The average age and height of students at SF State Wednesday became slightly skewed as 150 fourth- and fifth- graders paid their admissions with financial aid checks and attended science and athletic classes.

The students all were from E.R. Taylor Elementary School in San Francisco and were participating in the fourth annual “I’m Going to College” day, April 8, sponsored by SF State’s EOP Pre-Collegiate/Community Partnerships and San Francisco College Access Center.

There was a kick-off assembly where the children received free T-shirts, backpacks, writing journals and various educational materials. They heard guest speakers, participated in a pretend registration period where they paid for their snacks and classes with fake checks, and then they were all off to their classes.

“I’m Going to college” was the culmination of four months of planning, according to Educational Opportunity Program Pre-Collegiate/Community Outreach Programs Coordinator Xochitl Sanchez-Zarama. She said that about two months ago, the students who participated in Wednesday’s event completed a mock admissions application to SF State and had a variety of “college awareness activities” incorporated into the children’s curricula, preparing them for “I’m Going to College,” and the future.

E. R. Taylor elementary school is in the San Bruno/Silver area of the city, a less affluent section of San Francisco and is one of two elementary schools taking part in the program. James Sweat elementary school in the Hayes Valley neighborhood is the second and will be here May 11.

“Ninety percent of the students, (at E.T. Taylor and James Sweat), or more, are on a free lunch (program),” said Sanchez-Zarama. “And that’s a pretty good indictor as to the schools that we want to work with – schools that don’t necessarily have all of the college-bound programs or facilities to express college access.”

“I'm going to college!’” the 150 kids cheered when Sanchez-Zarama asked them why they were there during the kickoff in the Rosa Parks conference rooms in the Student Center. After the kickoff the kids registered and bought their snacks and broke into four groups, in an extremely energetic and orderly fashion, each to attend one of four classes, set up exclusively for the children and taught by SF State teachers.

In professor Lisa White’s geology class, about two dozen fifth-graders got a chance to search the Internet for facts about geology and break into lab groups to examine and try to identify some actual fossils. The first group asked to identify their fossil shared the responsibility evenly as their outstretched arms from the semicircle they comprised met in the center -- all fingers on the rock. All their little hands simultaneously retreated and the fossil dropped straight down when White announced they were holding petrified “poop,” which the children learned was ‘trace’ fossil.

After the classes, the SF State campus was laced with four individual groups of new, bright orange “I’m Going to College” T-shirt-clad youngsters as they toured the campus, checking out the baseball field, the gymnasium, the pool (as well as the actual classes being conducted in them), the Student Services, and the Library.

But it was the college atmosphere around Malcolm X Plaza that stole the show as they ended their day with lunch on the steps atop the Student Center.

“[SF State’s] big; you’re having a party,” said Asa Lamarr Roberts Jr., 11, when asked how he liked the campus. He was specifically referring to the fact that they were enjoying live entertainment from two hip-hop groups performing in Malcolm X Plaza. Stating that live music wasn’t the only attraction for him, he said his favorite part of the day was learning “that poop can become fossils,” and that “amber is made from tree sap.”

Sanchez-Zarama explained that once the kids are in the program and have expressed their craving for education, they are monitored. In collaboration with the community-based San Francisco College Access Center, the children are monitored throughout junior high and high school to make sure they have access to college-bound oriented programs and their interests and desires do not evaporate.