AVID Program Helps Eager Students With College Process

By Tony Tran
Pendulum Staff Writer

        The dictionary defines the word ‘avid’ as “extremely eager and greatly desirous,” a description which perfectly fits the students in the well-renowned AVID program.

        The four-year AVID course in Galileo, which is managed by Karen Cancino, not only educates students about college and assists them down their path to college, but also makes sure that they succeed. The many ways AVID elective courses achieve these objectives are by rigorously teaching essay writing for the college applications, skills for the infamous SAT testing, and proficiency in public speaking. AVID also has specialized tutoring services, which place students into groups depending on their weaknesses or strengths in a specific subject.

        “I joined AVID to help me with college and for it to look good [on] my college applications,” mentioned Selina Ho, a freshmen AVID student.The students have the privileges of going to certain colleges in the Bay Area as field trips and having a first-person perspective around campus.The freshmen, sophomores, and juniors are assigned to go to three colleges a school year. In their senior year, the students would have gone to a total of nine college campuses throughout their three years in AVID.

        The other advantages of joining are the short duration of meeting time with a counselor and the close attention   that the teachers pay to the students’ academic performance and behavior.

        “I encourage students, if they have room in their schedule, to join AVID because the truth is, how often do you have a teacher and a counselor on top of you all the time to make sure that you are doing the right thing to get where you need to go,” proclaimed Mr.Arquillos, the teacher of the junior AVID class. “That’s a very good thing to have.”

        The course is taught by the same teacher for four whole years depending on the grade.Mr. Arquillos and Mr. Phelps collaborate in teaching the juniors while Ms. Lee teaches the sophomores and Ms. Pringle teaches the freshmen.There is no senior AVID class this year because there were not enough seniors who signed up for the AVID class.

        Freshmen AVID students have their own separate academic classes, with their own AVID classmates unless their classes are honors. The academic AVID teachers are Mr. Barrios, Mr. Tong, Ms. Kim, Ms. Bliss, and Ms. Heskin. If teachers are interested in teaching the AVID academic or college courses, please see any of the AVID teachers or Ms. Cancino.

        The requirements for students to join are a minimal grade point average of 2.0, ninety-percent attendance and no unsatisfactory or warning citizenship.Students also need to have the desire to be enrolled into a four-year college.

        “We are always looking for students who really want to succeed and who aren’t afraid to reach out and get some help in getting where they want to go,” said Ms. Cancino.