Once the AVID program was firmly established in our public middle school of 1050 students, the enthusiasm and success of the AVID Coordinator, Site Team, and AVID students were seen throughout the school. We soon determined that if all teachers used key strategies that make a student successful in AVID, we could increase the rigor in all classes to raise the bar for students throughout Langston Hughes Middle School. By fully supporting the initial implementation of the AVID program, choosing a few strategies that targeted our goal of equity, and upskilling staff and students in the use of the strategies, we were able to see gains in organization, agency, and the ability to access rigorous curriculum across the student population. These steps improved equitable outcomes by raising the bar for all students; therefore, we wrote them into our School Improvement Plan.
Lay a Strong Foundation
When we first began to implement AVID at Langston Hughes Middle School in 2012, we focused on getting the AVID Administrator, Elective Teacher, Coordinator and Site Team trained and comfortable with the aspects of the program that would support our students in AVID. We spoke to our feeder high school, and they had also committed to the AVID program to close the opportunity gap. Both schools sent large teams to AVID Summer Institute. The Site Team met monthly to discuss components of the program and reflect on their use of strategies in their classrooms. They consulted AVID resources to develop a better understanding of tools that would improve student success and collaborated on targeted support for students. This support for both teachers and students enabled the program to be successful. For the next few years, the Site Team improved on its delivery of the program. Student success became a part of our school’s culture.
Each year, the teachers became more familiar and confident in the aspects of the program that made it a success. Soon the students and Site Team teachers were great advertisements of the AVID program and how AVID’s best practices and key strategies improve student outcomes in classes. Strategies such as the use of an AVID binder, focused note-taking, quickwrites, and Socratic Seminars exhibited the power of AVID to prepare a student to access and attain higher levels of curriculum. These students became leaders in their classes and were noticed by teachers and students outside of the program. Before long additional teachers were interested in receiving AVID training.
Knowing the benefit of the training, we sent anyone who could commit to the time and the learning. We applied for any district support and the school added additional funds to send teachers to Summer Institute or to local AVID training opportunities. We visited other schools and collaborated with staff that were further ahead in their AVID journey. As members shifted off of the Site Team, the teachers that attended these professional development opportunities were ready to join and continue to build on the strong foundation of the inaugural team. This ensured that there were teachers ready and able to keep up the quality of the program that had been established. Previous Site Team members, while not serving on the committee, were still using strategies such as focused notes, Socratic Seminars, and quickwrites in their classes to teach not only AVID students, but also students outside of the AVID program. The “AVID way” spread to many classes in the school, and this benefited many students.
Go Slow to Go Fast
The members of the school community could immediately recognize an AVID student in their classes with the hallmark AVID binder, taking focused notes, asking and answering questions, and coming fully prepared to engage in their lessons. When these students began to organize not only their learning, but also their thoughts and communication, they showed themselves to be top students in the classroom. At the same time, the teachers that taught AVID students recognized that the AVID organization and learning strategies allowed students to access high levels of content and produce higher levels of work. We were determined to improve equitable outcomes for students and thus, looked at all classes to increase the number of high-level performance tasks for students. The AVID students made more cross-curricular connections and had better synthesis and analysis of material. A wider swath of teachers seeing students succeed and using AVID strategies that were meaningful to student learning prompted the leadership of the school to consider a schoolwide implementation of AVID strategies. The Leadership Team, consisting of administration, department and collaborative team leads, and instructional coaches, decided to adopt a few strategies that the whole school could use in any class, from music to math, as a strategy for the School Improvement Plan to achieve equity for all.
Organization is one of the most common challenges of a middle schooler. Therefore, the schoolwide use of a one notebook system was an easy place to start. Teachers were expected to use only one section of the notebook for their class content. Teams discussed what their notebook would contain, and many used interactive notebooks for students to gather learning materials and retain notes. We asked community partners to purchase three-inch binders to support students who were unable to purchase their own, and soon the signature AVID binder was a standard supply for students at Langston Hughes.
We were looking at implementing schoolwide AVID strategies at the same time that our county had a focus on literacy across content areas. So, we adopted annotation marks and quickwrites as a way to process information, read critically, and practice writing a strong paragraph as our second and third schoolwide strategies. We set a goal that each content teacher would have students do quickwrites once a week in their content area and analyze texts with annotation marks. We created standard annotation marks across the school and a “Panther Paragraph” think sheet which was a model of a strong five sentence paragraph and asked teachers to have students mark texts and write summaries, justifications, journal entries, or expositions of current topics in their classes. These techniques significantly increased the frequency of reading and writing for each student in the building.
Finally, we decided to use focused note-taking in classes for content notes. These also translated to interactive notebook tasks and were used for reviewing, studying, and retaining material. Teachers prepared guided notes in this format to scaffold for special education students and ELLs so that every child could benefit from the questioning and summarization of content at any level.
Practice Makes Permanent
In a school that serves 7th and 8th graders only, we turn over 50% of our student population every year as one group moves to high school, and we receive the incoming 6th graders. This can be a challenge for a practice to become embedded in the culture of the school when we are starting from ground zero with half the students each year. The school is also located in an area outside of Washington DC where the adult population is also transient. Therefore, we had to have a systematic and ongoing plan to develop both the teachers and the students to use the schoolwide strategies to which we dedicated ourselves.
We used staff meetings to professionally train the teachers so that they felt comfortable using the one binder system, quickwrites, and focused notes. We included in our training not only how to use these strategies to teach and support students, but also the why behind the use of these strategies. The power of writing, questioning, and summarizing to clarify thinking and to master content were some of the reasons presented as to why all classes should be using these AVID tools to help students achieve. We also trained non-language arts teachers how to assess and grade a piece of writing in their content. We collaborated in teams on when to use focused notes, annotation marks, and quickwrites. After the delivery of the lessons, teachers brought samples to team meetings so they could compare, calibrate, and reflect on the process and how to use these to improve student performance.
In order for the students to become familiar with these tools, we used our advisory period and taught lessons using these strategies via the closed-circuit TV system to the whole school. The AVID Elective teacher, instructional coaches, and even AVID students created mini lessons on the maintenance of an AVID binder, how to use annotation marks and write a “Panther Paragraph,” and how to organize and take focused notes. They created engaging lessons that allowed students to practice these tools in a low-stakes environment on fun topics in the advisory period. Once a quarter, there was even a binder cleanout lesson to keep students organized. These same mini lessons also helped teachers in their understanding, development, and capacity to use these strategies by allowing them to practice using them in a lesson in an informal way via a TV lesson. These opportunities to practice our schoolwide strategies coupled with schoolwide professional development increased the comfort level and ability of the teachers to use these strategies in their own classes.
Raising the Bar for All Students
The journey to raise the bar for all students was supported by the use of AVID strategies in every class at Langston Hughes Middle School. We built on the firm foundation of our strong and successful AVID program. The time and training spent in the initial phases were critical to build an understanding and reputation that spread from the Site Team and students to the greater community. Choosing just a few strategies to improve outcomes for all students helped us give targeted training until these techniques were comfortably embedded in our practices throughout the building. Training both staff and students in informal ways allowed for practice before teachers and students used the strategies in higher-stakes performance tasks. The work we put in to implement schoolwide AVID strategies has allowed students to stay organized and prepare for rigorous curriculum. It has also given teachers the opportunity to raise the bar for all students. All teachers have the tools to support their students on more challenging and higher-level performance tasks. We are confident that the schoolwide implementation of AVID strategies equips all students to access rigorous high school classes that will prepare them for college and beyond, thus leveling the playing field and ensuring equity for all.
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