Central Fla. kids get their first taste of college life

Prior to seventh grade, Leticia Soriano didn't think she had the opportunity to go to college.

"I thought, ‘I'm not going to get to go to college. I'm going to probably finish high school, but that's it,' " said the eighth-grade Yearling Middle School student.

After a visit to UCF on March 15, which was set up by UCF Business Services, Soriano and close to 60 of her schoolmates were more confident in their chances of going to college.

The nearly 60 seventh and eighth graders from the Okeechobee County school were able to visit through being a part of their school's Advancement Via Individual Determination. AVID is an "elementary through post-secondary college readiness system that is designed to increase school-wide learning and performance. Although AVID serves all students, it focuses on the least served students in the academic middle."

"Through a rigorous curriculum, we want to put middle-school children on a college path," said seventh-grade AVID teacher Andrea Mitchum. "What we look for are kids that are at an economic disadvantage. They're usually middle-of-the-road kids, they make very decent grades, usually neither of the parents went to college."

Mitchum also said that most of the students have siblings, so being in a program designed to ready them for college will encourage their siblings as well.

In Okeechobee, the AVID program starts at a seventh-grade level; schools in other places sometimes start the program in elementary school.

"The dream is to have the seventh-grade students go all the way through the twelfth grade and then on to college," Mitchum said. "They all have a drive to go to college, which I'd say 95 percent of them when they were in sixth grade didn't even think about it."

Scott Eberle, the retail coordinator at Business Services, remembers having that same mentality at that age since his family was low income.

"Talking to me back in middle school, I don't think I would've bet a dollar that I would get my master's," Eberle said.

Eberle has served as Okeechobee's link to UCF, a relationship that developed two years ago when Yearling teacher Donna Garcia, who taught at Osceola High at the time, contacted the Business Services director about visiting her school to speak to the AVID students.

"We went down there with some merchandise and to talk to them … and then I heard that story that a lot of them hadn't been out of Okeechobee," Eberle said. "They don't even know what college is about. They just hear or read about it."

When Eberle was told during one of his visits to the county that many of the students hadn't even seen Lake Okeechobee, he relayed the story to the Business Services director, who then said that they should bring the students up for a visit.

Tuesday's visit was the first time they brought a group of AVID students to the campus.

"You can tell them, but it's much better to show them," Eberle said. "They were like kids on Christmas morning here. They were just amazed at every little thing."

Business Services paid for the buses' fuel and worked with UCF Dining Services to get each of the students a free meal. The O-Team, or Orientation Team, helped give the students a tour of campus, which included a visit to the Recreation and Wellness Center.

"I heard the biggest roar at the Rec and Wellness Center," Eberle said.

After leaving the Rec and Wellness Center, the students witnessed a UCF police officer pull someone over at the nearby traffic light.

Eberle said the students were impressed that UCF had its own police force.

"It's like a mini city here," Soriano said. "I like it."

The group's tour of UCF came to a close in the Arena where they were given goodie bags that included T-shirts, school supplies and supplemental materials with information about the school.

"[The teachers] said a lot of [the students] want to go here, so that'll be neat," said Eberle, who hopes to make the visit a tradition.

Eberle said that even if the kids don't choose UCF, he just hopes they go to college.