Getting to the Topic – Obladi Oblada Life Goes On

Being too full of bright ideas, isn’t as helpful sometimes.

My heart was set on doing a comparison of teaching techniques used in low performing schools as oppose to teaching approaches used in medium to high performing schools. I was going to make the nearest elementary school in the Tenderloin area the base of my operations and Sunshine Gardens Elementary School as my other headquarters. I wanted to further expand that simple comparison by  learning how these teaching techniques are reflective of the demographic, economic, and cultural composition of the school itself. I was going to do all this.

But then I started learning about loans and bonds from my economics class. And so, an idea came to me. What if I examine reasons and factors that sustain the growth of predatory loaning? Perhaps touch on the cycle of poverty and the nonexistent formula to break the cycle of poverty?  Great idea, indeed. Working with a prototype mentorship letter where certain lines can just be filled in with specific names of banks, I printed several copies and approached known banks in my area.  I was received well by the typical tellers and their suit and tie – with the Chase representative bearing the most charming smile – but in the end, the prospect mentors that I approached never got back to me.

The answer was in my own backyard, my textbook and my peers.  Acculturation and Assimilation? Salad Bowl over melting pot? I live in California for god sakes. Also, the due date for the mentorship letter convinced me even more that THIS will be my topic. With this in mind, I contacted Martha Bookbinder from the Community Learning Center  of South San Francisco (CLC) so I can enlist her as my mentor.  CLC has an intimate relationship with the Hispanic community by Grand avenue and Martha just happen to be the instructor of CLC’s citizenship class.  

Working with Martha during the summer of my sophomore and junior year, it was not difficult to ask her to be my mentor and so I got my mentor letter signed and my awesome idea two days before the due date.

The long process of getting to my final topic for the Capstone Project reflects the curriculums of my classes and also, the existence of critical thinking that years of bubble-shading have not fully destroyed just yet.