SLOCHS Community Based Learning Weblog

My third shift (Feb. 2) was really interesting. Borderline fascinating, really.

When I first arrived, I met Aristotle, who was docenting as well for this shift. After that I formally met Leon for the first time.

Later Jen showed up as a third docent for the shift and we all kind of sat there waiting. After waiting a while, Leon started talking to us and asked us what our ethnic backgrounds were. We told him and we really got into a great discussion about different cultures around the world and how great it was that we live in world today where all these amazing cultures could gather together at one table (such as we three student docents had).

We told each other some stories that were, in my humble opinion, quite fascinating and after awhile we started to get a steady flow of visitors.

There was quite a range of various types of visitors in those three hours. We had one lady come in with a little girl that was mentioned to have Chinese heritage and so the lady thought it would be good to have her see the exhibit. She took the little girl into the kids’ room after they had scanned the exhibit and I was tasked with finding a pencil sharpener that worked (I went through two that hadn’t worked) so that the little girl could continue her coloring adventure.

We also got a lady who came with a friend and an older lady in a wheelchair who had visited the museum years before. She was quite visibly disappointed in the museum, and she wasn’t afraid to be vocal about it. She kept throwing out phrases like, “I can’t believe they changed the museum to this!” and “This isn’t even appealing,” before finally muttering, “Come on. Let’s go. Nothing to see here.” It’s always frustrating when people are impolite about things. It’s like if I were to go to the Holocaust Museum and talk about how unimpressive it was. It’s somebody’s history you’re talking about. It’s somebody’s culture. You know? It’s kind of like those signs that a lot of high school teachers have: Be Nice Or Leave.

We also had a group of teens who were attendants of Cuesta. One of them remarked that one of her friends had taken a class and recommended checking out the museum. They were surprised to learn that there was a heavy Chinese population in Cal Poly, because (as she reasoned) she had never really seen many people of Chinese background around in Cal Poly before.

Oh! There was also a guest earlier in the day who fell asleep watching the video. That was interesting. We let him chill there for awhile though.

However, my favorite visitor to the museum was a foreign teen (whose name currently escapes me). He told us he was born in Dublin, but later moved to South Africa and then Mexico. Between him, Leon, Jen, Aristotle and myself we struck up quite a few interesting conversations.

One of my favorites to listen to was when Leon asked the visitor which country brewed the best beer. It was really funny to listen too.

It wasn’t all random nonsense like that though. We actually discussed a lot about things related to the early Chinese residents of SLO and then that evolved into a conversation of the various ethnic immigration into SLO and then it became another ethnic discussion.

We even discussed the historical landmark activities of minority figures in US history. The foreign visitor, for example, brought up the first white versus black boxing match held and the shockwaves that produced.

Once the visitor kind of drifted away to look at the exhibit a bit more, we also had conversations on politics and global warming. We actually all were surprised to hear about “Global Dimming” from Aristotle. None of us had heard about it before. If you haven’t either, I definitely recommend checking it out. It’s worth reading up on.

We all got a turn at being a guide for various groups of people who came in as well. It was fun. Leon took the first few groups, naturally, but really encouraged us to try our hands at it as well.

One lady at a point commented to Leon how she wished there were more books written on Chinese American and Japanese American histories.

Soon the day wound down to an end.

To say in the least, it was a interesting day.

To say a little more than that it was fantastic.

~André “Drey” Katkov