The SEAIF staff development activities can come in many forms. We can provide short after school presentations, workshops that can last from several hours to a complete day, or classes/institutes that can span multiple sessions over weeks or months. If you look at our current In Focus 2008/2009 Seminar Series and Summer Study Tour to Laos, you will see we have integrated a summer study tour. We believe in the transformative power of international travel and have already successfully led two study tours to Laos. As Mark Twain said, "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness."

SEAIF staff development activities can be standards-based, as is our current In Focus offering. Check it out to see how we’ve integrated standards into our seminar series.

We can also adapt our staff development activities to meet a special need, as we have with our current In Focus offering. In California an Assembly Bill was passed in July 2003, AB 78, designed to encourage 7th – 12th grade teachers to teach about the ‘‘Secret War’’ in Laos, and the role of Southeast Asians in that war. As far as we know AB 78 is unknown to most teachers and school districts. Consequently we designed a standards-based seminar series and study tour to help teachers create curricula that will allow students to develop a much deeper understanding of the issues involved in the events of the Vietnam era that have effected so many of the Southeast Asian students in our schools.

The SEAIF team members are specialists in digital technology and incorporate their own digital photos and video into all their multimedia presentations. They are also ready to provide instruction for staff in the use of digital technologies to enhance their instruction, with this being a key component of summer study tours.

Examples of workshops SEAIF can provide are:

1. Southeast Asia and Iraq-------Parallels and Paradigms
2. California and Southeast Asia in the Twenty First Century: Trade, Tourism and immigration.
3. Reassessing Southeast Asian Refugee Students: A quarter century perspective
4. Vietnam Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. Coming to terms with post-war Vietmam. Study tour?
5. The Flag of Vietnam. Perspectives on Identity and Political Reality
6. California and Laos: Rice Growing Communities on Two Sides of the Pacific Rim
7. California and Laos: How America’s largest state and Asia’s poorest nation came to be closely linked
8. Coffee and Culture: Tropical farmers and temperate consumers: Learning about globalization through an intensive exploration of a key commodity
9. Wat Tham Krabok Hmong: Are they the Leftover People? Learn about their lives at the wat and discover how they’re adapting here in America
10. Who are the real Lao? Exploring the incredible ethnic diversity of Laos while developing an understanding of the Hmong, Mien, and Lao refugees who now live throughout the United States

In California school districts are under pressure to make sure all teachers are CLAD (soon to be CTEL), or equivalently certified. An important component of CLAD is “Culture and Cultural Diversity.” All SEAIF staff development, regardless of the subject matter, is designed to increase participants’ cross-cultural competence. We have received many compliments from teachers after staff development training that they learned more about the importance of culture and cultural diversity from our training than they did in lengthy CLAD courses they were mandated to take. One comment from a history teacher who went on one of our study tours was,

“Where do I begin to sing the praises of an educational journey
 of a lifetime? The SEAIF Study Tour opened my eyes up to a world that I had little
 knowledge of and even less understanding. As an educator in 
California I feel that it is my duty to become better versed in the
 cultures that fill my classroom. Laotian students, mainly Hmong and 
Mien, are an integral part of the student population here at C.K. McClatchy High School in Sacramento. Finding myself basically ignorant of the history
 of these two groups, I jumped at the opportunity to learn more. I had
 the good fortune of having Peter Whittlesey, SEAIF team member as both teacher and guide
 to the complex reality of 21st century Laos, and embarked on the 
adventure of a lifetime last summer.

Experiencing Laos and its culture and history has allowed me a much
 better appreciation of the culture from which my Laotian students have
 come. In my teaching I am able to relate things to my South East Asian
 students which I never would have been able to before this trip. 
Talking about democracy and the freedoms we enjoy here, it is easy for 
me to compare our country to Laos and the freedoms that they lack.
 Discussing tribal culture and power structure, I can easily rattle off
 analogies gathered on my adventure to Laos. Immersion in Laos has also
 given me an understanding of my own culture and some of the advantages 
of being born in North America. This trip is one that I will continue
 to mine in my memories for the rest of my life. This is travel at its 
finest: educational, adventurous and most of all enlightening.”

Through SEAIF staff development, teachers and students will learn about Laos and Southeast Asia, while linking with California issues. For example in our staff development offering California and Laos: Rice Growing Communities on Two Sides of the Pacific Rim we will explore the economic, nutritional, social and ritual importance of rice in Southeast Asian culture. We will focus upon the cultivation of rice as the foundation of the village economy. We will discuss the origins of rice cultivation in tropical Asia, will explore the ecology of rice growing from the germination of the seed to the storing of the harvest and will examine the significance of rice to subsistence farmers, national economies and world trade. During this unit will also study the relationship between rice growing and art and ceremony in traditional Asian culture. Finally, the unit will compare and contrast rice growing in Southeast Asia with rice cultivation in California (the state which produces the largest rice crop in the United States). We will work closely with University of California Cooperative Agriculture Extension in Butte and Sutter counties, with the Rice Growers Association headquartered in Marysville, and with selected growers such as Koda Farms in Fresno and Lundberg Farms in Butte County to link the discussion of rice production in remote Asian villages to rice production in the central valley of California.

SEAIF staff development will be based on themes particular to the area under study and universally applicable in developing countries. For instance, a unit on tropic agriculture and local impacts of the global market place might focus on coffee production. The unit will detail the development of coffee planting in tropical Asia, will discuss the increasing demand for high quality coffee in industrialized, developed countries, will explore the technology and economics of coffee production in southern Laos and will stress that since coffee is a tropical crop its production its sale in the United States is one of many instances of increasing global integration.

We are willing to work with districts to customize staff development so it will meet the need for teachers to earn district credits. We also have the potential to offer credits through Continuing Education at UOP (University of the Pacific at Stockton) for $50 a unit. A 30 hour class would qualify for two units.