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Kids get a sneak peek at college life
| Tuesday, May 13 2008 5:37 PM
Last Updated: Wednesday, May 14 2008 7:35 AM
Before the teachers could finish asking the question, hands shot up and students stretched a little bit taller in their seats — a silent “Ooh, pick me, pick me.”
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John Mosley, CSUB assistant men's basketball coach, shows the visiting fourth-graders the next step in their basketball drill.
John Mosley, the assistant men's basketball coach at CSUB, runs drills with the visiting fourth graders during their "I'm Going to College" day, to encourage them to try and go to college when they get older.
Cathy Bangon, a CSUB liberal studies junior, helps fourth graders create an oil pastel drawing like Vincent Van Gogh's "Sunflowers in a Vase." The xollege hosted groups of fourth graders from four rural elementary schools in the area for a day in the life of a college student.
Curtis Cargill, a CSUB senior in art, leads his group of fourth graders to the Student Union for a tour of the bookstore during their "I'm Going To College" Day.
This wasn’t a typical 4th grade class, but a sneak peak at college life for the 300 students who visited Cal State Bakersfield for “I’m going to college” day Tuesday.
The students from Maricopa Elementary, Hacienda Elementary in California City, Hamilton Elementary in Rosamond and Cuyama in Santa Barbara County rotated through a class schedule including art, where they recreated Vincent Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” masterpiece, a lesson in “Mad Libs” in English and psychology.
It was the culmination of a semester of lessons about higher education.
The program, put on by the Southern San Joaquin Valley California Student Opportunity and Access Program, gives students in rural communities, which have few college outreach programs, a chance to see that a place like CSUB could be a reality for them, said Oscar Luna, event coordinator.
LaKia Ling, Avaron Lawrence, and Jenifer Grajales of Hacienda enjoyed the class work, although, the girls proclaimed, they already were very good at defining adverbs and adjectives and giving examples of plural nouns and past tense verbs.
All agreed fiercely that college would be part of their future: art for LaKia, fashion for Avaron and medicine for Jenifer.
It’s good to plant the seed early, said group leader Lacy Casparis, a Taft College student who works as a tutor and peer advisor to Maricopa High School.
“A lot of them are interested and they don’t know how to get there,” Casparis said of the high school students with whom she works. “They don’t know who to ask and they’re afraid to ask ... because they think they should know already.”