What is a course that will help you significantly throughout your high school years and that will prepare you for your future? What is a course that informs you about beneficial notes and studying tactics? What is a course unlike any other? This is AVID (Advancement via Individual Determination)! This is a class available to 9th graders at ERHS. I am a member of the AVID family and will share what the class is all about including the different units, service projects and field trips. 

So, what exactly do we learn in this course? In AVID, we learn about different note-taking strategies, part-time jobs, how to write a resume, ways to prepare for college, successful studying techniques, scholarships and student loans. Along with this, the full year course encourages students to begin thinking about their future plans and what their road to success will look like. The brains behind the AVID operation is Ms. Isik.  She teaches us all about the information above and guides us through many projects that deepen our understanding. An example of this would be “Ish-mas”. This is a holiday Ms. Isik created.  Through this project, AVID students are able to better understand holidays celebrated around the world. To celebrate this holiday, we were tasked with researching and developing a slide show about a variety of unique holidays. On “Ish-mas” the groups share research and foods that represent assigned holidays. A few other interesting projects include writing resumes, drawing our road to success, and the “College Exploration Project” in which we research one school we may be interested in.

Another large part of the class is building relational capacity, which means building relationships with your peers. In order to bond closer, we participate in team-building activities on Fridays. We call this “Fun-Friday.” This is a time when we take a break from improving our academic skills and focus on building social and collaborative skills. 

This is not all we do in AVID. In fact, the AVID family participates in many different service projects to better our community. In the beginning of the school year, we learned about what it means to be food insecure and how people all around the world are working to solve this issue. In fact, the AVID class hosted a Thanksgiving Food drive to help feed the food insecure during the holiday season. In total, we collected 85 full meals! Also, the AVID family has been arranging a community garden. This means that soon there will be fresh fruits and vegetables available to those in East Rockaway. Even more recently, the AVID class took to Citi-Field to view a bullying presentation put on by the NY Mets.  Afterwards, we stayed to cheer on the Mets and had a fun day at the ballpark!

AVID is a great course! I highly recommend it to anyone who may be unsure of the classes they want to take in 9th grade. Not only does the course prepare us for the future and help benefit our community, but I can almost guarantee that you will have fun along the way. You will grow closer with the AVID family, learn useful tips, and make many memories along the way. According to Ms. Isik, “This is a class that provides students with limitless opportunities. Our slogan is  ‘We are Limitless’ because there is no limit to what they, as students, can achieve!”