San Jose high school students bring history of Vietnamese refugee experience to life

SAN JOSE, Calif. (KGO) -- High school teacher Kevin Guzman did something different for his lesson on the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon: he let his students teach part of the course.

"I brought in some of our Vietnamese students in to share the stories of their grandparents and their parents," said Guzman, an ethnic studies teacher at Andrew Hill High School in San Jose.

About a quarter of students at Andrew Hill are Vietnamese American and children or grandchildren of refugees, many of whom risked their lives flee Vietnam on boats after the end of the war.

The stories the students shared were very personal and sometimes full of pain.

Isabella Pham's father left Vietnam with his younger sister and eventually made it to the United States, but his other sister met a tragic fate.

MORE: Bay Area man returns to Vietnam to find father's gravesite 5 decades after Fall of Saigon

"The boat people were often attacked by pirates from Thailand," said Pham to fellow students as she held up a photo of her father and his sisters when they were children. "The pirates got to the boat with my other aunt on it, and they killed all those people."

Last year, California became the first state to adopt a Southeast Asian Studies Model Curriculum for elementary and high schools.

It establishes coursework on the experiences of Vietnamese, Cambodian and Hmong refugees for school districts that want to include it in their lessons.

To prepare for the lesson, Guzman asked Vietnamese American students to interview family members about their experience fleeing Vietnam. For some, it was the first time their parents or grandparents shared stories about their journey.

"I learned a bunch of stuff I didn't know before," said student Catherine Nguyen. "And when I asked them why, they just said we don't like talking about it. You just push everything away and just focus on surviving."

MORE: San Jose museum gives look at history of Vietnam War, refugees who fled to US

The East Side Union High School District has been teaching ethnic studies courses for more than a decade, but starting in the 2025-2026 school year, ethnic studies will become a statewide graduation requirement for incoming ninth graders.

"It specifically looks at the history, the culture, the experiences, the struggles of the different ethnic groups and ethnic studies," said Kyle Kleckner, director of Instructional Services at East Side Union High School District in San Jose.

The state is not mandating a curriculum for the course. It is up to each school district to develop its own coursework based on the surrounding community.

"At the crux of it is allowing our students the opportunity to learn about the communities they live in, their relatives, their friends, their grandparents, all of that, so that they can sort of understand the experience, but also learn about other cultures as well," said Kleckner.

MORE: San Jose museum gives look at history of Vietnam War, refugees who fled to US

The requirement was approved after a 2021 Stanford University study found that ninth graders with lower grade point averages who took an ethnic studies course had improved attendance and a higher probability of graduating and going to college.

Guzman said the students really engaged with the stories they heard from their classmates.

Ninth grader German Angel Cisneros said the stories he heard were not sanitized like his history textbooks.

"That's a lot of drama to go through and to move on and to continue your life after that. It's scary to go through. I am honored they shared it with us," Cisneros said.