As part of their Senior Experience, AVID students from across Odessa saw what the program has meant to professionals involved in the program and what it will mean to them after high school.
Held in the Black Box Theater at Odessa College and sponsored by Complex Community Federal Credit Union, students took part in activities and demonstrations showing how Advancement Via Individual Determination has changed their lives.
AVID teaches students organization, time management, note taking and other skills they can use throughout their lives.
Students from Permian and Odessa high schools, OCTECHS, Odessa Collegiate Academy and George H.W. New Tech Odessa attended the event Thursday and Friday.
Wendell Brown, senior director of the central region for AVID, covers 22 states in the middle of the country.
The community’s support, he said, really adds value.
“It demonstrates to the students that we are all in this together; that our education is important, and that we need to work together … so I really appreciate the way that this has all been focused on making sure that they have access to rigorous education and a future beyond high school,” Brown said.
If AVID had been around when he was in school, Brown said he probably would have been in it because he had potential but didn’t always perform.
“That’s one of the things that makes AVID really powerful is that we are intentionally looking for young people who have potential and then helping them to learn how to own their own learning and giving them the skills and the agency to be their best selves. … Our students have never let us down. Our students have always risen to the expectations that we have. We just have to prove that those expectations are genuine. When we do, the genius is within them already and we’re just excited to be able to have an opportunity to help them refine those skills and to elevate that genius so they can be the adults and the professionals and the contributors to society that they want to be,” Brown said.
Brown was impressed that ECISD’s program runs prekindergarten through college and that it is the only one in his region that does. He added that it’s beneficial because it helps keep the genius within the community.
“That is such a big deal to be able to have a magnet that keeps your intellectual capacity within your own community. So many of these students, they may go off to college, but if they stay here, all that stays right here and we’d benefit locally from having it right here in our hometown,” Brown said.
He added that this is a model for the rest of the AVID programs in the country.
“We believe that the impact that AVID has on the learning environment is exactly what schools are meant to do. We engage in the learning; we build agency within our students; we teach them what they’re going to do with the knowledge once they get it; and then we give them a rigorous preparation so that each student is maximizing these learning opportunities as they go,” Brown said.
He added that it doesn’t matter if you’re wealthy or what your parents do, the genius is in the genes of the student.
Odessa Collegiate Academy graduate Karen Arredondo was in AVID and attended the experience Friday. She graduated from Odessa College and is now at University of Texas Permian Basin studying chemistry and biology and at Odessa College for radiology technology.
Jamarion Lane, a Permian senior, Nadine Marcelo, from Odessa Collegiate Academy, and Jaimee Antillon, also a PHS senior, also were on hand.
“Overall, it’s really nice. I would say that the speeches that have been given … are very personalized and you can see the passion that they hold with AVID, so overall I would say I’m having a good time right now because I see how passionate these folks are about AVID and it just makes me feel like … I have people taking care of me because I’m in an environment that has passionate people behind it,” Lane said.
Marcelo said the experience was inspirational, so far.
“I feel like this organization really brought out the inspiration that I had with me. I didn’t think that I’d enjoy it at first because it took my time [out] of studying. But when I came here and I listened to their speeches, I felt like I had a strong foundation moving … forward,” Marcelo said.
Arredondo didn’t have a senior experience when she was in her last year of high school.
“I think it’s pretty cool that they’re doing it now, especially because if you’re a first-generation high school student or college student, I feel like it’s really important to hear that from someone else who did something in life, rather than falling into the same … cycle. I think that’s pretty cool,” she said.
Antillon said the event offered good advice.
“It’s giving us advice on how to do life after because high school’s all we’ve known. Being in AVID for so long, it’s given us an idea of what it’s going to be like … They’re actually talking to us and telling us what it’s going to be like and what we can do and what we’re capable of,” Antillon said.
At first, Arredondo said she though AVID was a “drag” in middle school even though she chose to be in it.
Over time, however, she said she grew to like AVID and appreciate the opportunity it gave her.
