Students seated around tables and couches chat while completing homework and organizing folders. Teachers walk around the patterned carpet offering mentorship to students and fostering lasting relationships. This is a typical day in the Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) classroom. AVID is a four-year program that focuses on building community and developing skills for academic success to help students be college- and career-ready.
The program is aimed at academically motivated students who want to improve their executive functioning skills, are from an ethnic group that is underrepresented in post-secondary education and/or are first-generation students and have standardized test scores in the 40th to 70th percentile. Eighth graders may apply to AVID and undergo a selection and interview process to join.
AVID teacher and coordinator Suzanne VanKersen describes how AVID has helped these students.
“AVID students are advancing, getting higher grades and taking more challenging classes and therefore getting into better schools than they would have without the program,” VanKersen said. “I’m really proud of not only the schools that seniors have been accepted to, but also the scholarship offers they have gotten have been remarkable.”
The AVID program has left a mark on many of its students, teaching them new skills and helping them grow.
“[AVID] has helped me grow by taking notes, learning how to collaborate with others and preparing myself to get into college,” junior Holden Shen said. “I like AVID a lot, my classmates and especially teachers helped me grow a lot as a person and academically.”
In addition to academic skills, Junior Ailyn Torres learned other life skills, such as staying organized.
“We do a lot of organizing things like binder checks, and we focus on using planners to plan out our days,” Torres said. “Honestly, I’m a really messy person; in middle school, I would shove all my papers in my bag, but now that the AVID teachers are checking it every week, I put a mental note to organize it. Although it’s kind of tedious, I feel like it actually helps me.”
In addition to preparing students for the rigor and challenges of life after high school, AVID also offers a supportive community that encourages students to reach their full potential.
“My favorite thing is what I think anyone, staff or student, would say about the program, and it is the community,” VanKersen said. “AVID is a space where students challenge each other and lift each other up to lead the program. The community that we have here and the way students learn to lean on and rely on each other is awesome.”
