five simple pictures to communicate with the aliens and teach them about Filipino history and culture. One person from each group should have had paper and a writing utensil handy, and everyone talked about which symbols they should’ve drawn. The person drawing then presented the group’s pictures to the main group.
Finally, for the fifth workshop, I had originally wanted to share my screen and activate a live poll so that everyone can answer three questions. However, I had technical difficulties and ended having to just ask the questions out loud and have people put them in the chat. I asked: “How has your week been so far,” “What is one thing you know about Filipino American history,” and “What do you plan to do with the knowledge you’ve gained from Fil Ams Rising?”
Now for the leadership activities, each speaker did something different.
I lead the first activity, which was an introduction to leadership, and had put up a slide full of different leadership characteristics:
I wanted everyone to reflect on their personal values and pick three words that most resonate with them and fill in the blank of this sentence: “My core values as a leader are…” And then put their three words in the chat.
For the third workshop, the speaker, Ray Obispo, led an activity where we had to write personal haikus:
For the fourth workshop, Maria Inciong led an activity about public speaking and had certain participants speak off the top of their heads about their favorite songs, colors, etc.
Finally, Marlan Maralit led an activity about team building, where the participants were divided into three groups and were told to fill out this worksheet as a group. We were then supposed to discuss in the main group and describe what we came up with.
Post and Pre-Workshop Analysis:
At the very start and end of Fil Ams Rising, I had the participants answer the same statement and question:
Please rate your current knowledge of Filipino American history from 1 to 5. (1 meaning “not familiar” and 5 being “expert”)
To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement? “I have the skills and knowledge I need to be an effective leader.” (1 meaning “strongly disagree” and 5 being “strongly agree”)
The results were this:
Before they took part in Fil Ams Rising, 71% of the participants reported that they were less than to not familiar with Filipino American history.
After they took part in Fil Ams Rising, 100% of the participants said they were familiar with Filipino American history.
Before Fil Ams Rising, 55% of the participants felt that they were not effective leaders.
After Fil Ams Rising, 83% of the participants felt that they were better equipped to be effective leaders.
Based on my analysis, I believe that, overall, Fil Ams Rising was a success!
Fil Ams Rising 