FORT BENNING, Ga., (Sept. 16, 2015) -- AVID students at Faith Middle School are serious about preparing for their futures.
On Sept. 10 students participating in AVID, which stands for advancement via individual determination, pledged their commitment to the program by signing a contract with their parents and AVID teachers.
AVID coordinator Andrea Chambers said this is the first year students have signed an AVID contract.
"We hope to make this a tradition at Faith Middle School, because our students are important to us. Their success is important to us," she said.
Trinna Freeman, eighth-grade AVID instructor, said the contract represents each student's commitment to being an active learner and it stresses the parents' responsibility to keep track of their child's progress at home.
AVID is for sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students who receive no other support system, such as special education or a gifted program. In order to be accepted into the class, students must have a GPA of at least 3.0, be individually motivated, obtain a teacher recommendation and go through an interview process, Freeman said.
"It's targeted for that individual who needs just a little push," Freeman said.
AVID, an elective class that meets daily, introduces students to the idea of higher education by taking them on tours of local colleges, where they visit the student center, book store and have lunch in the college cafeteria.
"We feel exposing kids to actual college campuses is something they may not have been exposed to in their life. The exposure and being able to go on a college campus and see how life is for college students gives them that motivation to want to achieve more," Freeman said.
AVID requires each student to commit to at least two hours of study each night and teaches students the importance of organization, time management and note taking.
To learn organization, each student is required to carry a large binder that houses notes for each class they are in. For time management, students are required to keep a calendar up to date with all of their activities and test dates.
To ensure that students are proficient note takers, AVID teaches the Cornell note taking system.
"What I've seen in the past is that usually (AVID) students go to high school and do well because they know the note taking process," Freeman said.
Eighth-grade AVID student Karli Barnes said, "When we take Cornell notes, we understand the concept of each subject in class."
Ayleen Delosrios, an eighth-grade AVID student who hopes to attend Harvard Law School, said the first step of Cornell note taking is to write questions on the side of your paper before class begins.
"During class, most of those questions get answered by the teacher and at the end of the class you write a summary about everything you learned," Delosrios said.
Delosrios said this is her third year as an AVID student."It helped me a lot in my classes. I love that we always have tutorials every Tuesday and Thursday to help me in my academic class so I can maintain my 4.0 GPA," she said. She said the field trips are the best part about AVID.
"(I like) being able to see how college is going to be and to see the majors that most colleges offer and to see how my life is going to be in the future," Delosrios said.
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