AVID program offers extra help, motivation
Elective targets students in middle
Confused by calculus or overwhelmed by physics? Finding additional help can leave both student and parent foundering. It’s handled differently at each Albuquerque Public Schools institution and it is generally left to the student to make arrangements with the individual teacher for the two to find some time to get in extra work — usually during lunch breaks.
But the AVID — Advancement Via Individual Determination — program at APS has been flourishing across the district since its introduction 10 years ago in a couple of high school and a couple of middle schools, said director Amy Mahr.
Now it is entrenched in eight high schools and 21 middle schools, with 2,000 students taking advantage of the program, she said.
It is not a tutoring program in the strict sense of the word’s connotation, Rahr said.
“It’s not what people think of when people think or hear the word ‘tutoring,’ in the traditional sense,” she said. “Traditional tutoring is typically one on one, with one tutor per one student. And traditional tutoring, there is one specific subject or subject area or discipline.”
Rather, AVID is more of a “college readiness program targeting the least served students in the academic middle who have the capacity to succeed but need extra support and direction,” according to its website.
The program is taken as an elective and “the purpose is to develop critical thinking skills,” Rahr said. “Student are asked to pose questions that may be a point of confusion in one of their classes. They group together and with the guidance of a tutor, go through an inquiry process to ultimately answer the student’s question.”
The peer learning process has proven to be very beneficial, said Michele Torres, principal at Truman Middle School, which has four seventh-grade and four eighth-grade classes, as well as a nine-week introductory program for all sixth-graders.
“They interview to be selected,” Torres said. “We do try to get in as many as we can. Some of these kids wouldn’t have the opportunity otherwise to be involved in a program like this and some of them are so shy when they start and they blossom into these amazing eighth-graders.”
The ultimate goal is find students who just need a bit of a boost to seek more academically, Rahr said.
“The ideal AVID student is a first generation college student,” she said. “We look for students whose parents have not been to or not completed a four-year college. They need to be selfmotivated and goal-oriented. And they don’t necessarily have the best grades but they also don’t have the worst — B or C students who might need help with skills.”
Truman eighth-grader Osiris Rodriguez was interested in the program when she heard about it in the sixth grade and was the prototype student for AVID.
“It sounded really intriguing because I’ve wanted to go to college, but I didn’t quite know how,” Rodriguez said. “I found it something so difficult and something that was so out of this world because no one in my family has been there.”
Part of the class is looking into the feasibility of college and careers and Rodriguez pretty quickly realized going to college was not just a dream but very much a reality.
“We did so much research and right away I knew what college I wanted to go to and what I wanted to study,” she said. “Everything just came to me and I just felt so inspired by AVID.”
The program brings students together to solve academic issues.
“We all work together,” Rodriguez said. “No one is scared to ask questions because we’ve all been there. We all have not understood something in a class. But there’s no worries about what if the other kids make fun of me. In AVID, it’s such a safe place, it’s OK to be confused. It’s OK to bring something as simple as how do you add and subtract negatives to the tutorial. The tutors are going to help and your
About AVID
The AVID Elective class in APS ■ is offered in 8 high schools and 21 middle schools.
Approximately 2,000 students
■ are enrolled in the class, about 8 percent of the total student population at AVID schools.
There are 62 teachers across
■ the district who teach the AVID Elective.
APS employs 65 tutors who
■ facilitate the tutorials in the AVID classes.
Tutors are recruited, hired
■ and trained throughout the school year. (Interested people should contact resource teacher Christine Ragsdale at christine. ragsdale@aps.edu.)
AVID students also learn
■ organizational skills, time management, reading and writing strategies, collaboration skills and other types of life skills to help them be successful in high school, college and beyond.
fellow classmates are going to ask questions and it’s all going to go smoothly.”
Seventh-grader Cheyenne Elwell said her first exposure to the program as a sixth-grader convinced her it was what she needed.
“It makes you want to do more,” she said. “It makes you want to go above and beyond. When you’re in class and you don’t want to work, I don’t know what it is, but it gives me that extra push that I have to get this done, I have to finish it. It makes me think about the future. If I do this now, I know my grades are going to show it and it’s going to help me in high school and college. So I know that something as simple as doing it is going to help me long term. And I really like that.”
Again, the way the program is structured has made a big difference with Elwell.
“It makes it a really good learning environment for me,” she said. “With tutorials, it helps so much. You don’t feel dumb by going up there. All of that is just gone because everybody is there and everybody has that one thing they are confused on and everybody is there to support each other. It’s really good. It’s one of the only places where everybody supports each other instead of bringing each other down.”