Students soar with AVID

For students who want to be successful, but worry they lack the right skills or might have been out of school too long, the AVID Center provides a place to learn, study and thrive at Mt. Hood.

AVID, or Advancement via Individual Determination, offers a three-pack of courses, called “Learning Communities.”

Reading and Writing 90 are packaged together with a college success course during Fall Term. The instructors plan together and their courses revolve a round a central theme.

“It’s sort of a school within a school,” said Lauren Smith, AVID program coordinator. “It makes college a little less frightening or overwhelming.”

The AVID Center opened in October 2012 and provides free tutoring in addition to its classes.

There already were AVID teachers at Mt. Hood, but “they really just needed a center on campus to support students,” Smith said.

She said the center is “supporting students who may not be ready for college, or need that extra support when they’re here.”

Bennie Moore, 51, a second-year MHCC student, has completed all three terms of the Learning Communities.

“My greatest fear was I had been out of school for so long… and how I would test coming into college,” Moore said.

Instead of struggling, Moore made the President’s list (earning straight A’s) last fall and winter term after being a “C” student in high school. He credits AVID for helping him.

“I recommend the Learning Communities for anybody who’s coming back after being out of school,” he said.

Moore plans to transfer to Portland State University to acquire a bachelor’s degree in urban studies, but right now, “I’m having a blast feeling like a kid,” he said.

The AVID Center offers help with papers and assignments, but, Moore said, “They don’t do it for you. They make you think.”

Students can register for the Learning Communities by selecting that category on the my.mhcc.edu (website) portal. Students sign up for all three courses at one time, rather than select each individual course.

“It’s really important that they take the whole experience,” said Smith, the program coordinator.

The students take all three classes together, building relationships and trust, she said. “We want them to make themselves a community here in the AVID Center and Mt. Hood,” she said.

Smith began teaching AVID courses while at nearby Reynolds High School.

“I didn’t want to teach the top-of-the rung students,” she said. “I wanted to work with students that were like I was in high school and in college, that had potential but really needed a teacher to push them to do different things.”

AVID is not a “magic bullet,” Smith noted: “That’s the biggest myth about AVID that I’d like to demystify.” She described it as a support center for students, using methods that are mostly intuitive.

She could have benefitted from such a program during her own college studies, she said. “I sort of made my own methods, which was more time consuming, and I didn’t do as well as I could’ve done had I taken an academic skills class,” she said.

Beyond AVID, Smith also leads outreach programs. She’s working with Sandy High School students who have not passed standardized state tests in reading and writing and are in danger of not graduating and that school’s early childhood development center to redevelop its curriculum.

She said her approach in helping other organizations is, “What you’re doing is great, ’cause it is, but have you thought about doing this?”

The AVID Center is working on a way to stay in contact with MHCC students who have completed the three-term program. Often, those students are accepted to the academic program they wish to pursue and then, “They come in and they thank you and it’s like ‘Wow, this is why I do this,’ ” Smith said. “It’s because students are so thankful for the support that you gave them.”

AVID also offers support to MHCC instructors who invite Smith or another AVID instructor into their classroom, typically focused on “teaching students how to be students,” she said.