VISTA HIGH SCHOOL’S AVID PROGRAM PREPARES STUDENTS FOR SUCCESS IN COLLEGE & CAREER
Students gain powerful life and learning skills in the opt-in class
Vista High School’s AVID program is a college prep initiative offered to students, from freshman year through senior year.
AVID stands for ‘Advancement Via Individual Determination’ and the program focuses on training high schoolers for college and career by teaching a wide range of life and educational skills, including time management, study tools, and organizational techniques.
AVID is taught at Vista High School by Emilie Vancelette, Cindy Brooks, Andres Esquibel, Jim Thoen, and Blaze Rogers. Vancelette describes the program as supporting “that intrinsic desire to achieve or to work as hard as you can possibly can in order to find success.”
Rogers is in his first year of teaching AVID. “Teaching it has been a breath of fresh air,” he says. “The kids in AVID classes are all extremely motivated. They all have a goal to attend college and succeed in their academics so it’s been really nice to help them get to their goals.”
Equipping First-Generation College-Bound Students
The program has a particular emphasis on preparing first-generation college-bound students. Gabriella Hernandez, a senior at VHS is one such student and has been taking AVID classes in all of her four years at VHS.
“In class, we learn all these skills that ultimately help you be successful as a student and help you develop traits to be a better person,” explains Gabriella. “Being a first-generational student, I feel like they are skills I learn in the classroom but that ultimately help me be successful in every aspect of my life.”
Hernandez calls her teacher, Miss Vancelette, ‘a really great mentor’. “She’s very outgoing so I feel like I have a safe space to go and talk about anything. She’s always been super supportive throughout my college application process, which was really stressful, and she’s my go-to teacher for any updates. I’m really grateful for her.”
Fellow senior, Nick Taylor, started the AVID program as a junior. “The class has been really helpful for me personally because I’m involved with a lot of clubs and activities on campus,” he says. “So having these skills of learning how to reflect and learning how to organize and manage my time is really helpful, especially as I’m going to college in three months.”
Fostering Student Collaboration & Leadership
Taylor describes how AVID classes differ from traditional ones: “Unlike other classes, in AVID we’re interconnected with other grade levels and classes at all levels.”
He says this is particularly effective at the weekly Thursday tutorials, during which students have the opportunity to tutor their peers and can either decide to lead the tutorials or be included in them.
“When we all get together, it’s a great time for seniors and upperclassmen to help underclassmen with homework and classes they’ve taken. AVID is about academic excellence so it’s super beneficial for freshmen to seniors.”
Taylor says Vancelette gets to be more focused on individual students rather than the class as a whole thanks to the program’s structure. “It feels a lot more personal and I really like that because we all have so much going on.
“AVID classes give us a time where we can focus on what we have to do and plan our week.” Vancelette teaches students many methods of organization with frequent planner checks to ensure they are able to stick to their schedules. “It helps me keep myself intact,” laughs Taylor.
He adds that having Vancelette for two classes per week during one year “is very helpful because it has built that relationship quicker because I see her so much each week. She can help me even more in my AVID class as a result because if she sees I’m struggling, she knows methods that can help me specifically.”
Benefitting From Brand-New Building S
In 2024 the AVID classes were among the first to meet in Vista High’s brand-new Building S, which features technology-rich classrooms and flex space that fosters greater collaboration.
It’s a welcome location change for students including senior Katie-Grace Marley, who joined the AVID program as a junior.
“What drew me to AVID was the college prep idea but what kept me in it was the TOK (Theory of Knowledge) aspect of it. TOK really expands my understanding of what it means to be a student and gives me more knowledge about what I’m learning by using tools to dig deeper, like perspective, truth, and certainty. It’s been really eye-opening.”
Marley says she can take that knowledge into all classes, proving how AVID and Theory of Knowledge impact students’ education as a whole by guiding them on how to process and approach any challenges. And it all starts first thing.
“Miss Vancelette has us start our day with daily agenda with affirmations like, ‘I’m a good student, I can do this, I can make it through this week’, and that really helps set the tone,” says Marley. “It also helps with all the stressful deadlines as a senior. The reminders that ‘I can do this’, and that I’m being supported is really helpful. It sets me up for success.”
Videos about the program are available here: