Concurrent Sessions

Bryan Adams High School leveraged its implementation of AVID to flip the script on student achievement, student progress, performance gaps, and postsecondary readiness by embracing AVID’s Schoolwide Leadership model to provide professional development to faculty and shift the school to a more future-forward, student-centered approach. The presenters will provide insight into the AVID practices and engagement strategies that help build relational capacity and create engagement throughout their campus. Everyone attending the session will also be given multiple templates to utilize on their campus.

In this session, participants will learn how August School, a TK–8th grade Title 1 school, including SDC mod/severe classes, used the personal learning cohort (PLC) process to build capacity in AVID from AVID Schoolwide to a National AVID Showcase site over four years. Session participants will learn the efficacy of creating a culture of collaboration utilizing the PLC process as the foundation for building capacity with AVID on their campus.

School culture can have a direct impact on student learning outcomes as well as the social and emotional well-being of students. Educators can create a positive and connected school culture that impacts students by being intentional in their daily routines. This session will cover five high-energy and engaging strategies, which can be implemented at participants’ campuses immediately. This session will evoke various emotions and lead to deep reflection. The intended audience is campus leadership teams, AVID coordinators and elective teachers, and district leadership.

Join the Freeport School District’s (FSD) journey as they demonstrate how they use the AVID operational and leadership tenets to align the work of the AVID Framework with the FSD districtwide strategic planning and School Improvement Plan (SIP) Goals.

During this interactive session, participants will learn how the FSD’s focus on AVID implementation has expanded and refined, and how this refreshed thinking has influenced district-level visioning. Explore ways AVID has been embedded into district structures and learn how FSD made decisions, developed plans, and worked collaboratively to implement AVID successfully and ensure that AVID strategies are integrated into classroom instruction.

See how one community college promotes AVID Schoolwide, the pairing of AVID’s WICOR^® strategies with select digital learning tools to increase learner engagement, ensure rigor, and teach critical thinking skills. This session will introduce and demonstrate instructional technology tools that pair well with AVID’s research-based strategies to increase engagement, foster collaboration, and build relational capacity between students, the instructor, and the content through any mode of instruction.

Think Together and AVID have similar, almost identical, philosophies about breaking down barriers, advocating for all students, and ensuring students get the support they need to meet their needs best. In this session, participants will learn how Think Together and AVID collaborate to align instructional strategies and support student success in the after school space.

This session will show participants how to implement AVID Schoolwide in an Elementary school setting. Participants will learn how to align other programs or initiatives with AVID Elementary. They will learn how to start an AVID Ambassador program and discover how to utilize AVID Ambassadors within their school to help the students develop leadership skills and compassion. Integrating the AVID Ambassador program will help create a culture of diversity and inclusion mirrored by students and staff and embed systems for student leadership. Presenters will discuss the successes and struggles and help develop a plan for how this could work in participants’ schools.

Over time, AVID APLMs evolved based on educators’ needs to support students in engaging, rigorous learning. Used both by partners and internal program management for delivery, an APLM provides educators with enhanced learning through engagement in AVID WICOR^® strategies.

During this session, presenters will provide an overview of the APLM development process over time, including how they have researched the usage data from MyAVID, created feedback avenues, and adjusted timings allowing for use during a 45-minute or 90-minute block. Participants will engage in AVID WICOR strategies throughout the session just like those used in the APLMs.

Get up-to-date on the latest resources for the AVID Elective. The Weeks at a Glance (WAG) curriculum is being revised and shifting from a daily lesson plan approach to a weekly unit plan approach. This year serves as a transition year to the revised AVID Elective Standards. This session will provide an opportunity to learn about all the updates and to interact with the current AVID curriculum.

AVID Elementary Weekly^®: Literacy Connections Schoolwide provides teachers with ready-to-go lessons that bring disciplinary literacy to life in every classroom. A variety of texts with readability levels beginning at kindergarten are used to design lessons that include optional blended learning opportunities and support, and each month includes English language learner lessons. In this session, participants will embark on a journey that will allow them to navigate the site, explore an AVID Elementary Weekly text and lesson, and investigate resources as they engage in AVID’s Critical Reading process. Participants will gain knowledge and understanding of how to cultivate literacy in their classrooms.

AVID Elementary Descriptors help bring the AVID College & Career Readiness Framework to life through “What Students Need” and how that looks in an elementary setting. With each grade level represented, educators can apply the Elementary Descriptors to locally defined content and standards to support student success. Participants will learn how the Elementary Descriptors are scaffolded through the gradual release of responsibility from educator encouragement and modeling to monitoring as students become more independent in their skills. Participants will work with other educators to apply the Elementary Descriptors to their professional practice to support student success.

This interactive session will provide participants with current research about the academic needs of long-term English language learners and outline essential instructional routines for academic success and access to rigorous coursework. In addition, participants will learn how AVID Center as an organization specifically addresses these needs through AVID Excel^®, a middle school course offering for long-term English language learners that uses a strategically designed curriculum, professional learning, family connections, and promotion of biliteracy. AVID Excel accelerates academic language acquisition and places emergent multilingual scholars on the path to high school AVID and college-preparatory coursework.

This session will provide an overview of the National Demonstration School Revalidation process and provide opportunities to engage with other Demo School leaders to connect, learn and share best practices. Discussions will focus on how Demo Sites break down barriers, insist on rigor, align the work, advocate for students, and demonstrate Collective Educator Agency as a Teaching and Learning Center.

In the session, participants will learn how to streamline the process of integrating AVID strategies into their advisory course and accelerate efforts to foster rigorous academic preparedness, agency, and opportunity knowledge in students schoolwide from AVID’s Schoolwide Advisory team. This session will provide an overview of AVID Schoolwide Advisory, opportunities for participants to engage with the website content and resources, and time to connect their specific campus goals to the materials and the CCR framework. Additionally, presenters will provide an update on the upcoming changes and content being delivered in response to the feedback from the pilot year.

The AVID Site Team is the impetus for moving towards AVID Schoolwide. In this session, participants will discover ideas for organizing, structuring, and empowering their AVID Site Team, focusing on the role of teacher leadership. Participants will engage in activities that allow them to explore AVID Weekly lessons and build knowledge and understanding of disciplinary literacy and how to bring it to life in their classrooms.

AVID Weekly^®: Literacy Connections Schoolwide provides teachers with ready-to-go lessons that bring disciplinary literacy to life in every classroom. A variety of texts with readability levels from grades 5–12 are used to design lessons that include optional blended learning opportunities and support, and include at least one English language learner lesson per month. In this session, participants will embark on a journey that will allow them to navigate the site, explore an AVID Weekly text and lesson, and investigate resources as they engage in AVID’s Critical Reading process. Participants will gain knowledge and understanding of how to cultivate literacy in their classrooms.

Adopting AVID’s College and Career Readiness Framework reduces or eliminates achievement gaps often associated with student access and opportunity gaps. Historically, students who are African American, Hispanic, from a low-socioeconomic background, or from parents who did not attend college were underrepresented in postsecondary education. However, AVID students with these characteristics are not underrepresented. They enroll and persist at rates that often match or exceed national comparators. This session highlights how AVID-trained educators minimize opportunity and expectation gaps so all students achieve at higher levels.

The session is designed for educators to reflect on what is in their locus of control and create a plan of action to dismantle barriers to student success. It will include strategies that allow participants to explore how barriers such as scheduling, planning, expectations, and mindset affect student success. Additionally, this session aligns with AVID’s college readiness framework around collective educator agency and what educators can do to support what students need.

Presenters will share concrete tips on setting and maintaining a bold vision and building aligned, sustainable systems that students and staff easily recognize and value. Their easy-to-use schoolwide data systems and instructional framework seamlessly connect, whether it be through advisory or their college and career center. These systems work and have significantly increased graduation rates and access to postsecondary options for all student populations. In this session, participants will learn how this National Demonstration School created a brand that focuses on being the best at educating, nurturing, and inspiring.

This session will provide an overview of the steps to become an emerging AVID National Demonstration School. This session will review the criteria, guidelines, and rationale that schools need to meet and the steps toward becoming a Demo School.

This session is for Secondary AVID Schools.

Presenters will explore how the AVID Elementary Essential skills can be used in PreK through grades 5/6 to align all content areas and boost student agency and access to rigorous academic preparedness. They’re designed to work seamlessly with participants’ school’s existing standards and curriculum. By implementing these skills, participants will help their students prepare for college and careers in a fun and engaging way.

Financial education is more than dollars and cents. It’s about establishing better spending habits, instilling confidence, and equipping the next generation with the real-world skills to manage financial goals and milestones. Join EVERFI as they provide an overview of their no-cost digital lessons featured in the AVID elective course and advisory. AVID educators will learn strategies and best practices on how to integrate the resources in their classroom to enhance curriculum, increase student engagement, and develop youth financial capability.

The expectations and vision of an AVID Site Team are complex. Intentional alignment of goals and strategies are critical components of AVID schoolwide success. In this session, participants will learn how Roseville Area Middle School in Little Canada, Minnesota, a National Demonstration School and Site of Distinction, strategically aligns district, building, and AVID Site Team goals, explores strategies that foster strategic reflection, and systemically infuses AVID strategies across all curriculum areas.

If rigorous academic preparedness is essential for college and career readiness, then what does coaching for rigor look like? This session provides participants with a framework for establishing a clear site-based definition of rigor, support to assess and coach rigor in the classroom, a strategy for exploring the role of lesson design in ensuring rigorous instruction, and the opportunity to investigate best practices that support rigorous instruction. Participants will engage in coaching conversations around problems of practice to generate a collection of coaching questions and concrete tools to take back to their campus to provide instructional coaching and support.

This session, intended for all AVID educators PreK–12, will explore how to use a blended approach to WICOR^® as a lens for lesson design and best instructional practice. When the five skills of WICOR are woven together and integrated into lessons, the result is higher levels of student engagement, academic rigor, and student achievement. A blended learning approach to WICOR amplifies and accelerates learning to build student agency by empowering students to approach anything new with curiosity, a growth mindset, and a set of technology and problem-solving skills to engage with content in meaningful ways. Participants will explore WICOR as a lens for lesson design that blends WICOR with digital strategies to engage students in collaborative learning practices that empower them to take ownership of their learning.

This session explores how participants can engage their feeder schools, community stakeholders, and local colleges to increase students’ awareness about college and career opportunities. During this interactive session, participants will hear how specific and replicable district and school systems can support mutually beneficial community partnerships. Additionally, community stakeholders will share how and why their partnership with AVID and the local school district aligns with their organization’s mission and vested interest in the success of all students.

Through a huddle structure, presenters will review their playbook of replicable organizational structures that ensure fidelity, accountability, and sustainability of AVID schoolwide practices. The presenters will walk participants through the four quarters of their championship game plan that equips their students to make it to the next level and has led their school to an AVID National Demonstration victory.

The Greenwich Alliance for Education (Alliance) partners with the Greenwich Public Schools (GPS) to support, enrich, and supplement the existing AVID Elective at Greenwich High School (GHS).  We also support GHS AVID Alumni as they transition to college, work towards their degree completion and into the early years of their professional careers. Presenters will share an overview of the data collected, which identified areas of unmet needs, the scope and sequence of programming and supporting materials, and examples of community resources and partnerships engaged in support of AVID students and families.  Additionally, we will share how we are growing an AVID SUCCESS Alumni Network to leverage the students’ strong foundation built in the AVID Elective as they progress through college and into their professional careers.

What the world needs most are students who analyze problems like engineers, develop hypotheses like scientists, think analytically like mathematicians, recognize the power of individuals like historians, create like artists, and record their thinking like writers. Disciplinary literacy is a schoolwide approach to providing students with the tools and strategies for success in every content area to empower them to design their future. This session will explore what disciplinary literacy is, why it matters, and how to take it schoolwide so that AVID schools and districts are able to close expectation, opportunity, and achievement gaps for all students.

What the world needs most are students who analyze problems like engineers, develop hypotheses like scientists, think analytically like mathematicians, recognize the power of individuals like historians, create like artists, and record their thinking like writers. Disciplinary literacy is a schoolwide approach to providing students with the tools and strategies for success in every content area to empower them to design their future. This session will explore what disciplinary literacy is, why it matters, and how to take it schoolwide so that AVID schools and districts are able to close expectation, opportunity, and achievement gaps for all students.

This session will engage participants in interactive conversations focusing on knowledge-sharing and problem-solving around the implementation challenges of AVID Schoolwide and the AVID College & Career Readiness System. The discussion will allow networking between District Directors and Principals from across the country.

Desert Sands Unified will take participants on its journey toward AVID Districtwide. AVID Center challenged presenters with the mission of district strategic planning, and they accepted it. Participants will learn how this opportunity uncovered who was missing at the table, provided a common language, and brought district leadership together to undoubtedly solidify, “All means all in Desert Sands.”

Pinellas County leaders will provide insight into the actions that have served as the strongest leverage points for growing and strengthening the implementation of AVID Schoolwide and Districtwide. Information will include district-level systems and processes that are in place related to the collection and use of data, leading professional learning, coaching and mentoring, and advocacy for student success. Leaders at all levels, from the classroom to the school board, will find this session valuable to their work.

This session provides participants with the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of how to strategically lead Districtwide AVID in order to realize Student Agency, Opportunity Knowledge, and Rigorous Opportunity for ALL Students. The learning will be enhanced through sharing ideas and best practices with District Leaders from across the country.

Leaders will understand how to use the AVID College and Career Readiness Framework to align “the work” after this session. In the sport of rowing, all rowers must put their oars in the water succinctly to get their boat to reach maximum speed. Dr. Sheka Houston and Dr. Tammy Taylor will demonstrate how to organize the vision, Professional Learning Team (PLT), Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS), and Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS), using the framework to effectively align the work, maximizing student outcomes. Both leaders will share their expertise in using the framework as an alignment tool to turn around their middle and elementary schools. Attendees will engage in collaborative activities.

This session will provide those responsible for professional development delivery with a practical approach to online and blended teacher professional development (PD) that is relevant, engaging, and immediately useful. Presenters will explore AVID’s professional learning sequence and how it can enhance participants’ PD experiences. This session is for participants tasked with bringing AVID’s best practices back to their school or district.

“There are no good schools without good principals.” – Arnie Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education.

Presenters agree with that statement and would add that ‘there are no good districts without good principals.’ When a district invests in inspiring, empowering, and mobilizing principals to lead their students, staff, and families, and invite them to the decision-making table to lead AVID districtwide systems, work that impacts multiple groups. Pasco School District #1 AVID District Leadership Team, comprised of mostly site principals, will share how they are elevating the collective educator agency districtwide by creating a roadmap to AVID implementation using AVID’s Components of Excellence, AVID Districtwide Tenets and aligning to their districts outrageous outcomes.

This session will delve into innovative ways to promote student inquiry and engagement through “unplugged” activities, which do not require computers but integrate computer science and computational thinking skills. Participants will gain insights into applying logical thinking processes from computer science to various academic disciplines and grade levels, enhancing transferable problem-solving skills.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize education, transforming how participants teach and learn. One promising AI tool for the classroom is ChatGPT, a language model that can generate human-like responses to natural language prompts. This session will focus on combining the power of AI and AVID to enhance student engagement and achievement. Participants will engage in hands-on activities and collaborative discussions to learn about the use of ChatGPT to WICORize lessons and provide rigorous academic preparedness for all students.

To what extent are site and district leaders aligning practices and programs for all students occurring at sites and districtwide? This question comes up again and again for site and district leaders. Determining how initiatives and programs implemented at each site fit together and distinguishing why they are important for successful academic outcomes are key starting points in ensuring college and career success for all students. Participants will learn how one school within Amphitheater School District worked through this question and inspired district leadership to develop a list of districtwide non-negotiable initiatives and systems that support the learning and success of all students.

AVID’s Summer Bridge programs offer high-engagement content designed to accelerate learning. This session will offer participants an opportunity to learn about our math, science, and English language development summer offerings through an interactive, informational presentation. Through interactive and collaborative lessons and activities, AVID’s Math & Science Summer Bridge programs enhance students’ critical thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving skills. AVID’s English language development Summer Bridge supports middle and high school English language learners with academic language acquisition through community building and focusing on college and career readiness skills.

This interactive session provides practical strategies and resources for educators to foster opportunity knowledge for all students. Participants will engage in an exploration of AVID partners’ digital tools while collaborating with peers to support their students’ successful futures. The session aims to equip educators with the necessary tools to foster financial, professional, and college preparation for their learners. Participants will have the opportunity to actively engage with the content and envision how to apply the skills learned in their own settings.

Presenters will share how one AVID National Demonstration School took the pandemic and turned it into possibility. Participants will learn how Ted Polk Middle School used AVID’s Schoolwide Domains to transcend its pre-pandemic culture, and transform the campus into one where every scholar is an AVID scholar and every teacher is an AVID teacher.

Join presenters in this engaging session, where participants will discover how to WICORize phonics lessons using AVID’s powerful strategies. Presenters will start by reviewing Scarborough’s Reading Rope and connecting it to AVID’s College and Career Readiness framework. Participants will be immersed in a WICORized phonics lesson and walk away with practical tools to help students build strong literacy skills and take ownership of their learning. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to promote student agency and take phonics instruction to the next level!

We know all students across a school need rigorous academic preparedness to be ready for college and careers. But, acting on that knowledge—leveraging WICOR^® strategies to ensure rigor in all classrooms—represents a daunting challenge for educators and administrators alike. Where to start? How to create momentum? How to engage all teachers and reach all classrooms?

In this session, participants will explore a strategic approach to implementing WICOR across a campus, with a focus on both leadership actions and classroom practices. A blueprint of aligned, specific and replicable strategies will be shared, helping any campus use WICOR to build rigorous learning environments schoolwide.

Looking for new ways to engage students that spark their creativity? Come play with presenters as they explore mathematical concepts and design principles through quilt math. This interactive session will provide practical ideas and strategies for incorporating quilt math into instruction, helping engage students in relevant and exciting learning experiences. Come explore the possibilities of quilt math and discover how it can enrich classrooms with its interdisciplinary and creative approach to teaching mathematical concepts. Educators and administrators will walk away with resources to help guide immediate implementation. Join presenters for the opportunity to ignite students’ creativity and enhance learning.

Dr. Reynaldo J. Carreon Jr. Academy and James Monroe Elementary School share their journeys from AVID Elementary schoolwide implementation to becoming National Showcase school sites. During the presentation, participants will hear about some of the “bumps along the way” and the systems created to make college and career a priority for all students. As schools from Desert Sands Unified School District, where the motto is “The Future Starts Here,” AVID has become the vehicle to ensure that all students have opportunities always and in all ways.

This session explores game-based learning strategies to promote language acquisition among multilingual and emergent English speakers. While gamification focuses on rewarding students to positively impact motivation, game-based learning leverages games as a tool for learning. Game-based learning can serve to lower the affective filter to break down barriers in language acquisition. Participants engaging in this session will discover a variety of tools, technologies, and instructional strategies to implement game-based learning with their students.

The practices discussed and modeled in this session will help participants address the opportunity and expectation gaps that negatively affect many young people. Helping all students succeed is not about changing what educators do, but changing how educators do the following: the delivery, the scaffolding, and the relationship building. The strategies shared in this session can be implemented immediately to increase the level of success, engagement, and rigor for all students. This session will help educators reflect on their practices, learn new ones, and ask the question, “Does all mean all?” when it comes to meeting the needs of learners in their classrooms.

This session offers an overview of Tucson Unified School District’s (TUSD) journey in becoming an AVID district. It is a large urban K–12 school district that covers 229 square miles that encompasses 89 schools. Presenters will provide a blueprint of strategies, conditions, and systems that TUSD has created and continues to refine in its efforts to implement AVID’s College Readiness System districtwide. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions that address their considerations in implementing AVID districtwide.

How can participants ensure “all means all” at their school? In this session, presenters will guide participants in making connections to Cholla High School’s journey in becoming an AVID Schoolwide Site of Distinction through the partnership of AVID and the IB Diploma Programme. Cholla High School is a large, comprehensive, racially concentrated, Title 1 urban school in a large Southern Arizona district. Cholla High School provided an opportunity for students to participate in open-access advanced learning experiences by identifying and breaking down barriers through a Systems Thinking Approach of redefining the school culture, meaningful professional learning, and leveraging funding sources.

What happens when a district, against all odds, doesn’t listen to the noise, believes in its students, believes in each other, and knows that something different is possible? How an imperfect district utilized AVID and leaned on each other to change schools that were considered “failing” into commendable ones and showed others what they knew to be true about their students and community all along. Danville, Illinois, is a high-poverty area. The community’s perception of the schools does not match the reality. Presenters will share their district’s story of battling misconceptions, creating success, and changing the narrative. In this session, presenters will utilize strategies that help participants reflect on their own stories, brainstorm carousels for movement and collaboration, graffiti walls for planning and brainstorming, and Frayer models for refinement and focus.

Student agency is a critical attribute of a college-and career-ready student. This session will introduce AVID’s Student Agency Survey, which measures the extent to which students believe in themselves and act with intentionality. Initial findings from students in grades 4 to 12 will be shared, including how AVID provides students with a more consistent/equitable education experience that reduces gaps in student agency. In addition to AVID Center’s perspective, participants will hear how district leaders use AVID’s Student Agency Survey and data to inform their work in schools.

The California Region 3 Capital Metro Area AVID team insists on rigor and aligning district and school site work when creating engaging professional learning opportunities. This session offers insight into planning and implementing rigorous workshops with engaging, fun, and innovative WICORized lessons with an overarching social emotional learning lens. District leaders, administrators, site coordinators, and teachers will acquire practical strategies, templates, and plans to implement professional learning workshops in their educational space.

This professional learning experience is designed for elementary educators, counselors, instructional coaches, and site leaders to develop mathematicians through cultivating a rigorous, discourse-rich mathematics learning environment. Participants will explore teacher actions that are necessary to empower students to engage deeply in mathematics, communicate their ideas, and connect their thinking to others. This collaborative experience will engage participants in strategies that they can immediately implement to begin building rich discourse among students.

This professional learning experience is designed for secondary educators, counselors, instructional coaches, and site leaders to develop mathematicians through cultivating a rigorous, discourse-rich mathematics learning environment. Participants will explore teacher actions that are necessary to empower students to engage deeply in mathematics, communicate their ideas, and connect their thinking to others. This collaborative experience will engage participants in strategies that they can immediately implement to begin building rich discourse among students.

Presenters will provide a step-by-step look at how the most diverse middle and high schools in Oregon have strategically utilized the AVID College and Career Readiness System to strategically implement and reboot AVID post-pandemic. This session will provide participants with a strategic implementation cycle so the AVID College Readiness System can be systemically rebooted or implemented at sites to improve outcomes for all students. This presentation will share resources for implementing AVID Schoolwide, including teacher surveys and reflections, administrative observations and evaluations, and professional development plans.

Are you looking for impactful ways of engaging students and empowering their learning? Makerspaces might just be the answer, as they support the development of resourcefulness, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills among students. This interactive session will give participants an opportunity to immerse themselves in easy-to-implement makerspaces within their classroom and school as a tool to promote hands-on learning and foster creativity and innovation among students. Educators and administrators will walk away with resources and tools to help guide the immediate implementation of makerspaces.

This session will share a case study about an onboarding district and the events that occurred throughout their first year of implementation to ensure maximum success and impact for all sites, implementing or planning. Participants will learn about intentional interactions that led to district-wide planning, buy-in from sites and educators, and how AVID implementation aligns with existing district goals and initiatives.

In this session, participants will learn about one district’s journey to implement AVID schoolwide at the elementary level. This presentation will include roadblocks encountered along the path to implementation and how the campus used resources and innovative thinking with data to overcome barriers. Participants will evaluate where they are on their path to implementation with their three non-negotiables and leave with resources to catapult those select three to leverage student agency and outcomes.

While collaboration is a large part of what a school community provides, students need external community networking to move from practice to profession. The presenters’ partnership with the local rotary club arose from gap analysis, identifying roadblocks to effective community involvement. This partnership matches students with mentors in cohort-style groups; they receive career, academic, and life coaching. The school, business partnerships, and the community thrive. Former AVID scholars are empowered to return as mentors to foster student agency and opportunity knowledge in their younger peers. This session will give participants the tools to start their own academic mentorship program that can benefit all students and engage their communities.

This session will help participants investigate areas of need and help align the work of preparing students for college and career by creating connections for students and staff. Join presenters for collaboration to build collective educator agency by making intentional choices to enhance campus culture for all stakeholders. Participants do not want to miss this chance to elevate their campus cultures, and their students will thank them for it. This session is geared toward site leaders.

Desert Sands will share their experience of leveraging the implementation of AVID schoolwide student planners to effectively strengthen a districtwide personal learning cohort (PLC) process that aligns with district initiatives like Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS), social and emotional learning (SEL), Universal Design for Learning (UDL), and iReady. Starting with horizontal grade level common commitments with a common language encouraged systemic thinking and changed the culture on every site. Grade levels then shared artifacts to align vertical articulation and create systems to support all students to be successful in the mastery of organizing both time and materials. This schoolwide culture change is intensified using the CCI Site Team Goals to increase communication and the partnership of parents, students, educators, and administrators; the agenda is not just a box to check on the CCI, and it is a vehicle that changes the trajectory of all students. Agendas became the catalyst that sparked a culture of success in all elementary AVID sites and middle schools striving for AVID Schoolwide.

As a result of participating in this session, participants will gain an understanding of the 3 Tiers of Vocabulary, 6-Step Process for Vocabulary Instruction, as well as experience and engage in scaffolded vocabulary acquisition strategies. This session is intended for K–12 educators in all content areas.

Look into the growth of traditional and CTE dual credit courses in Goose Creek Consolidated Independent School District (GCCISD). GCCISD has seen an explosion in dual credit enrollment growth at over 400%. Learn how to leverage advanced academic programs to improve college and career access. Over a four-year period, GCCISD has experienced a 61% growth in college and career readiness as accessed by the state of Texas. This presentation will focus on student and faculty recruitment, strategic course offerings, using AVID as support for advanced academics and postsecondary goals, and a college partnership that has led to a successful growth model.

Get ready for a game-changing experience that will take participants’ teaching practices to new heights! Join presenters for a dynamic and engaging mini Edcamp session where they will uncover a treasure trove of ideas and resources to enhance participants’ teaching practices. Explore instructional strategies, technology tools, and resources that will elevate participants’ teaching. No matter the experience level, this session is packed with practical tips and strategies to help build participants’ professional networks, share their ideas, and grow as an educator. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to build a professional network and take teaching to the next level!

As leaders, we should focus our resources on actions that will impact students and ultimately “Move the Needle” on our campuses. This session will outline the presenters’ journey from compliance to collaboration through WICOR^® Walkabouts. Participants will reflect on current practices and determine how they can “open doors” on their campuses. Using the philosophy of “The Best PD is Next Door” will allow participants’ leadership to leverage the expertise and experience on their campuses to empower teachers and accelerate instruction.

There are five million English Learners (ELs) in schools today, and it is estimated that by 2025, ELs will make up 25% of public school students. This session introduces AVID Emerge™, an intentionally designed English language development resource differentiated by proficiency level for grades 6–12. AVID Emerge provides essential instructional routines that target the four language domains while focusing on developing student agency, building scholarly habits, and discovering college and career paths. Participants will explore the materials and experience portions of a lesson to deepen their understanding of how AVID Emerge can advance multilingual learners in language learning classrooms.

Attendees will gain an understanding of how pedagogical partnerships and student voice data can be used to inform the development of effective and relevant tools and strategies for promoting student success and fostering student belonging. They will also learn about the importance of forming diverse pedagogical partnerships when creating a relevant and comprehensive ‘playbook’ supporting students, particularly those from underrepresented backgrounds.

Description coming soon!

Seeing is believing, so let’s put on “rigor glasses” and examine strategies for elevating AVID elective courses to create alignment by utilizing best instructional practices. Participants will explore the key components of AVID’s instructional model and learn how to strategically align course content and delivery to ensure maximum student success. Emphasis will be placed on developing a deep understanding of AVID’s academic expectations and how to integrate them into curriculum design. By the end of this session, attendees will have a clear understanding of the tools and techniques necessary to refine AVID elective courses and support students in achieving their academic goals.

Insisting on Rigor is a critical part of the AVID College Readiness Framework and a cornerstone of the Instruction Domain. Presenters will present the ways that identifying and ensuring rigor in the AVID Elective helps students develop the necessary skills to be successful in the most challenging courses. AVID Electives, District Directors, and Administrators will leave with a better understanding of AVID’s definition of rigor and how to identify and coach it.

Ensuring all students regularly engage in appropriately rigorous instruction is a top priority for any campus that prioritizes college and career readiness. When educators insist on rigor and design academic experiences accordingly, students develop the skills needed for success in a global society. What exactly does rigorous teaching and learning look, sound, and feel like on a campus? In this interactive session, participants will explore ways to develop a common understanding of rigor with their staff and identify specific look-fors to ensure all students have the opportunity and access that prepares them for a future of possibility.

Roadtrip Nation helps students put career and college planning into the context of their own lives. Roadtrip Nation has partnered with AVID to help students align their passions with college and careers. This session will focus on how Roadtrip Nation’s self-discovery exercises are paired with real-world learning opportunities and aligned with AVID Elective Standards to help students map their interests and attributes to fulfilling future pathways.

Join presenters as they share how their advisory period transformed their instructional practices, WICORized their school, and infused AVID into their school’s culture. Presenters will share their journey from emerging to being an upcoming showcase school in this session. A number of resources and other innovative ideas will be shared to make AVID come alive in participants’ buildings. Participants will leave with the presenters’ links so they, too, can rock AVID schoolwide.

In this session, participants will learn how AVID’s suite of STEM programs and products support the Career and College Readiness Framework in this interactive presentation. Whatever role participants have in their school or district, they will learn how AVID’s STEM products support rigorous academic preparation, student agency, and opportunity knowledge, enabling them to close the opportunity gap for their students.

This session will focus on how AVID transformed a school from one elective class to an entire campus community that holds ALL students to the highest of expectations. This school has sustained a strong college-going culture after multiple changes and shifts, with AVID as an anchor for the past 25 years. By strategically aligning the work & building systems through stakeholder capacity/agency, AVID is now Schoolwide. Participants will leave with tips, resources, and ideas (connected to AVID’s College & Career Readiness Framework) to take back to their campus so that AVID is not just a program that just exists… it thrives.

Language supports, and collaborative structures will be merged in order to engage students and practice oracy within lessons. This session will focus on language supports proven to increase oracy for English learners and students in a dual language program. These are woven in by using them during AVID collaborative structures in ways that would benefit all students (K–12).

This session will provide an in-depth overview of AVID Elementary schoolwide implementation for participants who are planning to implement or are interested in implementing AVID Elementary. Participants will learn how to strategize and actuate AVID Elementary schoolwide structures and strategies that positively impact student achievement. Participants will follow the journey of one elementary school’s progression from commencement to becoming an AVID Showcase school. The intended audience is district directors, elementary principals and assistant principals, teachers, and instructional specialists.

This panel is comprised of superintendents with comprehensive AVID implementations within their district. This panel will respond to a variety of questions regarding the districts’ perspectives on AVID’s impact on their communities. The superintendents will impart insights into their journeys of successful implementations that elevate college and career readiness.

Attracting and retaining males of color has always been a problem for the AVID Program at Edison High School in Stockton, CA. The presenters had heard that an AVID Athlete program was a potential solution, and later they created the Edison AVID Scholar Athlete Program. Participants attending this session will learn how creating an AVID class for athletes can be a helpful solution for their AVID Program.

The AVID Systems outlined in the CCI can guide, support, and sustain schoolwide implementation through transitions and instability. Truman Middle School is a National Demonstration school that was able to sustain multiple changes, including areas of staff turnover. Truman was able to revalidate as a demonstration school in 2023 and maintain schoolwide implementation because of the established AVID systems, the guidance of the CCI, Secondary Site Team Months at Glance checklists, and the Guiding Questions by Domain. In this session, presenters will share how these tools lay the foundation for site teams and provide the structure and stability to ensure sustainable schoolwide implementation.

Join presenters for a fun and engaging NatCon23 session where participants will gain an understanding of how AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) students develop the skills, knowledge, and behaviors that are essential for college and career readiness. This session will explore the importance of building relationships, persisting through obstacles, and activating knowledge and skills. Participants will explore how student agency is foundational to a supportive classroom environment where all students can be successful. Participants will have the opportunity to collaborate with other educators and gain diverse perspectives through a gradual release of responsibility and a blended approach to learning. By the end of the session, participants will leave with practical resources to implement with their students.

Wouldn’t it be so easy if all educators had to do was deliver information? Then you throw students in the mix, each with their own history, experience, personality, and relationship to school, and it gets much more complicated. Instead of looking at WICOR^® strategies as just one more thing to do, in this session, participants will experience how to use WICOR as a lens for lesson design to transform instruction and develop instructional routines that increase engagement, create access to rigorous content, and accelerate learning. Participants are asked to bring their digital devices.

Join presenters for an eye-opening session on the game-changing potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education. Learn how AI is revolutionizing teaching and learning, empowering students and educators with innovative tools to foster creativity and enhance critical thinking skills. Discover the latest AI technologies and explore practical strategies for integrating AI into participants’ classrooms. Leave with strategies for preparing students and educators to be responsible users of AI technologies. Seize the opportunity to stay ahead of the curve, unlocking the full potential of AI in education. Be part of the change by shaping the future of learning with AI!

This session will journey through the connection between WICOR^® and high expectations for all students, with specific regard to teaching and learning outcomes in a diversity of classrooms within participants’ schoolwide Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS). Classrooms with neurodivergent students must have instruction that is intentional, well-designed, and engaging while continuing to meet the unique needs of each student.

In this session, for all AVID educators PreK–2, presenters will dive into AVID’s 4 A’s digital learning framework, a powerful tool that will supercharge teaching approaches. Participants will discover how to harness the power of AVID strategies by enhancing them with technology to make learning come alive in their classrooms. Participants will review the 4 A’s, explore the transformative instructional shifts that happen when they’re used, and make powerful connections to how the 4 A’s support AVID’s College and Career Readiness Framework. Transform the learning in their classroom with AVID’s 4 A’s.

This session will support educators in the use of the Foundations of Instruction Tool (FOI).  Presenters will examine the five components of the FOI: an appropriate environment, powerful relationships, learning outcomes, diagnostic teaching, and strategic lesson planning. Educators will observe and apply academic coaching practices to accelerate schoolwide expectations that all students listen, speak, read, and write like scholars. Educators will engage in accelerating academic language coaching through the use of the FOI and Academic Language Scripts. Intentional relationship-building will be modeled and practiced in order to allow participants to apply effective diagnostic teaching strategies schoolwide.

Discover how STEM Connections engages students in hands-on STEM lessons that promote problem-solving skills and college and career readiness. Participants will experience how STEM Connections provides a comprehensive review of AVID’s multidisciplinary approach to STEM by engaging in several differentiated STEM Connections lessons that utilize the design thinking process to support critical thinking and problem-solving.

This session will engage participants with Daniel Kahneman’s “Systems Thinking” from his book, Thinking, Fast, and Slow. The focus on identifying participants’ “Who” to define their “Why” will reflect in practice and procedures to enhance student advocacy and collective educator agency. Participants will reflect on current practices impeding the support and acceleration of collective educator agency due to automatic actions and reactions.

During the session, participants will learn how to WICORize a blended learning environment to differentiate instruction and increase student agency.  Presenters will explore how to design meaningful learning experiences that will foster a sense of ownership and maximize the success of every learner. WICOR^® strategies and resources will be introduced to help educators design and implement a blended learning environment that will transform teaching and learning communities.

Systematic schoolwide use of 1:1 technology in a digital teaching and learning environment at Deer Park High School allows their students to access knowledge while employing their educational agency, creating deep learning and practical application.  In this session, presenters will demonstrate how students use their devices (in this case, iPads) for multiple learning purposes, including, but not limited to, processed note-taking, collaboration, discourse, and inquiry.

In this session, AVID will partner with The Learning Accelerator, an organization working alongside educators across the nation to advance a research-informed vision for equitable teaching and learning that is personalized, mastery-based, and comprehensively developing to explore the potential benefits and challenges of introducing AI into schools. Presenters will discuss how generative AI technologies are being used in schools to enhance the learning experience and enable new forms of creativity in the classroom. This session will be of interest to educators and administrators who are interested in exploring the potential of AI to transform education.

This session will review the nature and scope of AVID and Code.org’s partnership in the states of ID, MT, OR, WA & WY, highlight existing curriculum, professional learning, and community engagement opportunities for educators the partnership offers in those states, and forecast a variety of future opportunities for educators through this collaboration. Participants will gain insight into how this partnership develops new value-add resources to better prepare them to bring their students trajectory-changing computer science learning opportunities.

Join presenters in their exploration of the journey functionality of the AVID Open Access website and its benefits for teachers. AVID Open Access is a free online resource platform that provides educators with high-quality materials and tools to support student success. The journey functionality offers a personalized learning experience for teachers by helping them develop professional learning resources that can be shared with their personal learning cohort (PLC).

This session will provide participants with sample journeys on timely topics in education and build personalized journeys together that can be shared with all session participants so that participants will leave with a library of resources for immediate use by their PLC.

Recent research indicates that students, particularly students who are neurodiverse, who learn about Computational Thinking in the context of STEM learning show improvement in executive functions. In this session, presenters will delve into Including Neurodiversity in Foundational and Applied Computational Thinking (INFACT), the innovative program developed by EdGE at TERC. INFACT aims to develop executive functions in students, such as self-regulation, problem-solving, and decision-making—critical for success in STEM fields and life. The session will explore the program’s impact on improving students’ computational thinking skills and how it fosters meaningful inclusion in STEM education, promoting diversity in the field.

At the exact moment when educators are grappling with the impacts of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the classroom, this session will equip participants with tools and strategies for embracing AI in their classrooms. AI is now a mainstream technology, and learners have a growing and unmet need for foundational and technical AI education. During this session, participants will develop a roadmap for AI for today and tomorrow.

This conference session is designed to bring educators, corporate partners, and volunteers together to share best practices and experiences to encourage college and career readiness and success. The session will provide attendees with the opportunity to learn from and collaborate with experts from a wide range of backgrounds, including tech industry leaders, educators, and volunteers.

As AVID begins a new partnership with Microsoft TEALS as a national partner, participants will receive an overview of this unique partnership model with AVID. This session aims to provide a complete overview of the Microsoft TEALS program, including its benefits, challenges, and successes. The presenter will explore why schools should apply to this program, what they can expect from the program, and how they can collaborate with the tech industry to expand computer science education.