As I was walking through schools last week, I couldn't help be impressed by the rapid spread of AVID at the elementary level. High school AVID students were already making visits to elementary classrooms to talk about the importance of setting and achieving goals.
It is one thing for 4th and 5th graders to hear this message from their parents and teachers. It is a completely different thing for them to hear it from a teenager. For some reason, when a teenager says it is cool to do well in school, the message really starts to stick. A big thank you to everyone who arranged these visits. They make a difference.
Cascade teacher Ryan McWayne already had his students organizing their binders and getting ready to start the year. He was emphasizing the O (organization) in WICOR, by teaching his students how to set up their binders and how to keep their learning organized. When we set these kinds of high expectations for students and stay consistent throughout the year, we will see students take more ownership and responsibility for their learning over time, and that is the point of everything we are trying to do for our students, isn't it?
