I'm thankful for...

1. The door projects are looking really good. We started the idea a few years ago. Students, working in twos or threes, interview a staff member who graduated from college. Then they research and create a door display that honors the staff member and their school. I've never seen such attention to detail and such high quality artistic presentation. All in all this one project is not what I am most thankful for but it's an example. As frustrated as I get with students and class progression within AVID sometimes, there are so many things going well.
2. The AVID Elective teachers at our school are planning well together. We don't get to talk and plan enough but when we do we're all contributing expertise and effort. We're a lot better than we've ever been because we get along. The last few years the makeup of the team was different and we didn't get along so well. What a difference!
3. Tutorials are developing - I am seeing some skill developing earlier than past first AVID years (I get 7th graders this year). I feel like I am less panicky to get everything done at once and progress slower which seems to result in better quality. We really worked on inquiry process and the progression of questions to get students to ask during tutorial. I make the kids keep the prompts on their desk throughout and we give feedback before students leave at the end of class.

AVID District Meeting

The other day we met as a district. High School Site team, and the two middle schools' AVID Elective Teachers. We talked about tutors, funding, a grant for the high school that makes them look at AVID tools and AVID school-wide, etc etc. The best part though was about vertical teaming. How do our middle school students perform at the high school? What do we need to do differently?

Here's what we came to...
1. The Connely article from AVID Summer Institute described particular attributes of students who are successful. We talked about how to have students understand the descriptors and assess themselves in reflection.
2. Read more...AVID students need to read more.
3. Math regularly during tutorials that are planned by teachers and tutors in conjunction with the math department instead of all tutorials being student generated (we'll see how that goes).
4. Time management as a focus.
5. We're also going to see if the media class can produce a video about "a Day in the Life of" several high school students to give middle school students a chance to see what the expectations, benefits and negatives are to high school. I think kids are getting tired of hearing what we think they should be and how they should go about it.

We'll see how it works out.

The AVID Dolldrums

It's almost the holidays. The website for AVID in the Northwest is up and running. Life is good but a couple of weeks ago, my AVID classroom was dull. It seemed like the students were bored. I know AVID = hard work and I tell my kids all the time that the single greatest difference between success and failure is effort. What was going on?

I think when my class is boring I am mostly irrelevant to my students. The AVID tools are good, my application of them is what needs adjustment.

Instead of a Philosphical Chairs on health care, we did it about the movie New Moon. Talk about engaged.

Instead of a time management unit straight from the AVID library, I assigned students to small film making crews who will make two minute films about a character who learns the benefits of time management.

Students are happy because they care about the subject matter and I'm happy because they are using AVID tools. Life is grand.