Meeting with Allyson Cubales

October 22, 2013

I was able to meet with one of my panel members and I presented my findings and talked to her about what my center project is going to be about.  Since their website is down I was discussing with her about what should be presented first in their website. I also described to her my ideas on how the website can be re-introduced to everyone.  We talked about how it can be utilized by students as well as the teachers and how the website can be used and maintained for a long period of time.  Other things we discussed about were the reasons why the counselors don’t know much about PEP and found out that they were not informed about PEP, which verifies my research that students know more about PEP than the teachers or counselors.

Problem & Purpose Statement

Panel of Experts

Panel of Experts

Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, PhD

SFSU Associate Professor,

Asian American Studies Department


AAS MA Program Coordinator

Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP), Founder and Director

Allyson was my first pick in my panel of experts because she is the founder and current head director of PEP which gives me direct connection with PEP rather than having a middle person in between to relay messages when I come across a challenge. She helps me grant access to schools in San Francisco, as it is sometimes hard to receive a visitors badge in public schools.  She is most of the time busy meeting with students as well as teaching; therefore she only meets by appointment only.

Maria Abigail Santos

Asian America Studies Graduate at SFSU

PEP Teacher for Longfellow Elementary

Maria is one of the PEP Teachers/Staff in Longfellow Elementary; I have chosen her for as part of my Panel, because other than the fact that Allyson is harder to make contact with. Allyson has appointed me to her as someone that I can rely on if any question that I might have when she is not available. Maria has worked for PEP for two years and I believe her experiences would provide great insights into my research.

Andrew Gutierrez III

Business Graduate at SFSU

Works at Lyric in San Francisco

PEP teacher for Balboa High School

Student Body President of Associated Students

Andrew has wide-rang information about students as he was part of the Student Body President of Associated Students in Fall of 2011. He was also the Assistant Head Coordinator of the student organization for PACE (Pilipino American Collegiate Endeavor), this is where he helped organize a peer-to-peer educational internship to help students think critically about their Filipino culture.

Evelyn Obamos

Graphic Designer

Dual Degree Teachers Preparation

Media Studies and Education at CSF

A graphic designer in partnership with PEP to help out with their website as well as their graphic poster. She has experiences in wide varieties of media skills such as video production, video editing, music composition, photography, as well as event planning.  She creates most of the graphic elements for PEP.

Three School In One Day

October 4, 2013

In trying to understand my problem a little bit more I decided to go to three different schools today to see if I can increase my data research.  I also have my question surveys ready to give out as well so I can understand how people are finding out about PEP.  I am taking public transportation to see if I could pick up any data on students traveling by the same means and realized this is going to be a long day.

My first stop is Balboa High School. When I got there the class was already over as it was a half day for the students that day.  Since I’m already here I decided to check out the school and see if I can find anything about PEP throughout the school such as posters on the walls. I didn’t find anything and thought I would try to speak with the counselors thinking that they would know about PEP and have tried to offer it to students.  Instead of meeting with a counselor I was greeted by the vice principal of the school and as I explained to her my reason for visiting I was kindly turned down and was informed that the students would know more about the class rather than the counselors.  I decided to give up because as much as I wanted to pursue in trying to get an audience with a counselor I didn’t want to risk losing my privilege of visiting the school.

Next I headed over to Skyline College.  There was not much of a difference in the class curriculum as the PEP teacher in Skyline told me.  He told me that the only difference between them and high schools was that they talk about the curriculum more and that students were more open to expressing their thoughts. I then stuck around for the class and handed over my surveys to get some data and quickly left right after as my next stop, Longfellow Elementary School is a long distance to get to.

Longfellow Elementary School was my last stop on the list and I got there early enough to see the parents waiting for their kids to be off school.  Most of them were grandparents and a few didn’t seem to speak English fluently and I realized grandparents are the ones who are picking up the kids in this school. I went in to the PEP class with the students being third graders and I was greeted with two teachers teaching the class. There was not much data I can gather with the students and I tried looking at the door to see if anyone would pass by.  In the end I didn’t get enough date needed for Longfellow and decided to come back again and try talking with the grandparents.

Visiting Balboa High school

Thursday September 26, 2013

Talk to one of my panel of experts Maria Santos, one of the teachers of PEP at Longfellow Elementary School and talk more in-depth with how PEP works. Some questions came up when talking to her was how the way PEP is being funded. I have heard that they are always in need of funding so I ask more about how that work and what I found out was kind of surprising.  I’ve always have a though that they needed money to keep their program working, but that wasn’t the case as Maria have told me that they accept any kind of donation from school supplies to food or snacks for elementary students.   Other things I’ve talk about with her are how are they advertising the program in her school. Very sparingly they don’t have any kind of way to attract them, no pamphlet, not even a conversation that would help explain PEP.

PERT Chart

PEP Workshop

Wednesday September 25, 2013

Visiting the PEP workshop to see how PEP works and talk to the staff of PEP.  I found out that PEP program for Grad students is like a steppingstone for people who are really interested in becoming a teacher. The people who attend this workshop are aspiring teachers that are working with PEP and teaching in local school area in San Francisco. This gave me the opportunity to talk to them and get to know who they are and what their reason for attending PEP. I found out that most of these people are not even Asian American Studies students, that there are varieties of different majors and grad students.