Helping Students Become College and Career Ready

Sometimes, when you combine two great things, they both end up greater than before. And what better example of this than Xello and AVID? AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination), a comprehensive initiative that helps students become college and career ready, is in around 8,000 schools in nearly every U.S. state and in Canada and Australia, serving more than two million students. And Xello’s new AVID elective standards correlation guide makes it easy to see how Xello aligns with and complements AVID schools and districts, making both programs more impactful.

AVID focuses on closing the opportunity gap by helping students become college- and career-ready, providing scaffolded support for staff in facilitating an inquiry-based, student-centric experience for their learners.

AVID helps children develop the academic habits they will need to be successful in school, in an age-appropriate and challenging way, and does so according to its framework. This framework consists of four domains: instruction, systems, leadership, and culture. Students are at the top of this framework because everything in AVID revolves around the student. Teachers are at the bottom because their role is to insist on rigor, break down barriers, align work, and advocate for students.

AVID Elective courses – available for grades 6-12 – in addition to doing all of the above, provide students one period a day to receive the additional academic, social, and emotional support to help them succeed in their other classes with an eye on building future success.

When it comes to knowledge about careers, young children are often limited to what their parents, guardians, and others close to them share. By engaging with Xello, K-5 students learn about careers they otherwise wouldn’t know exist.

In grades 6-12, Xello then helps them envision where they fit, and how to work towards that future.

One way that Xello aligns to and complements the AVID framework for its elective courses is by helping students identify careers that align with their interests through assessments like Matchmaker, which helps satisfy the Advancing College Preparedness subset of the AVID standards.

“We backwards map and begin with the end in mind,” Anthony Cook, a Xello training specialist and former Florida high school counselor, says. “Once a student can answer questions like, what problem do you want to solve, what would get you excited to get out of bed every day, we begin to leverage the pieces within Xello, and ask ourselves what’s appropriate.”

Roundtable attendees also noted they use Xello in the AVID classroom for career exploration and career matching. Students can do this in Explore, which allows them to browse job descriptions, core tasks, salary information, education and training requirements, and more, meeting the Building Career Preparedness AVID subset. And lessons like Exploring Career Factors take it a step further by guiding students as they identify career factors that are important to them in determining future career choices.

Because AVID prioritizes future-readiness for its students by way of goal-setting and academic plans, tools to create these are the key to success. Whatever the pathway (college, career, military, etc.), students can create plans in Xello, as well as prepare for future careers in lessons like Jobs and Employers and custom assignments like Building Career Connections.

Xello helps AVID schools get the most out of the program. Mary Anne Send, the AVID District Coordinator and Guidance, Counseling and College Readiness Coordinator for the Irving, Texas Independent School District, noted that her district is in the early stages of aligning her AVID program with Xello.

“Our AVID portfolios are extremely important for us,” she says, “as they ensure that we’re being certified and doing what needs to be done for our AVID elective students.” When Send learned that Xello could help with the AVID portfolio with resources like the My Portfolios activity lesson plan, she was thrilled.

“Every time I talk with someone from Xello, they’re like, ‘Did you see this?’ And I’m jumping in thinking, oh, that reminds me of this AVID lesson. And this reminds me that we have to do this with the AVID portfolio.”

As someone who describes herself as a “systems girl,” Send is “super excited” to help her teachers roll out Xello so they can “connect it with what has to happen in the AVID elective class” and to work smarter, not harder.

“Thinking about Xello in the framework within AVID, there are pieces within Xello that you can leverage so you’re not going to have to go search to find supplementary classroom resources,” Cook notes. “All lessons have additional supplementary activities that you can use to deepen that learning for students and really lean on those opportunity knowledge gaps.”

Cook shared the enthusiasm he’s seen with elementary students. In one example, a teacher announced the class would stop the project they were working on and instead work on Xello and the students reacted with cheers.

For AVID teachers using Xello, it’s not just another box to check. “Teachers are really excited because Xello isn’t an extra thing for them to do. It doesn’t supplant. It extends student learning.” Bogaenko emphasizes.

Schools can start small and use Xello as it aligns with the AVID elective standards. Send advises educators to backwards map. “Before you consider what to do, look at your plate and determine what will feed everything else that you have to do. What is the thing that’s going to drive your systems, leadership, instruction, and culture and go from there.”

Cook agrees that schools should go slowly in implementation and analyze the landscape before hopping in. Once schools consider their framework, they can find something that helps them support that framework. He encourages schools to pick one thing and become great at it before moving on to the next thing. “When you think of the comprehensive rollout of that within AVID, it’s okay to say, listen, we’re going to really hone in on this piece in Xello.”

Not only does Xello complement AVID, it helps schools meet specific AVID elective standards, which makes it even easier to get other educators and district staff on board.

If you’d like more information on how to use Xello within an AVID curriculum visit Xello Support.

Not yet a Xello client? Contact us today and we’ll discuss how to align your AVID standards to our college & career readiness program. .