Eight weeks into his first semester at Central Connecticut State University in 1993, Miguel Cardona choked back tears as he reviewed his first midterm report.

The first-generation college student was failing every class.

“For a moment, I felt like I didn’t belong—that I should leave,” the secretary of education under President Joe Biden told Eagles on September 18 during an event sponsored by the Kennedy Political Union and Students for Change.

Instead, Cardona thought of his grandparents, who left Aguada, Puerto Rico, in the 1960s during the tail end of the island’s Great Migration in search of economic opportunity. He remembered his mother, Sarah, who dropped out of school in ninth grade to care for her five younger siblings.

“I realized how fortunate I was to carry the torch for my family,” Cardona said. “I stopped the pity party, and I got my butt to work. It wasn’t that I got smarter that day; it was that I realized who I was and that I had the potential to achieve.”

Cardona finished the semester with straight Bs and never got a grade lower than that again. After becoming the first college graduate in his family, Cardona worked as a fourth-grade teacher in Meriden, Connecticut. In 2003, at age 27, he became the youngest principal in the state’s history.

He was serving as commissioner of education in Connecticut when he was tapped to become the nation’s 12th secretary of education. In that role, Cardona helped 65 million American students, from pre-kindergartners to adult learners, navigate the pandemic’s shifts between virtual and in-person instruction.

Cardona, a native Spanish speaker who learned English in kindergarten, said the classroom should be a safe space where differences are celebrated. He challenged AU students to view education as “a public good.”

“The more people feel a sense of belonging, the more likely they’re going to reach their full potential,” he said. “And in this country, we all win when people do well.”