Director of Curriculum and Instruction Amy McConnell
Cascade Locks Principal Adrienne Acosta
HOOD RIVER — Hood River County School District board members heard the annual report on the district’s Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program at the Feb. 7 meeting.
Namely, board members received an update on the rollout of school-wide AVID programs at May Street, Westside, Mid Valley and Parkdale elementary schools — Cascade Locks Elementary is in its fourth year — from Director of Curriculum and Instruction Amy McConnell and Cascade Locks Principal Adrienne Acosta.
AVID is a college and career readiness framework that includes the four “domains” of instruction, systems, leadership and culture and focuses on what students and educators need in order to be successful.
“So within AVID, every component falls into one of those domains,” McConnell said.
Acosta explained the program concentrates on the “how,” not the “what,” to teach.
“We’re still using all of those core curriculums, spending a lot of time and energy making sure these are the right ‘what to teach’ things,” she said. “And then, AVID is how to teach those things, how to set up practices for students to learn. It’s skills that we’re teaching that will be applied in whatever they do.”
District-wide implementation has long been a goal of superintendents and the board, and McConnell explained the steps taken to ensure a successful rollout this fall at the elementary level — the trainings, data collection, and planning by the district leadership team.
“It’s basically a really detailed rubric for everything that encompasses AVID,” Acosta added. “Those four domains, like the instruction, systems, leadership and culture, there’s a lot of work you guys get to see — you see a lot of the instruction component … but there’s a lot of system planning and implementation that has to go on behind the scenes.”
Both Acosta and McConnell expressed gratitude for the board and superintendents’ support.
“You all have prioritized and seen the benefits of AVID and supported that … [you] really believe that this is important and we have that belief that students will be college and career ready,” Acosta said.
“It’s interesting because I talk to a lot of other AVID district directors when I go to trainings,” McConnell said, “and some of them will say it’s so challenging because they don’t have the support of the school board or their superintendent, and they’re kind of fighting for time in front of administrators, so I’m always very thankful that everyone’s all in and in support of this.”
The program continues to run at Hood River Valley High School (seven sections) and Wy’east (two sections) and Hood River (three sections) middle schools as elective classes.
Wy’east has also implemented the program schoolwide at the sixth-grade level; HRVHS and HRMS are looking into schoolwide implementation, as is Hood River Options Academy.
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