Program Helps Kids Find Their Way Into College

Laura Luszcz always knew she wanted to go to college, but after earning average grades in junior high, she wasn’t sure she would get accepted.

Now the freshman at Esperanza High School in Anaheim has drawn a road map and started down that path, preparing for classes like calculus in her senior year and, eventually, for higher education.

“I thought it would be different. I thought there would be more work,” said Luszcz, 14, of Yorba Linda.

Luszcz is one of 25 students in a pilot program at Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District that is aimed at getting students with C grades to improve their averages and get into college.

The program, called Advancement Via Individual Determination, or AVID, first came to Orange County five years ago when Loara High School in the Anaheim Union High School District picked it up from the San Diego schools. Now, 10 high schools throughout Orange County offer the program.

“I get to follow the students and see them grow and mature,” said Sue Balas, an AVID teacher at Loara. “It’s really neat to see them turn themselves around. They come into ninth grade as little kids and when they leave they’re going off to college.”

AVID combines study and writing skills, group work, tutoring and field trips to colleges to help students improve their scholastic performance, said Esperanza’s AVID teacher, Teri Bailey.

Those in the program are considered under-represented on college campuses, Bailey said, because of their ethnic or economic backgrounds or because they would be first-generation college students.

Students are encouraged to enroll in a rigorous academic curriculum, like advanced math and science, and must go to summer school to complete their AVID requirements, she said. They also are required to take notes in every class and have them checked for organization and content each week.

Balas’ son, Tommy, 14, who is in Bailey’s AVID class, said the note-taking helps him study and get on his teacher’s good side.

“Teachers really notice it because usually nobody’s really taking notes but us,” he said.

In Bailey’s class, students spend two classes a week working on core subjects with tutors, who are either college students or high school seniors headed to college. Small-group tutoring is a key part of the program.

“We’re just trying to bring out the potential a lot of them don’t realize they have yet,” said tutor Brian Seguin, 27, who is working on his teaching credentials at Cal State Fullerton.

After one semester, Bailey’s class, which she said is more like a family now, has done better than she had hoped--22 students are carrying a B average or better and most of them are in college-prep classes.

Bailey’s group will meet once a day until they graduate. She will begin this spring to recruit students for next year at Bernardo-Yorba Junior High.

“I tell them that the dream of going to college has to be your own, not your parents’,” she said. “I say, ‘I’ll show you how to get there, but you have do it and it’s not easy.”’