Students Take AVID Approach to College
By HOWARD BUCK
College dreams are swell.
A clear-eyed plan is better.
It’s a lesson absorbed by about 40 Heritage High School 11th- graders, groomed since middle school to prepare for college as part of a project called AVID, Achievement via Individual Determination.
The AVID program is a special college-prep program for students who show academic promise but might need guidance to find a clear path to higher education.
Thirty-one AVID juniors spent four days and three nights dipping a toe into college life at the University of Portland last month. They slept in dorms, attended real classes, ate real cafeteria food and found that juggling responsibility with new freedoms takes maturity.
They were among 140 Heritage students bused last week to Seattle to check out the University of Washington.
Early reaction to the campus visits?
“I thought I wanted to go to a big school, maybe like UCLA,” said Royesha Gibson, 16. But the sheer size of UW jolted her. “Maybe not,” she said. “A medium-sized school, that’s good for me.”
Kristin Guest, 17, had her hunch confirmed.
“It was way too big for me. It’s like a city within a city,” Guest said of the Seattle campus, where enrollment tops 40,000. Even the cozy University of Portland campus felt a little too urban, she said. “I’ve always known I wanted to go to a small school.”
AVID’s goal is to make the question of college a matter of where, and not if, for students.
A daily elective course prepares students for rigorous Advanced Placement classes in their junior and senior years, and to start aiming for college now. For a group that will graduate next June, the campus visits reinforced some notions and shattered others.
“We use that term: To ‘demystify’ the college experience,” said instructor Aaron Reilly, who has stayed with the same students since ninth grade.
Reilly has used drills, tutors, guest speakers and other tools to hone student skills. Study habits, work ethic and grasp of required college entrance exams, application essays and financial aid paperwork have vastly improved, several said.
“I’m miles ahead of where I thought I’d be,” said Sarah Alvick, 16, who has found a calling in marketing classes and DECA marketing competitions. After scoring just 30 percent last fall in her first exam in AP physics, she said, her days of “cruising” though classes were over.
“Stepping in there was such a shock,” Alvick said. Now, she’s earned an A, thanks to strong lab work, relentless questioning and follow-through, she said. “I’ve just really pushed myself. I have to buckle down.”
All three girls report enjoying their AP courses this year.
“I’ve learned a lot more in this class than any English class I’ve had,” Gibson said of her AP language and composition course. She hopes to study filmmaking or personal relations in college.
The trio said the UP visit, during which students fanned out to designated classes, attended special seminars and got critiques on college essays and applications, underscored the vast jump from high school.
“College: You’re supposed to do everything on your own. That’s what it means to me,” said Guest, who wants to teach English. Without adults watching, she said, “you have to motivate yourself, to pay attention and actually do your homework.”
The Heritage AVID program has run on a three-year, $1 million federal grant won in 2006. It reaches into seventh and eighth grades at Covington and Frontier middle schools.
Using Evergreen district funds next year, AVID will run in grades seven through 12 with about 40 students in each grade. Current juniors represent the first graduating AVID class, and college expectations are high, something Reilly and others hope will resonate throughout Heritage.
“We’ve started to change the culture here, of college-bound kids, and they spread it to their peers,” Reilly said.
“That’s the big thing: That everybody can go to college, if they want to,” he said.
Did you know?
AVID requires extra training of instructors so they can teach pre- Advanced Placement, AP and study skills courses.
Vancouver Public Schools ran a pilot seventh-grade AVID program at McLoughlin Middle School this year. AVID will expand to Gaiser and Jason Lee middle schools and Hudson’s Bay and Fort Vancouver high schools next year, officials said. Update rail w/o leadin Update rail w/o leadin Participating students must “test in” to the AVID program.
Howard Buck covers schools and education. He can be reached at 360-735-4515 or
howard.buck@columbian.com
Originally published by HOWARD BUCK Columbian staff writer.
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