AVID Tutors Present at the IMPACT Conference 2012

Posted by on May 08, 2012

On March 29th-31st I traveled to Deland, Florida with Alexander Keene, a senior secondary education major at Arcadia University, Brittney Sampson, a senior sociology major and education minor and Julia Ransom a third-year PHD candidate in urban education and current professor of Education in the Global City at Temple University for the 2012 IMPACT conference. This group has worked with me over the past year to promote and to shape the AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) tutoring program in Philadelphia public schools. Our workshop was focused on reflecting, with a national audience of college students and college administrators, on the process of partnering with public schools and in implementing a large-scale tutoring program with multiple sites, coordinators and schools.

This workshop, also presented at the Student Leadership Summit at Drexel University, was a collaborative effort to help start discussions about the affect college students can have in supporting public school classrooms in Philadelphia. AVID tutors are required to go outside of their college “bubble” to work in schools that are often geographically close but a world apart from their current experiences. AVID tutors, and especially leaders, gain a deeper understanding from the experience of what it means to go to college, the challenges that their students may face in achieving this goal and the types of support that can be provided in a short-term tutoring program. Student coordinators at each university are vital to the AVID program. Coordinators recruit and train new tutors and show strong leadership in AVID classrooms and School District administrators use tutor feedback to improve AVID classrooms and support struggling teachers. This opportunity to create and implement a workshop at a national conference was new for the entire team and was a wonderful learning experience!

We used a “quickwrite” exercise led by Alex to allow participants to express their opinions regarding college access and public schools. We then worked with participants to have them create “eco-maps” of the relationships they have with individuals and institutions that are both positive and challenging regarding program implementation. We concluded our session by discussing different ways we can reflect on our partnerships with schools and how to better understand the impact we’re having.

Check out our “prezi” to get ideas on how to lead a similar workshop: http://prezi.com/kt1iv8k8vc0x/impact-conference/

Below are reflections from Julia and Alex regarding their experience.

Julia Ransom, Temple University
The IMPACT conference although geared toward college undergraduates for the most part was very eye opening for me as an instructor. While at the conference I learned that there are students all across the country that make it their business to be deeply involved in community organizations in their communities. On the smaller scale one personal significant take away for my pedagogy was that I will try to connect my students personal experiences with those of people in the surround Temple University community. I will try to find any way possible to have the students relate their own lives to others. When students make personal connections there is a greater capacity for them to have the will to do service in the community.

Alex Keene, Arcadia University
Attending the IMPACT Conference was an interesting opportunity for me. Although I’ve been working with the AVID program for nearly 18 months now, I’ve never really sat down and thought about what it was trying to do in our communities. I looked at it from the perspective of the AVID people – the goal was to teach critical thinking skills. Working with Liz and the other presenters helped me understand how interacting important the paradigm shift associated with AVID – that college is an achievable goal and that critical thought for its own sake is a worthwhile skill to develop – is in impacting not only the lives of the individual students, but also in their communities.