Average students shine with help from AVID program

It's hard to imagine that Bruna Afonso was once apathetic about her studies, unsure if she'd finish high school, much less go on to college.

She now earns good grades, takes tough courses and almost always speaks up in class, as she did recently during a spirited debate over the United States' role in Bosnia.

A few years ago, she disliked school and didn't try to do well.

Now? "I'm busting my butt," she said.

She credits her transformation to a program with a mouthful of a name: Advancement Via Individual Determination, or AVID.

Part supercharged study hall, part motivational seminar and part time-management training, AVID plucks students such as Afonso — with C or low-B averages — and turns them into college material.

Outside of AVID, average students often aren't encouraged to take challenging classes, especially if they're students not putting out a lot of effort.

"In AVID, we get to dig a little deeper," said Ian Duncan, Afonso's AVID teacher at Sammamish High in Bellevue. "We get to know students better ... and can get them to the place where they believe they can do the work."

A high-school English teacher started AVID 30 years ago because she believed children in the middle needed to speed up, not slow down in remedial classes.

Mary Catherine Swanson started with a group of low-income, lower-achieving newcomers bused to her high-income school in San Diego. She insisted they be placed in challenging courses, and designed an elective to help them succeed.

In that elective, now known as AVID, she coached them on how to take notes, how to ask good questions, how to think critically and how to use study time effectively.

Her methods worked so well that AVID spread to schools across California. It's now used nationwide in 4,500 schools, including 128 middle and high schools in Washington.

AVID is one of many programs aimed at motivating lackluster students and closing the gap in achievement between middle-class students and those from poorer families. The program also is one of the oldest and has a strong track record.

AVID reports that close to 80 percent of its seniors are accepted at four-year colleges.

Toughness, affection

"OK, people, let's get working," Duncan says as his sophomore AVID class breaks up into study groups for math, chemistry and history.

Some students look sleepy at this early hour, but they all turn in the required notes from at least one of their classes — four full pages, with two questions on the left side of each page and a summary at each page's end.

They take turns writing a question on white boards, asking their peers to help them answer it. Ideally, classmates help them find the answer by asking questions, not giving them the answer, another feature of AVID.

Teachers recruit students they believe would do well in AVID. If accepted, students often must sign a contract pledging, among other things, to take college-prep classes and spend at least one to two hours a night doing homework.

AVID teachers check their grades weekly.

"If they slip at all," Duncan said, "they're going to hear about it immediately, and they know that."

Most students enter AVID in middle school. At Sammamish High, 70 to 80 percent stay in the program through high school.

Along with teaching study skills, AVID teachers spend a lot of time talking about college and how to get there, and they take students to visit college campuses.

Like other AVID teachers, Duncan — a tall man with a big voice — mixes toughness with affection.

When he spies a student playing with a pencil, he uses humor to get him back on track.

"If that's going to help you get into college, I'm all for it," he booms from across the room. "But I doubt it."

Sometimes it takes a long time to turn a student around, Duncan said, but if he keeps at it, telling students day after day that they can do well, and how to do well, it sinks in.

Not every one of his AVID students becomes a standout. Still, Duncan said all but a few have improved their grades to at least a C-plus.

From F's to A's

And 16-year-old Bruna Afonso isn't the only dramatic success story. Five or six of Duncan's students have, at one point or another, improved their grades from F's to A's and B's.

One is Flavino Vizcarra, also 16, who failed all his classes in sixth grade. He says he wanted to do well, but just didn't follow through.

He finally did, improving his grades before entering AVID, yet crediting AVID — and Duncan — with helping him keep them up.

For the first time, Flavino earned all A's last semester.

It was a point of pride. Duncan had challenged him: Did Flavino want to work at Subway or some other fast-food place, or go to college and do great things?

"I told him I definitely want to go to college," Flavino recalled, smiling. "He said, 'Well, then prove it.' And I did."

Linda Shaw: 206-464-2359 or lshaw@seattletimes.com