Fishing for Freshmen : Telfair’s College Awareness Day Urges 6th-Graders to Stay in School

Jaime Verdin had not thought much about college, which is not unusual for a sixth-grader at Telfair Avenue Elementary School.

The Pacoima school is in a region that has one of the highest dropout rates in the Los Angeles Unified School District, Principal Delores Soll said.

But administrators and teachers at Telfair say elementary school students should be aware of the opportunities a college education can bring. That’s why the school held its first College Awareness Day on Friday for its 175 sixth-grade students.

The school asked former Telfair students, who have graduated from college and are practicing their careers, to speak to the students. Their theme was “stay in school.”

Jaime, 12, was impressed with what he heard, saying afterward he would like to study architecture. “I like drawing,” he said, adding that the most important message of the day was “study hard.”

Soll said the college awareness day seems to have boosted the self-esteem of the students, who are mostly from poor Latino families. She said college awareness days are usually held for older students.

“We don’t expect 100% of them to go to college, but we want them to know that option is out there,” she said. “We want them to know that it’s possible even if their parents haven’t had an education. And that it doesn’t take money. And that it doesn’t take straight A’s. . . . “

Bobby Jimenez, 12, said he had thought his poor schoolwork lately might prohibit him from going to college. But, after the session, he said he planned to study harder so that he can go to college and become a police officer.

Soll said Telfair Avenue officials decided they needed to make a special effort to encourage their pupils to consider college after a Hispanic engineering society in March invited pupils from Telfair and nine other elementary schools to tour the Cal State Northridge campus.

“We got to thinking what a terrific idea this would be for all of our kids,” Soll said. So Soll, along with curriculum coordinator Barbara Young and counselor John Hall, arranged for the school’s sixth-graders to visit a college campus in the area.

Students visited CSUN, UCLA, College of the Canyons and CalArts in Valencia.

Gabino Diaz, 11, who visited CSUN, said he liked the college and would like to study engineering there someday. “I like to fix radios,” he said.

Guadalupe Oregel, 12, visited CalArts but said she would rather attend UCLA and become a nurse.

Next Step

After the students’ campus visits, Telfair officials decided to go a step further and hold the college awareness day.

Speakers at Friday’s program included Henry Villatana, a graduate of USC with a master’s degree in accounting, now employed by a Los Angeles accounting firm; Sandra Tejeda, a 1987 graduate of UC Santa Barbara, a teaching assistant at Telfair; her sister Leticia, a 1986 graduate of UCLA, a retail manager for a department store; Ernesto Cardenas, a graduate of UC Santa Barbara, an engineer with Pacific Bell and Wendell Francisco, a 1983 graduate of UC Davis, a substitute teacher.

Francisco told the students that one teacher at Telfair, Neil Stroud, took an interest in him and encouraged him to go to college.

He urged students to pick their friends carefully so that they don’t wind up with a drug habit or a criminal record.

Anthony Cardenas told the students “success is doing what you want.”

“It’s OK to be a plumber,” Cardenas said. “If you do it because you want to, that’s good. But if you do it because that’s your only choice, that’s sad.”

The speakers told students that, even if they are too poor to pay for college, they can apply for financial aid including scholarships.

Soll and others at Telfair said they want to make the college awareness day an annual event.

“I think we’ve been successful in raising awareness of options,” Soll said. “How successful it has been, we won’t be able to tell for a long time.”