i am now returning last semester, trying to redeem myself with a different mentality. my priority is to help my community. that is what motivates me now to make a difference for youth in the community. i have been doing youth work also since i got out of high school, and that motivated me to move forward. >> we only had a few minutes left. if any of you have one suggestion that somebody sitting on this side could do differently than what your experience, you have a unique audience in front of you -- then what you experienced -- if someone sitting on this side could do something differently than what you experienced. something that would really make a difference to change the trajectory for a lot of your peers and colleagues. >> i guess i will started off. one is the thing i just

mentioned. i think a lot more things like that studies class is are something that is an obvious need -- things like ethnic studies classes. something that ninth graders are taught from the beginning. we need to have culturally and linguistically competent teachers. we need to train our teachers to try to see past just the things that they have to teach, but try to understand and work with students to learn and understand where they are coming from and the fact that a lot of our students are stepping in the classroom with a lot of baggage, a lot of trauma, which affects the way they will learn or if they are going to learn at all because some of their situations might be that series at home that when you get to school, you are not focused. you might be sleep deprived or hungry. we need to provide services for

our students to support them in these other areas of life, which are the basic needs, which we know now and research shows that if you are hungry, if you are worried or you have to take care of your siblings and you have these big responsibilities that normally adults have, as a child, you are not going to be able to focus in school, so i think we need to support our students in that way outside the classroom and then inside the classroom as well. we need to provide a curriculum that is going to engage them. >> i would say bring back the fund classes -- the fun classes. [laughter] i was disappointed my freshman year when they did not have things like shock and cooking class is -- like shop and cooking classes.

and teach the teachers because some of my teachers are terrible. >> i would say the same. bring back the fund classes -- the fund -- the fun classes. each student has to have a fun time, and that makes the student better, and they can apply all the knowledge they had into the fun stuff. that is how i have been going through, learning from high school, learning about math, science, everything, and i am right now applying it to architecture. i am in a program called build san francisco and applying my knowledge, so you should bring programs like architecture. there are students asking me how they will use this knowledge. they are learning all the basics, but they do not know how to apply it to the real world. if you bring the fun stuff, you

can give them the opportunity to see what they can do with the knowledge they are learning from high school. >> i would say transition day is a great thing we are doing. i went through the application process, and it was a drag. i had to come back to the mission more than twice, so i feel like having an even like this is great where we can do all our matriculation and counseling all at once so we do not have to worry whether or not we did the right steps or messed up because we would have professionals here to help us out. >> i would say more support. i actually did not feel like i had support, so that is where i messed up. and i have been here two years, where i should be done or finishing up, but i think it was the support, where i just did not feel that, especially in my home. when i came here, the

counselors, a kind of felt like, "you just do this" and pushed me away. i am a fashion design student, and it sucks that i have to go to l.a. or new york to get that type of experience like everybody says. i do not want to do that. i definitely want to make san francisco a booming place for fashion, and i know it is going to happen. i have confidence in that, but there should be more creativity and stuff like that. music, for example. the city is definitely going to come around to that more. and i know technology is definitely going to advance that. they should be both up there with each other because it is definitely happening. >> yes, i also think similarly to them. bring more classes to the school. most of the classes in the school are like teachers and students -- they do not really

communicate outside of the class. we had more classes like cooking class, you could interact with your teacher and do practical stuff at the same time. i also think that more stricter teachers -- usually, a lot of teachers do not really bring most of the students' ability. if you have stricter teachers, students will need to realize that they need to bring their best in the teacher's class. >> some class for international kids. for example, when i came to america, i did not know the system. like bachelor's degrees, master, ph.d. in my country, you study in school and go straight to university. that is it. you finish. here, you get a bachelor's,

master's, ph.d. after school, and this is a big problem for us. we need to learn it. we need teachers to tell us. we cannot actually ask the staff. when you do not know the system, you think everything is similar, so you do not really ask about that. you think that the system is similar, so you do not know what to ask, and then you realize you have to go to city college because you cannot enter university. you need to finish more english class is because you have only two years and need four -- the need to finish more english classes. this is a big problem for international kids. you will see many international kids, and they are very smart, but they just did not have the opportunity to go to university. >> thank you all. we are going to have the rest of the students file in so we can have more formal remarks, but i want to thank all of you for sharing remarks. there is a few obvious takeaways for us around making classes

more interesting and relevant, making sure we understand what is happening inside and outside the classroom and supporting students and making sure that we are connecting that to students coming from different backgrounds. all good lessons for us to think about. i appreciate also the fact that what we're doing here today will make a difference to getting over some of the barriers to getting into college. mr. mayor, i do not know if you want to share any final thoughts as we let the masses in. mayor lee: first of all, thank you for including me with all of these other prestigious individuals, but more importantly, i am honored to talk with all of you. my immediate impression of all of you is you are going places. you do not know that now and maybe you have a lot of doubts, but listening to you, you are already analyzing what your own life is doing the very first years you're doing it. that is the beginning. that is the excitement of college. when i was in college, i allowed

my mind to float, and i learned things from different teachers because i did not know what i was going to do. the chance in college allows you to change, allows you to find out not only what you are but what you are comfortable with and where you want to build a career. you are already exhibiting that because you know how to analyze. that is the number one thing. the other thing is you are giving yourself a chance to make choices. there are a lot of people not making the choice to go to college. some people say they do not have to have a choice. they have to do something else because they have to make money and have all these other pressures to deal with. they are setting themselves up for not being able to make a choice. life is all going to be about choices. as you proceed to college, you will get better at it and make better choices for yourself, and the ultimate is when you start making choices that involve other people. as the mayor of san francisco, i am making choices to lead the

city because i have been able to get through the kind of lives you are about to get in for yourselves. that is exciting, and i truly hope that you create that foundation, keep that confidence, and then make the commitment to yourself that this is all about yourself. this is where you want to do something for yourself, to improve it so that you can be part of a community of enlightened people that says, "i got this degree. i did it on my own, and i can help other people." that is what urban society is about. you are here because you want to interact with other people, and your pride and experience will be exhibited through the choices you make. [applause] >> we hope you stick around, but we are going to transition to the more formal part of the date. thank you for sharing with us. >> i would like to welcome our board of trustees, our

administrators, our staff, and, of course, we are all here to welcome you, the students, to this very important and exciting day, the very first frisco day at city college of san francisco. [applause] i am the dean of outreach and recruitment at city college, and i am also the co-lead of the bridge to success in the senate. the bridge to success initiative is a partnership between city college, the city of san francisco, san francisco unified, and san francisco state, and we're working together to reach an exciting goal of doubling the numbers in san francisco will get a degree or certificate. how many of you are going to get a degree? raise your hands. or a certificate? raise your hands. we should have every hand up in this room. if you are not convinced you are

coming to college, you will be convinced before you leave today. i just want to tell you a little bit about myself. in the first in my family to go to college -- i am the first in my family to go to college. anyone else? for me, my first year of college was really intimidating for me. i was really overwhelmed. i did not know how to get the financial support i needed. my mother never even went to kindergarten. i could not even go to my mother for help, so i did not know where to turn. my transition was overwhelming. we want to make sure you have a smooth transition of college. that is why we have created this important day for you. that first year in college, i felt like i did not belong. i had this fear that at any moment, somebody would have me on my shoulders and tell me i did not belong. we want to create an environment for you today where you feel

comfortable, you feel welcome, and you feel like city college is the place for you and college is the place for you. there are four things we want you to take away from this date. the first is college knowledge. anyone know what that is? having an understanding of college. all right. you are already smart. what we want you to know today is before you leave, we want you to have the knowledge about how to work the system. that is what college knowledge is, okay? very confusing. even to enroll in city college, you need to complete five steps. we want to get you through the system. we want you to have the knowledge to understand how to maneuver that system. also, persistence. we want to connect you with all the student clubs. we have cheerleaders in the back. you are going to meet student clubs and organizations today. we want to connect you with the

support programs so that when you get here, you know with a talk with to feel comfortable so you can get through and persist through the degree or certificate. options -- we want to make sure you understand college is an option for every single person in this room. we have 100 certificates that can lead you to a career or so seats degrees -- or associates degrees that will lead to us. how many of you are planning on transferring to university? almost the entire room. the fourth item we want you to take away from today is self advocacy. ultimately, you need to own your own education. we want to give you the tools for yourself so you can fight for a quality education. that is what it is all about. when you become a student here, you become active, and you can fight for what you believe is right and what you believe you deserve as a quality education.

these are really important takeaways. we want you to leave today with college knowledge, persistence, college options, and self advocacy. i really struggled through the first year, but i made it. i made it through my bachelor's degree, my master's degree, and i am in the final year of my doctorate program. if i did it, every single person in this room can. do not have a doubt at all. we want you to be convinced that today is the day you can absorb all the information from every person you interact with because we want you to leave feeling empowered and that college is for you. we are truly committed to making sure every single person feels welcome today and our overarching message to you is you are college material. you are smart enough. you do belong here. with that, i would like to introduce you to our chancellor, so he can share more about city

college's commitment to you. let's give him a warm welcome. [applause] >> thank you. so, a couple of years ago, i sat down with unified school district, city and county of san francisco, and we said, "how can we change the system in san francisco so that all of you can have the kind of experience educationally that you need?" we decided that the only way we could achieve this is that all the people on the stage have to work together because the students were telling us that we have failed them to a large extent. why? because many of us went to college perhaps or high-school too long ago. i was at uc berkeley in the

1960's as an undergraduate. so i had to look at that and ask how confused i was. when i look back on it, as everyone on this stage will tell you, their first stage was -- their first year was confusing, maddening. we were experimenting. we were experimenting perhaps with a lot more than you will be experimenting with. [laughter] nevertheless, we are here now. what is the common thread that connects all of us? college education. [applause] do not be fooled. do not let anyone tell you that without a college education, everything is fine. we are in america now. we are in international scene now that without a college education, you are nowhere in this society and going further down. i know you do not want to hear that because people think that other people did it. high-school would be fine --

high school would be fine. it would not be ok. the ok route is what we have to tell you about. you want to go someplace, your elders, people who have done it have to tell you the roadmap. you cannot invent the road map for yourself. it is our obligation to give you that road map -- road map -- roadmap.. frisco day is telling you, here is the first step. but that is not all of it. we have changed the system. we talk to each other, work together, make sure we are planning together and giving what you need. someone said you cannot go to college without help, and that is true. you have to have financial help,

wraparound services, individual faculty and friends who understand your journey so that you can go along with them in that journey to success. without all of those things going on, it is very tough for most people. and what happens that is really detrimental for me and other people is you start thinking inside of your head and thinking you are alone, the only one experiencing this particular set of problems, and you are not. when you go to college, like everything else in life, you have to start networking. you have to start networking with your fellow students, talk to them. goethe your instructors and say to them, "give me some of your time. i want to talk to you." they will talk to you because at city college, that is what our mission is. our mission is to help students learn and be successful and create an environment where that is happening. and my office is open for anybody -- all of you at city college that if they feel they

are not getting what they need, they can come to my office and talk to me directly. we have set up more than two dozen support programs here. it is there to help you individually so that you can be successful. do not be ashamed to reach out to us, to reach out to the people here for help. because we all reach out in our past for help, and there was someone there to help us. i guarantee you that nobody sitting here would be sitting here if they did not have someone that grab their hand and helped them -- someone had grabbed -- someone that grabbed their hand and helped them. college makes a difference in terms of your deciding that you are going to demand from the

system what it is supposed to give to you. and the system must respond. if it does not, there are plenty of us here that will force that response. second is a discovery journey. you are on a journey to discover who you are. only you can actually do that. inside, there is something waiting to be opened up for you to show the world, for you to share with the world, and every one of you sitting here can be a success story. every one of you here is a success story, and it is our job for the self discovery. it is your job to have a better sense of who you are as a person, a better sense of what you want to do, and if we do not help you do those things, we have not done our job. it is not just about the math and science and english and so forth. it is about you. england had the wedding, and we have frisco day.

[applause] now, the thing that i want to do is i want to introduce a man who i greatly admire, who has done so many wonderful things here in san francisco and who understands education. in fact, early in his career, the mayor was actually a member of the staff, maybe the director, of an upward bound program, and it basically is doing what we are doing today, which is to try to take high school students and get them into a college setting in a way that they can be successful. a number of years ago, he was having his own frisco experience, so i want to do -- introduce our mayor who is doing a terrific job, mayor edwin lee. [applause] mayor lee: good morning.

i am glad to be here has your mayor and also to join this distinguished panel of people utilizing the funding opportunities from the gates foundation, working with our school district as well as our community college, and to talk with you today about my own personal experience related to college. just last month, i had a very special thing happened to me -- happened to me. somebody that i got acquainted with some number of years ago came to visit me in the mayor's office, flow all the way out from brunswick, maine. this gentleman was a high-school student that i had recruited when i was in college to be a student at the top were bound program that i was counseling at

during the summers when i was in college -- at the upward bound program i was counseling at. i had an interest in that program because of the opportunities that i was lucky to have, being able to go on a full ride to a college all the way across the united states. i was born and raised in seattle, and this little college had recruited me. it was funny at the time because they were recruiting on the west coast, looking at me. obviously, i was asian, and they were suggesting that maybe my strengths were in math and science, so they gave me a full ride, thinking i was going to do math and science because i am asian. [laughter] after the first year where i knew i could do math and science because that was kind of easy for me, i decided i was not going to go that route. i change my career, and i had an

opportunity to do that because i had a great institution to work from. in the summers, i stayed on the campus. three of the four summers, i stayed on the college campus because i really like working in the upward bound program where we were talking to high school kids, particularly low-income high school kids from indian reservations in northern maine, from the french-canadian border. a lot of kids were minority kids, and they never had a chance for anyone to speak to them about what it was to be in college and what it was to be even in the very expensive private college. one of those students who i went back to his house in northern maine one summer and talk to his parents -- talks to his parents -- he was a kid with five siblings. his mother and father were saying they could not afford for him to go to college.

that was not in his future. it was my opportunity to speak with the mother and father to say, "give the kid a chance." their family was potato farmers. they were planting potatoes their whole lives. generations of that. if they got a job, their job was car mechanic or working in a restaurant. i worked with this kid, and he said i had to talk to his parents. i sat down, talk with his father -- talks -- talked with his father. he asked why i would want him to send his kid to college where he needs money and needs to be able to have a life of his own -- what does college have to do with that? i said that i was going somewhere, and i was going to be places and my mind was open, and i think college is a good opportunity.

after that meeting and after i tried to make an impression on the parents that it was the right choice to allow his son to make that choice, that father actually told the sun -- son that college was not for him. i had long hair. he said i was not even from the state, trying to convince him about a better life. an arrogant kid, does not know what our lives are -- an urban kid. but the son i talked to said he made his own choice. he said he was convinced that it was something that he wanted to pay attention to end date. he flew out last month to visit me when he found out i was mayor of san francisco, and he came in

to my office just to thank me after 25 years. i had not seen this guy in 25 years. to say thank you. from those programs and the values instilled in me, like, out of -- he out of the five kids in this family was the first to graduate from college. his older brother and sister were still working for the car dealership. he got a great job and can afford to fly out to san francisco to visit because he has that kind of income and has a family. his younger brother and sister also went to college. they have lives that are better because of college. so i want to share that with you because it is unique in so many ways, but it is a personal story for me, too, because i was able to impact somebody that i did not know what their lives would be about.

we all talk just about the college experience and what that means. all of you have in front of you an opportunity that will allow you to make choices. the worst life that people have in san francisco that i have known are when you do not have a choice in what you want to do or be, that you do not give yourself an opportunity to make a choice. the best lives are reflected in people who have choices to make, and i believe that when you have a college education and when you complete that, your choices will be numerous about what you want to do. how many of you tweet right now? how many of you use twitter? wouldn't you like an opportunity to work for that company? that product is madend