Question Everything E-Book

Jay Mathews

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

How AVID levels the playing field, helping underserved students come out ahead

In Question Everything, award-winning education writer Jay Mathews presents the stories and winning strategies behind the Advancement Via Individual Determination program (AVID). With the goal of preparing students for the future – whether that future includes college or not – AVID teaches students the personal management skills that will help them survive and thrive. Focused on time management, presentation, and cooperation, the AVID program leads not only to impressive educational outcomes, but also to young adults prepared for life after school. This book tells the stories of AVID educators, students, and families to illustrate how and why the program works, and demonstrates how teachers can employ AVID's strategies with their own students.

Over the past thirty years, AVID has grown from a single teacher's practice to an organization serving 400,000 middle- and high-school students in 47 states and 16 countries. Question Everything describes the ideas and strategies behind the upward trajectory of both the program and the students who take part.

• Learn which foundational skills are emphasized for future success
• Discover how AVID teaches personal management skills in the academic context
• Contrast AVID student outcomes with national averages
• Consider implementing AVID concepts and techniques into current curricula

As college readiness becomes a top priority for the Federal Government, the Gates Foundation, and other influential organizations, AVID's track record stands out as one of success. By leveling the playing field and introducing "real-world" realities early on, the program teaches students skills that help them in the workplace and beyond.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

Taking AVID Home

Raising the Bar: Higher Expectations Across the Board

Beyond Rote Memorization: Learning to Ask the Right Questions

Tortuous Journey of a Teacher's Idea

AVID to Learn: Advancement Via Individual Determination

Overcoming Obstacles and Taking the High Road

Writing, Inquiry, and Collaboration: Building from the Ground Up

Growing Pains: Expanding AVID without Going Broke

Boise Schools Changed by Love

New Beginnings

“Come to Jesus”: Changing Attitudes and Increasing Classroom Rigor

“Prove to Me You Got an A in Everything”

High Expectations Beget High Performance

Competing for Honors and Breaking New Ground

Keeping Order and Keeping Afloat: Leveraging AVID in College and Beyond

Showing America How to Take Notes

Cornell Notes: Deeper Learning through Effective Note-Taking

“Out-Loudness”: Active Question-Making for Independent Thinking

Teachers Afraid of Tough Courses

Accelerating Students through Engagement

Continually Improving

College Readiness for Middle and Elementary Schools

No Lockstep Curriculum: Flexible Strategies for Reaching the Vulnerable

Asking Rather Than Answering Questions

The Challenges of Inquiry-Based Tutoring

Listening Carefully to Students and Exposing Classroom Inadequacies

Getting on the Same Page: Aligning AVID Instruction with College Expectations

Abandoning Ineffective Traditions: Helping Students Help Each Other and Themselves

Bringing the Power of Tutoring to El Cajon High

Tutoring and Relationships

Never Give the Answer: Learning Belongs to the Learner

Think, Question, and Reflect: Power in Puzzle Solving and Peer Groups

Santa Barbara Rejects AVID

Trouble in Paradise: Forgetting the Essentials

The Santa Barbara Manifesto: Keeping AVID Standards High

The Importance of AVID Support Systems for Success

“Our Teacher Said We Couldn't Take the Test”

Everyone Takes the Test: Meeting Resistance with Insistence

AVID on 60 Minutes II

Changing the Mess at Bell Gardens High

AVID as a Program for the Middle

No One Is Turned Away

Three Days at the Summer Institute: A Crash Course in AVID

What Makes AVID AVID

The Development and Philosophy of Note-Taking

Philosophical Chairs: Learning to Think Persuasively through Debate

Tutorials: Keeping Focused on Question-Making

Buying into AVID Strategies

“I Don't Care If I Have to Haul You Down There Myself”

Pushing the Capable to Reach Full Potential

More Than Organizational Skills and Time Management

Finding a Home in College and Beyond

Losing It in Atlanta

Repairing Breakdowns in Communication and Staying out of the Way

Inside Tutoring

A Little Prodding for New Processes

Tutoring as Motivation, Not Babysitting

Pursuing Inquiry: AVID's Greatest Gift

“Don't Give Me That, Akila”

Pulling Academics from the Sidelines

Teaching Honors Like AVID and Getting Real Results

Looking for More Mr. Searcys

Seeing and Surfacing Untapped Potential

From Dropout to Superintendent

The AVID Push: A System and Structure for Success

Struggles of an Average AVID Program

Challenges with Staffing and Turnover

Adjustment Problems: Convincing Students AVID Is Worth the Trouble

Undermining Resistance to Hard Work

College Acceptance: Finding the Right Fit

A Friend, a Teacher, a Mentor

AVID as Guide and Protector

From the Classroom to the Real World

Checklist for AVID Greatness

Evaluating Progress and Adherence to the AVID Essentials

Continually Improving: Charting Out a Course for Betterment

All Students Need More of a Challenge

A Political Education

Passion and Commitment: An Introduction to AVID

Small Steps for a Big Difference: Tracking and Measuring Success

Taking AVID to the Other Side of the World

Subverting Biases against American Inventions

A System of Rigor, Not Remediation

Scaling AVID to the Needs of Australian Academics

New York Site Team's Philadelphia Adventure

Not for the Weary and Sluggish

Learning from Each Other

More Than a Program, an Attitude

“Precious Is Making a Big Mistake”

Finding the Right Fit

Running with It: Keeping Organized and Going After the Journey

Escaping Death, Making AVID Cost-Effective

From the Edge of Death to Engineering Efficiencies

Bringing a Long-Term Perspective to the Shortsighted

Research Results: Slow Groups Make You Dumb

Research Findings beyond the Numbers

Parallel Ladders: Combating Bias and Competition with Community

Surprise Leader Creates Giant AVID District

AVID as an Enabling Process

The Challenges of Expansion

Up and Down in Chicago

Student-Led Push for AVID in Chicago

Keeping Close to AVID's Core

Some Setbacks and Successes

From 7-Eleven to AVID

Get Out of the Way: Removing Roadblocks to Success

Warming Up to AVID

AVID Excel: Closing Gaps for ESL Students

Spreading AVID to Elementary School and College

AVID for Higher Education

AVID for Elementary School

The Growth Mindset: A Commitment to Learning above All Else

A Veteran Superintendent Becomes AVID Leader

Common Sense

Beyond Orderliness

McKay Wins One in Madison, Indiana

Not a Remedial Program: A Willing-to-Work Program

Growing Up with AVID: Changing Hearts and Minds

There Is Always More to Do

Conclusion

Feedback on AVID

Ever a Work in Progress

About the Author

Acknowledgments

Index

End User License Agreement

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Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Introduction

Begin Reading

QUESTIONEVERYTHING

THE RISE OF AVIDAS AMERICA'S LARGESTCOLLEGE READINESS PROGRAM

JAY MATHEWS

Cover image: © Shutterstock/Digital Storm

Cover design: Wiley

Copyright © 2015 by AVID Center. All rights reserved.

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FIRST EDITION

To Linda

Introduction

What works in schools, and what doesn't? For the last three decades, in articles and columns for the Washington Post and in five books, I have focused on that question. Never in my quest for answers have I had as many surprises as in my investigation of the Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program.

I knew a little about AVID before I started this book. I had been invited to speak at one of its conferences in 1999. It seemed to be a thoughtful program based on the work of a terrific teacher, Mary Catherine Swanson. But I had much to learn.

AVID has become the nation's largest college preparatory program by far, with about four hundred thousand students in five thousand schools, in forty-four states and several countries. There are several aspects to this success that I did not initially understand. The excitement and commitment it inspires in teachers are extraordinary, even though AVID is rarely mentioned in our heated national debates over education reform. Once a school adopts AVID, even in a small way with a few classes, teaching practices and standards begin to improve throughout the campus. Students and their parents swear by it, although newspapers and magazines like the ones I write for usually ignore it.

What's going on?

This book was written to answer that question. Before I explain how Swanson created this extraordinary challenge to the usual ways of educating average students, let me outline the central tenets of the AVID program:

Teaching and enforcing orderly learning—keeping well-organized binders, making time for homework, cooperating with other students—can reap enormous benefits.

Students can and should be taught how to take notes, one of the most neglected skills in education.

Learning standards should eventually take all students, including average ones, to the most challenging courses in high school, such as Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate. Every child deserves a taste of what college demands.

In order to push learning beyond memorization and repetition, students must see each concept as a response to an important question. They should practice inquiry-based learning, using it with each other so that it will be second nature once they get to college.

Regular access to well-trained tutors is essential. This is the only practical way to bring average students to the point where they can handle the demands of college and the workplace. Tutors should focus not on answering questions but on showing students how to arrive at the answers themselves.

The demanding college-level courses and tests that have become the measure of high school quality won't raise standards unless students have support in dealing with them. Educators must be there daily to make sure that students are managing their time, taking notes, benefiting from tutors, and asking the right questions.

Applying for college or other training after high school, particularly for average students, cannot be left to overloaded counselors. Writing essays, preparing forms, seeking financial aid, visiting colleges, and choosing extracurricular activities should be a part of a regular class.

Programs work best when both teachers and students feel that they are part of a free-thinking family. AVID students bond with each other and their teachers. The teachers are free to be creative in their lessons and to advocate for their students outside the classroom. That motivates and excites them as they head for school each morning.

It took me some time to comprehend what AVID does. I knew that requiring students to take notes, keep their papers in order, be tutored regularly, and apply for college were best practices proven to boost achievement. I thought that was the essence of AVID: because the AVID program did those things, it was good.

I am still embarrassed by my simplemindedness. I was startled to discover that those approaches had a depth unlike anything I had seen in other school programs. AVID teaching was inquiry based. The Cornell notes invented by Walter Pauk and required by AVID, and the intricate tutoring procedures AVID founder Swanson developed, forced students not only to absorb new information but also to ask questions that got to the conceptual root of their lessons.

AVID students learn not just by remembering what is taught but by conceiving what vital questions are at the heart of their lessons. This is something I rarely had to do as a California public school student, or even as a Harvard College undergraduate. I memorized as much as I could and almost never tried to turn the content into conceptual questions until I was asked to do so on an exam.

I missed out on a better way of learning, and I am not alone. It is difficult to find anyone in this country who has ever been taught how to take good notes. AVID students write down the important points and facts, but they also jot down what appear to be the questions the lecture or book is answering. They learn to discuss the subject with others and link the lesson to other reading. That helps them remember the material and use it intelligently on exams and in life.

The question-making demanded by the AVID tutoring process goes even further. I was skeptical that average high school students could do it. But as I watched carefully, interviewing many teachers and students, it became clear that AVID kids were getting the idea. As a former tutor in Washington DC–area schools, I felt sorry that my tutees had received such inadequate assistance from me. Some top-rate private tutors do what AVID does, but they are rare.

Tutoring sessions, usually every Tuesday and Thursday, are the core of AVID. Most of the money spent for the program goes to pay the tutors. The process is unlike anything I have ever seen in thirty years of education reporting. Each tutor works with no more than seven students. They are trained to stifle their instinct to help struggling students by giving them the answer. In an AVID tutorial, that is the worst thing you can do. Instead, the tutor nudges students toward the questions that will suggest the answer. The students themselves employ that question-making more often than the tutor does.

Inquiry-based tutorials are difficult to do. It takes months for students to get the hang of it. Some AVID tutorials are ragged and disorganized, but even the weaker ones I saw appeared to be more enlightening than the non-AVID tutorials I have observed and participated in over the years.

Emory University English professor Mark Bauerlein has pointed out the fallacy of our popular notion that the best way to improve high schools is to make the teaching livelier and more relevant to students' lives. There is nothing wrong with doing that, but it isn't enough. As Bauerlein, who teaches college freshman composition, points out, college courses like his are inevitably going to be boring and off-putting to a large number of students. He has to teach rules of grammar, organization, and usage, not fun for many students. High school students must learn to deal with courses they don't find engaging if they are going to succeed in college. AVID's frequent lessons on time management and its tutorial emphasis on what to do when stuck on a problem prepare students for such challenges.

In a way, this book is my attempt at question-making. How did AVID evolve into a national movement? Why hasn't it received more public notice? Why are the teachers, principals, and counselors in AVID so passionate about it? How much further will it go? Does research on its results back up the enthusiasm of its participants?

Those of us immersed in the raging national debate over how to improve our schools should note that AVID has little to do with the issues on which we so often disagree. The program doesn't tell us if it is OK to assess and pay teachers based on student test scores. It doesn't care if the students it serves are in traditional public schools, charters, or private schools. It is unrelated to school vouchers or teacher tenure or corporate motivational techniques or test security or competing curriculums. The fact that such hotly debated issues are largely irrelevant to this powerful program explains in part why it has become so influential while remaining little known. It also makes me wonder if our big arguments are as important as we think they are.

AVID is trying to grow and improve. It now reaches elementary schools as well as colleges. Its teachers want to involve many more students than they do now, and to move beyond AVID's emphasis on average students to a schoolwide approach. That requires more experience with students who don't fit the AVID profile and with the many school district administrators who have trouble, as I did, understanding what AVID does. The program also wants to bring its methods into more large urban districts. The collapse of an ambitious AVID program in Chicago shows that such growth will take time, hard work, and some luck.

AVID's great strength is its popularity with teachers, who see it as an exceptional way to engage students and deepen their learning. They and their students sense from the beginning the unusual nature of the enterprise. Teachers can be creative in the classroom and advocate for their students outside the classroom when old rules and procedures are denying students the challenges they need. AVID teachers like the focus on preparing students for college rather than just raising state test scores, a numbers game they distrust.

The power of what Mary Catherine Swanson created in a San Diego ninth-grade classroom in 1980 is best understood through the stories I tell here of those teachers, and their students. They still have lots of questions. That is the best you can say about anyone in AVID or any other effort to improve our schools.

WATCH CLIP 1: “PEOPLE LIKE ME DON'T GO TO COLLEGE”

AVID students turning self-doubt into positive self-talk.

www.wiley.com/go/avid1

Taking AVID Home

It wasn't until Kande McKay moved two thousand miles from Madison, Indiana, for her third year of teaching that she realized how little her students were accomplishing back home and how much more they could do if she asked them to.