School Tours Information

As the exhibition travels, this opportunity may be made available to local schools. For more information on how to bring the exhibition to your community, visit us here (Travel Exhibition link).

In the meantime, please feel free to use our Activity Packets below as part of your curriculum when teaching about the Vietnamese American experience.

From January – March 2016, the VIETNAMESE FOCUS: GENERATIONS OF STORIES exhibition team welcomed 30 junior-high, high-school, and college classes from around Orange County to visit this interactive history and art exhibition on display at the Old Orange County Courthouse in Santa Ana and Viewpoint Gallery at UC Irvine. Though the exhibit was free and open to the public, we provided free bus transportation, activity guides (see below), and curator-led tours. Funding for transportation was generously provided by Orange County Historical Commission and Orange County Old Courthouse Museum Society.

Presented by OC Parks and the Viet Stories: Vietnamese American Oral History Project at UC Irvine, this exhibition, co-curated by Dr. Linda Trinh Vo and Tram Le with original artwork by Trinh Mai, showcases the diverse experiences and histories of Orange County’s Vietnamese American community. The exhibition provides snapshots of their lives before the war, experiences during the war, paths of escape and resettlement, and current lives in Orange County. It was on display from July 2015 to March 2016.

The exhibition offered students thought provoking intersections with Orange County Unified School District’s curriculum in Language Arts, U.S. and World History, and Fine Arts. This multi-media interactive exhibition and educational activities had been designed to provide students with the opportunity to expand their literacy skills through reading comprehension, creative writing exercises, and critical thinking. As an exhibition of history and visual art, the informative panels, artifacts, photographs, and works of art presented in this exhibition introduced students to the personal stories and contextual information to broaden their cultural knowledge of the experiences faced by Vietnamese Americans in Orange County. Additionally, this exhibition combined both primary and secondary sources, giving students the opportunity to explore how individuals have lived through history.

Viet Stories: Vietnamese American Oral History Project