Research: Texas Colleges

Part of the focus of AVID is College Awareness. In order to expose the AVID students to the many colleges here in Texas, the 8th grade students each created a PowerPoint presentation of a particular school. A "lottery" style selection process was used to ensure a variety of schools were chosen. Students were given five days to research their school and put together their presentation. As a part of this process each student will write a letter to their chosen school requesting information. Over the coming weeks, each student will present their slide show to the class.

MISD College Week

College Week!

All the hard work of planning for MISD College Week finally paid off the week before Spring Break. With the help of the students and faculty the AVID class was able to raise over $1000 for our scholarship fund. This money will be used to help send a senior from West Mesquite HS to college next year. Over 100 students submitted essays for the College Week Essay contest and 8th grader Rory Duran won a UT football jersey for submitting the most outstanding entry.

Some of the 2nd period AVID students show off their college shirts on Friday.

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AVID and ICT students created banners and posters to decorate the hallways. Each teacher's college(s) were displayed outside the cafeteria.

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A BIG thanks goes to all the teachers who participated in Spirit Day by either wearing their cap and gown or dressing as a college mascot. An extra hearty thanks goes to Coach Shreiner for being the Texas A&M Corpus Christie Islander and Coach Westphal for being the SFA Lumberjack.

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College Students visit AVID

February 3, 2010 12:41 PM

by Rob Temple

College Students visit AVID

Recently two former A.C. New and West Mesquite students visited the 8th grade AVID classes to talk about the transitions from middle school to high school to college. Since the majority of AVID students are the first in their families to attend college, many do not have a clear picture of the academic expectations of not only college but also advanced high school courses. Maggie Paige and Alyssa Jones could speak from direct experience because they had already traveled the paths that the current AVID students will be heading down soon. Maggie is in her first year at The University of North Texas while Alyssa is a freshman at Texas Women's University (which confused some that it's NOT an all-girls school).

Some of the things that the pair highlighted as differences between middle school and high school were:

• higher expectations from teachers including fewer requests for late assignments
• a greater emphasis on self-determination
• classes with older and more mature students
• a faster pace in a bigger place which can lead to a feeling of being "lost" or "just trying to stay afloat"

A few comments about the differences between high school and college were:

• success is completely reliant upon individual determination
• professors expect you to have/do work without reminding you
• so much more freedom it can be tough to adjust
• living on your own can be so fun but takes a lot of responsibility

College Road Trip

November 17, 2009 6:27 PM

by Rob Temple

College Road Trip!

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November 13th marked the 8th Grade AVID group's first college field trip. At the beginning of the school day buses were loaded and the AVID classes headed to Texas A&M University - Commerce, a school of about 9000 students just over an hour's drive from our school.

In order to get a feel for campus, students were broken into 5 groups and participated in a campus-wide scavenger hunt. For over an hour groups could be seen running (some more than others) from building to building gathering clues.

After a quick lunch, students were treated to a presentation by the University Admissions staff and several Student Ambassadors shared about their reasons for choosing TAMU-C and their experiences of being a TAMU-C student.

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