Class of 2013 Visits Area Colleges

More than 10,000 kindergartners converged on the county’s community college campuses Friday for an early lesson in academic aspiration.

And 5-year-old Dulce Acosta quickly grasped the message urged by the fourth annual KinderCaminata.

“I have to go to college to be a doctor,” said the Topaz Elementary School student from Placentia, who was visiting Fullerton College.

KinderCaminata aims to have children think from the start that they can pursue the career of their dreams--starting, of course, with a college education.

Thus the 2,000 children who visited Rancho Santiago College wore caps proclaiming them members of the Class of 2013.

The children carried name tags telling what they want to be when they grow up. There were future presidents, doctors, an astronaut, a computer designer and lots of teachers.

“I want to be a policegirl because my daddy’s a policeman,” Danielle Frie of Irvine said. “He gets the bad guys and puts them away in jail.”

The 6-year-old was one of 450 kindergartners who visited Irvine Valley College.

For most of the children, KinderCaminata is their first exposure to college, said Galal Kernahan, the event’s founder. Many come from low-income families who worry more about putting food on the table than sending their children to college.

Organizers said that by stressing the importance of education, children will go home excited about college and tell their parents that it is within their reach.

“This event really opens up the minds of the students as well as the parents,” said Nora Garcia, vice principal of Paul Revere Elementary School in Anaheim. Her school visited Fullerton College. “Here, they see that they have the potential and can succeed.”

Dulce’s mother, Esther Acosta, said she was grateful for the event: “This helps motivate my daughter to study and become whatever she wants.”

About 2,000 children toured Fullerton College, where they were treated to a ventriloquist’s performance, took a hands-on lesson about reptiles and amphibians, and learned about medical careers by listening to their heartbeats through stethoscopes.

“It goes tick, tick, tick,” Jose Aguilar, 5. said. “This is cool.”

Rancho Santiago Community College District Chancellor Vivian Blevins said the event sends the message that “children belong in college.”