When Windom Area High School chose to add an AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) class for freshmen, and now sophomores, to its course offerings, the hope was that it would help students learn key organizational and study skills that they would use throughout the rest of high school and into college.
While it certainly has done that, it’s also given students another lesson — doing something for others.
A component at every level of the national AVID curriculum is for the class to do a community service project. While the project is recommended, it isn’t required. When the district had to move to distance learning for six weeks due to a pandemic surge in November, class instructor Erin Elder could have said it was just too problematic to make it happen.
Instead, he considered it an essential part of the course.
And when he pitched the idea of a community service project to the class, they were enthused.
“It took us a couple days to narrow it down to what we wanted to do, what was feasible to do,” Elder said Friday morning. “It started out as one huge brainstorming session on what were all the possible things we could do to help out. Then it got narrowed down to sending care packages to Minnesota soldiers overseas.”
For more on the community service project, see the story in the March 3 issue of the Cottonwood County Citizen, on newsstands today.
