Class of ’28
Fifth-graders get taste of college
Amanda Brooks couldn’t get her students to leave class on Tuesday morning when it was time to go to lunch.
The fifth-graders from O.C. Johnson Elementary School were having too much fun investigating bones from the biology department at Arizona Western College in the annual “I’m Going 2 College” program.
Biology professor Daniel Davis even brought out the college’s “pet” cat skeleton, which both thrilled and chilled students during his “Human Skeletal Systems” lecture. Students got to “pet” the cat at the end of the discussion.
The grant-funded “I’m Going 2 College” program, now in its 14th semester, is a collaboration with Northern Arizona University-Yuma, in which professors volunteer time from their schedules to expose fifthgraders from the Yuma area to a typical day of college life.
The program is held each semester at the AWC campus. Students arrive around 8:30 a.m. and get to “take” classes until about 12:30 p.m. in courses such as history, science, agriculture, English, leadership and engineering. They also have two assemblies to hear speakers from the colleges and to discuss what they discovered during the course of the day.
San Pasqual students Alan Martinez Zazueta said he liked learning about scholarship opportunities, and Angel Lizarraga said he liked the agriculture aspect. Jose Gutierrez Ramirez said he was interested in the athletic opportunities college offers, as he is a soccer defender.
O.C. Johnson fifth-grader Ciara Escalante said she really enjoyed the science class by professor Cecilia Vigil, which focused on field work in the discipline.
Escalante said she had not been considering college because “I thought it was going to be really hard work, but the stuff they showed us today wasn’t that bad.”
Dominic Arriola and Jose Arias both liked getting to work with animals, and have already thought about future careers.
Arriola said he wanted to be a policeman, while Jose Arias said he wanted to be a doctor. Classmate Rene Cabrera said he’s interested in joining the Air Force.
“We learned that we can be anything we want,” Cabrera said.