When enjoying a high school life many students don't wonder how they are going to make it to college after they graduate because they have been given the stepping stones early in their educational careers to follow on through college. That is not the case for many first generation students. These students have to lay those stepping stones for themselves because they have had no one to coach them through the process of applying or even considering college after high school. Most high schools employ the tracking system, which labels students as headed in the direction of either vocational training, a junior college, or a university after graduating. Students are then placed in courses that correspond to how they have been labeled by the guidance department. Many schools place students on a track according to their score on a standardized test which can be administered as early as the sixth grade. More often than not students are in no control over which track they are placed on and have to fight in order to be put on the path of their choice.

    Teachers as well as counselors and the high school community should support students wanting to make these first critical steps into their future. But as many find out you have to pave your own way just like Maria Lupe Figueroa did:

Did high school prepare you at all for college?
So I went to talk to my counselor and I asked them to please place me in a higher level like, um algebra classes like, um bilingual classes like cause I didn't know English but I was placed in ESL classes. Those are English as a second language. And that was fine with me cause I needed that class. But the rest of the classes like I needed to talk to the counselor and he was, "Yeah...okay? Um I think it's going to be really hard for you cause you don't speak the language but you can try it. Let's see what happens." At that point I didn't even know what was the college prep classes... And also there were some of the professors that saw the kind of potential in me and they told me like "I think you might be like taking these other classes instead. Instead of the basic math and stuff." So I jumped from basic math all the way to algebra 1, and then into geometry and algebra 2." (Lines 51-83)

These steps taken by Lupe shouldn't have been so complex for the counselor to understand. Luckily the administration made a mistake in students' schedules so that Lupe had the chance to move on to challenging classes to help her finish the English requirement for college admission. What would have happened if that administration leak hadn't occurred? Many students suffer the consequences of tracking. For Cesar Mora, his counselor also didn't have great confidence in him attending college:

How did high school prepare you?
Not very good. My counselors actually never told me I could go to college and when I told them I was gonna I was thinking about going to college, he laughed. So you know he pretty much laughed, like not just smile he laughed (emphasized), you know. So it was kind of not good, I didn't really have a, you could say a role model, somebody like a mentor kind of thing.
How was your reaction to his laughing?
I was, embarrassed kind of thing, upset, but you know like since, sometimes, you don't really think to much of it sometimes, a little bit just for a couple of seconds, ignored it pretty much I didn't know what to do, so you know.

Cesar experienced a harsh reality that many students don't face bluntly in this day and age. His counselor laughed at him because he thought he couldn't make it in college. Sandra Chavarin, a CSUMB sophomore, also had experienced the same type of let downs in high school as her peers:

Do you feel that high school prepared you to go to college?
I think that it didn't. Because I just took the classes that were preparing me to graduate and not to come to college. But somewhere in there I don't know how, I took the right classes to come to college. (Ln 39-41)

Sandra just somehow magically found herself taking college preparatory classes. While falling in the right places through high school some students had the right classes, but didn't know how to follow through on the application status. Carlos Armenta explains how he was in the right place at the right time for all this to fall in place:

What really did it was ­ it was about March, March I think, early March, about this time. And my counselor calls me in and he goes, "So, Mr. Armenta, what's up?" You know, like, and like, "Do you still want to go to college?" I go "Yeah. I haven't applied. I haven't filled out nothing. I haven't filled out my CSU or FAFSA, nothing." He goes, "Hmmm " He goes, "Well, they are still accepting applications at CSUMB." I go, "OK." And he goes, "See " and he pointed to Patty ­ I don't know how to say her name ­ Patty Fernandez ­ she works for ­ she used to work for Outreach and Recruitment. And she was there. So he just pointed me to her and you know says, "Go see her." You know, "She's from, she's a representative." So I waited and I go, "Yeah, the counselor told me to come over here." She goes "Oh, yeah." So she started talking to me. Mainly About Monterey, and different schools. But so I just sat down there and she filled out ­ helped me fill out the application. At that time, I honestly thought at that time I was just going to go to Hartnell. Because I had like I didn't ­ I missed the deadlines ­ November, December, and January. So it's like because I was playing sports. I was playing football so kind of just lagged it ­ procrastinated. So I honestly thought, well, I'll just probably just go to Hartnell. You know, just do it there, that's cool, all my friends are going to go. So but I think by her being there and helped me fill out my CSU application. She even brought some in here so they helped me fill out financial aid, EOP, just different papers like that. My Cal Grants, I think what really did it was that really she showed me, and she sat with me. She called me out, every time she came, I'd have whatever she needed. "Go home and get your taxes, get this, get that." "Like, OK". So I think that really ­ even pushed me more." (Ln 165-186).

Carlos was lucky that he went to his counselor the day he did or else he would have been at Hartnell College, where most of his teachers expected him to be:

And so I got to saw a lot of my teachers there and they were surprised that I even 'What? Thought you'd maybe at Hartnell." Or, you know, it was something else. So some of them were surprised that I even made it straight. I went straight from high school to CSUMB, right to a four-year collegeTo a community college, and now they see me they're like, "What are you doing?" I'm like, "Oh, I am going to CSU Monterey." "Really?" They were like, surprised! And I was like, alright! (Ln. 136-144).

     Carlos's teachers didn't have high expectations of him to even be considered a college material student. Did these teachers already have an impression of who was and who wasn't going to make it to a four-year college? What does a student have to show for them to be college material? To be college material one must first feel that they have supports to be that caliber student. None of these students had felt any support through much of their high school years. What helped some of the interviewees overcome this fear of non-support was a summer program called FOCUS (Freshman Orientation for College/University Success) Summer Bridge. All of the interviewees went through FOCUS which helped them face the fear of college life. Carlos states, "that program really helped me and the fear was just I think it was like coming face to face with it" (Ln. 45-46). The fear that he had was of being 'lost' on a big campus, like San Diego or San Jose. FOCUS helped him cope with that.

     Not all the interviewees had fears of college. Lupe states that she didn't have any fears because she didn't really know what to expect of college life so her mind wasn't conditioned to have a 'fear' of college. What do we do when students like Lupe haven't even been conditioned to have a fear? Even if having a fear might be wrong sometimes, we believe in this case it might be good. The fear would have given her a feeling of what college life is really about; it would mentally prepared her for college life. If she had not received that support through the FOCUS program would she have had to look for extra help the way she did back in high school, now that she was in college? The point is that we have to include these supports way back in high school where first generation students don't have the backing of the faculty or staff. In "From the Barrio to the Academy" Laura I. Rendon states it best:

We must set high standards, while helping students to reach them. Most faculty fail to give students the support they need in order to break free from belief systems that stifle their creativity. For example, many nontraditional students who come to college believe they cannot succeed, that their academic skills are not well developed, that they cannot compete with other students, that their perspectives are not valued in college, and/or that they will be "just a number" in college (62).

     Many high school students from nontraditional backgrounds feel this way. Our interviewees got past this stage, but what about the ones that were left out, dropped out because of such a stigma? How do we as a community start helping out these high school students who think that they don't have a chance at college? The solution which always comes up is to educate the parents or try to get the parents more involved. But wait a minute. Most of these students' parents work in the fields and have service jobs that require long hours to fulfill the month's rent, food, etc. Most of the parents can't even help them in basic subjects that are required at a high school level. What do we do then? Create more tutorial programs, create more support programs. The only solution to this is to have the help of the community. Recruit the college alumni from the community to help these students out some how. Maybe have the 'likely to succeed' students help out the one's that struggle the most, while earning some type of credit towards high school graduation, or even college credit. Don't just let the counselors give presentations about the process of applying to college but include teachers and faculty, even staff, because isn't the goal of every high school to get as many graduating students into a four year institution? And once in college, how do we keep these students from leaving a foreign domain? In "Helping First-Generation Minority Students Achieve Degrees", Richard C. Richardson Jr., and Elizabeth Fisk Skinner state that:

All first-generation students are uncertain climbers. Minority students in particular need ladders with every rung in place in order to provide them with a fair opportunity for overcoming incomplete preparation, nonspecific educational objectives, and nontraditional modes of college attendance. The necessary rungs include early intervention to strengthen preparation and improve education planning, summer bridge programs, special orientation and registration, tailored financial aid programs, assessment and remediation, tutoring, learning laboratories, mentoring, intrusive academic advising, and career development (41).  

     CSUMB has some of these programs, but for some students the supports are too little, too late. For example, FOCUS Summer Bridge started two years after CSUMB opened and programs such as Migrant Education and Educational Opportunity Program have been in the planning stages but not operational due to a lack of funding.

     More importantly, because many students do not see themselves as college bound in high school, they never make it to the university where they can explore these programs. We have to start helping first-generation students once they start high school and start shaping their goals towards academics instead of McDonalds type careers. How do we get students to realize that college is the most positive way to enrich their future? Do we have more career days than usual? Or should we have more field trips to actual locales of where these careers are taking place? We think the best thing to show students is that they have the power to be whatever they want is to through positive reinforcement. Our interviewees shared that they didn't have any of the reinforcement, unless if it came from the home. This shows that through tracking and apathetic attitudes, high schools are not giving students what they need to succeed, which is a united front of support from their school, community, and prospective universities.