situation and blessed us the way he has. i want to thank my family, my wife and my boys. my teammates. i tell you what. when i got traded over here, it was a tough long road, but our trading staff was unbelievable. kept us all on the field. a quick story -- when i was down earlier this year, sabs came in and said what are you doing, why are you upset? the season is not over yet. we traded for you for a reason. that picked me up. all the coaching staff, everybody, we made it happen. as you know, i grew up a dodger fan, but right now and forever it is all about the san francisco giants and our world series, baby. [applause] >> san francisco giants are world champions. i am a part of it. i cannot believe it. nine years of my life. dead last our fourth place, this organization has the hard to bring me here and give me a chance. here i am in front of you beautiful people. you deserve it just as much as i do, trust me. i have a present for you all in san francisco. i am sure all of you have heard about the rallying song. i know this is a family event, but if you have seen zoolander, i have a special talent just for you. [applause] >> world champions. we will do it again, baby. san francisco, i love you. thank you very much! [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen, congratulations to the giants of 2010, and to you, i have the sound that you made at at&t park in the world series echoing in my head. we need it another few times as we face the winter ahead of next season. let's hear it again. let's go, giants. let's go, giants. >> let's go, giants. let's go, giants. let's go, giants. let's go, giants. let's go, giants. [applause] >> one more word from andres torres. >> i want to wish my wife happy birthday. i love you. many more. >> thank you all for coming to andres torres' wife's birthday party. i cannot wait to have another party next year. ladies and gentlemen, three and half months, pitchers and catchers report to scottsdale. and the giants will try to do it again. we will see you at the yard. the giants are the champions of the world. congratulations and thank you. [applause] ♪ ♪ i left my heart in san francisco high on a hill it calls to me to be where little cable >> thank you all for being here. this first session, we wanted to have a chance in a slightly more informal setting, despite the cameras and microphones, to have a conversation with some of our leaders about what your experiences are as students. what are we doing well to help you get a college, and what can a day like today and leaders who are assembled here due to make that experience better for our students? i appreciate you all being here to share those stories. why don't we do a quick round of introductions, and i would like each of you to give us a moment about your name, what school you are from, and a little background about either if you are in college, how you got here, or if you are getting ready to go to college, how you made that decision and how we can help. >> i am kimberly. >> in chancellor here at city college. >> [inaudible] >> alright, this close enough? all right. i follow directions well, too. i'm happy to have a session with you because we are always eager to hear what students say could ultimately help. we have to design educational programs to suit students because that is what we're all about. great to see you. >> in -- i'm ed lee, mayor of san francisco. >>i'm on the board of trustees for city college of san francisco. my wife is a crowd city college alum. i'm claiming her because i did not grow up here. [laughter] >> good morning. i am deputy superintendent for instruction and innovation, social justice for san francisco unified, and all of you are my boss. what we do, along with our teachers and administrators every day is make it possible for you to have a lot of success. this is really special to get an opportunity to have a conversation with you. thanks for being here. >> [inaudible] >> he is a task master. my name is chris jackson. i am the vice-president of the board of trustees at city college, born and raised in bayview-hunters point, and i am a proud sf state alum. it is really great to see you guys, especially you -- you guys know about the budget cuts coming down, and this is one of those morel boosters for you guys and us inside the institution where we bring fresh energy in, talking about college, and bucking the trend is. when people say we have to close off access to higher education college, we are actually opening access. i want you guys to know that as much as you guys are going to get from us, we are getting a lot back from you guys as well, so i just want to welcome you guys. >> i go to mission high, and i am planning to attend uc merced in the fall. >> i attend mission high school, and i am planning to go to uc berkeley. >> my name is sharon. this is my last semester at city college. i am transferring to sf state in the fall. >> i am a fashion design student here at ucsf. my transition was a little rough, but i found my way. i have not decided what school i am going to transfer to, but i am hoping fit -- f.i.t. in new york. >> i am from balboa high school. i am planning to go to city college this year. >> good morning, everyone. i came to america two years ago, i am planning to go to city college first and then transferred to ucla -- transferred to ucla. thank you. >> i am a graduate of balboa high school, and i am a student here at city college. >> ok, well, welcome, everybody. we thought what would be helpful for this -- those of us on this side of the park would be to hear from each of you one of two things. if you are in high school, tell us when you knew you were going to be a college student and what we either did to help or did not do to help to get you to that point. if you are in city college, it would be helpful to hear a similar thing -- what got you into city college, and what made it possible for you to stay? anyone who wants to start is welcome. >> ok, so, when i entered into the united states i did not speak english at all. my first language is russian, and my second is hebrew. i entered into balboa high school, and i had this great teacher who taught me english. i am super thankful to him, but i still need to learn english more, so i am going to city college. teachers, i think -- it depends on teachers, the way they teach us how to speak correctly. i was super shy when i entered the united states, and i could not talk in front of other people. i just could not. i had so many grammar mistakes, and it is super embarrassing. >> yes, so, i first want to go to city college when my parents said that if i wanted to choose a college, choose the best college for me, and i thought city college would be the best place for me right now because i do not really have money to go to uc and stuff. city college opened my doors, so i decided to go year, and i think it will be a great choice for me -- so i decided to go here, and i think it will be a great choice for me. >> i actually did not think i was college material just because nobody in my highs -- in my household went to college and it just was not thought of. it was not until junior year when all my friends were focused on it as well, for example, taking the a.c.t.'s and s.a.t.'s. it is still shocking to be in college, like, when you really realize you are furthering your education. i just thought maybe after high school, that would kind of just beat it. so to see myself here is definitely a blessing. >> was there anything someone in your high school did to help get over that hurdle? >> definitely. i took a program called avid. it actually was in fairfield, so i was not in the bay area. but i started taking a junior year, and we started focusing, during the organization's -- doing the organization for getting into college. >> i actually started my freshman year at san jose state university. it did not really work out. i had no idea what's -- what g.e. class as ore, and i was probably taking glasses that were not transferable. after my second semester, i decided i would come to city college, and i really learned a lot. i got introduced into the metro health academy program, which helped me get into a straight path way to -- pathway to sf state where i'm going to go in the fall. one thing that really helped me was school to college at balboa. i always knew i wanted to go to college. my parents did go to college, but they never got a degree, so they always wanted me to go for a higher education. >> go ahead. that is all right. thank you for joining us. >> when i was younger, i had to help my family working, and sometimes, i had to help them picking up cardboard and delivering newspapers. for me, it was kind of helping them in any way to survive in this city. every night, i had to go from 6:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. to pick up cardboard or deliver newspapers throughout san francisco, so i was frustrated and realized i did not want to do this anymore when i am, like, 40 years old. so i was thinking, why not go to college and find a way to help improve lives? so i started joining different programs. that kind of motivated me. i wanted to do something to inspire young degenerations. i applied to different schools and managed to get into berkeley with a full ride. >> congratulations. [applause] >> i kind of always knew that i was college bound. my grandparents and parents on both sides of my family went to college, except for my father, so it was kind of the next step for me. i do not feel like high-school prepared me much. i feel like i had to put in more of the work myself to find stuff to do. and put myself out there more than the school actually offering me programs and such. in that aspect, i would say high school did not prepare me for college. >> for me, school has never been my strong suit, to be honest. i have generally struggled, all the way into high school, up until around, like, 11th grade when i started to change my life around. i am a son of immigrant parents. even though they wanted me to go to college, it is different when they do not know how to -- when you are told to do something but not told how to get there and given the tools to make it to that spot. i was involved in a lot of street activity, and i really just woke up with things like friends passing away, friends going to jail, including my own sister going to jail. i really saw the influence that i have and that others have in our community, and that really just woke me up. also things like in balboa, it was key moments, a key people like teachers, like george lee, wilcox, benedicto, who in the beginning of his history class said, "even though our curriculum is a certain way, i want to make sure we touch on a little bit of the history of everyone in this class and how you got here to america." that really made me see that education could be different. before that, i was not really engaged or interested in what i was being taught, but that made a huge difference for me. i am involved in things like ethnic studies here, which are taking a turn to hopefully engage students and relate to the audience and the people you are teaching. for me, i did not -- i still had some bad habits when i came to city college. when i first came, i was not focused. it was not my priority. i was working full time. so i struggled. i dropped out. i messed up my transcript. 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