An avid approach to teaching

By Anne McDermott
CNN

SAN DIEGO, California (CNN) -- Mary Catherine Swanson has a succinct philosophy regarding education: "It's really very simple. Hard work makes people smart," she said.

Swanson should know. She has become something of a cult figure among teachers as well as some of her former students, many of whom have gone on to high-powered careers.

"I have students who have now developed intersector ballistic missile systems, students who have launched space shuttles with NASA, students who are CFOs of major corporations, who are doctors, who are teachers," Swanson said.

The administrator of an education reform program in San Diego, Swanson brings more than two decades of classroom experience to her role. In fact, the program that she directs, known as AVID -- for Advancement Via Individual Determination -- is one that she herself developed while teaching at a San Diego high school in the late 1970s.

At that time, the school's student body was changing from one that was primarily white to one made up mostly of low-income minorities. Swanson worried that many low-income children with so-so grades would wind up stereotyped as non-college material. Although there were programs for failing students and ones for high achievers, the program Swanson created targets those who fall in between, whether white or a minority.

AVID was so successful at spurring mediocre students to perform better that it has expanded from its 1980 start with 32 students in a single school into a program reaching more than 1,000 schools in 16 states.

"We're looking for students that I would describe as those who sit in the backs of classrooms, do the minimum to get through school, and when they're gone, nobody even remembers their name," Swanson said.

During daily AVID classes, these students learn to take notes and study so that they can move into advanced classes. To help them are AVID tutors. Nowadays, many of these tutors are AVID graduates themselves.

"Those of us who are born into educated families have dinner-table conversations about how to get along in school," Swanson explained. "So let's say we've gotten a real low grade on an exam. How does an educated parent tell the child to handle that? They say, 'Go to the teacher and say, "I'd like to do better. Could you help me understand what I could do?" ' That works very well. The student who comes from a family that doesn't understand school very well says, 'That teacher doesn't like me, the test wasn't fair, it's not my fault I got that low grade.' And there's no way to get out of that kind of situation.

"So what AVID does is not only prepare students as to how to be good students, but it teaches them how to 'do' school," she said.

Maximo Escobeda, a graphic designer with two daughters, is one example of someone who was helped by AVID.

He and his parents immigrated to the United States from Mexico when Escobeda was a child, in the hopes that he and his seven brothers could get a better education. But the Spanish-speaking youngsters were loaded up with less challenging subjects such as shop and gym classes.

"There was a feeling that I didn't quite belong," Escobeda recalled.

But his fortunes changed when he was recruited into the AVID program. By the time he was a senior, Escobeda had moved into an honors English class.

"I probably got a B or a C, but I was more satisfied with the lower grade in a really tough class than I would have been with a really high grade in an easy class," he said.

Swanson said she believes that the United States cannot afford to overlook such students and the reservoir of ability that could be tapped within them.