Why I built
Avid Thinking.

Dear student, parent, teacher, and person still trying,

I grew up with very little in a trailer home in rural South Texas. I was the first in my family to attend college. My parents could not always show me how to solve an algebra problem or study for a spelling test, but they never left me alone with the problem. They helped me find somebody who knew. In fifth grade, I learned to call classmates’ parents and ask for help with homework. My parents drove me where I needed to go, even to Walmart at three in the morning when I had forgotten tape for a poster board. They taught me that education has always taken a village.

My father, Martin Rios, worked three jobs and mowed lawns so I could attend a small private school from first through eighth grade, and that sacrifice laid the foundation for everything that followed. My younger brother believed in me even when I did not believe in myself. My family could not teach me every subject, but they taught me that it is okay to be great, that every person has something to offer, and that a support system can make the impossible feel possible.

I did not get the glasses I needed until seventh grade. Before then, I often struggled to see even from the front of the classroom. I know what it feels like to be capable and still be unable to access what everyone assumes is visible. I also know what it means when a teacher notices, cares, changes the explanation, and gives a child another way in.

During eleventh and twelfth grade, I independently taught myself much of the advanced coursework I wanted. When my school could not offer every course or testing opportunity, I fought for the chance to sit for AP exams. I was not fighting for a guaranteed result. I was fighting for the right to try, the right to fail honestly, and the right to discover what I could become.

In 2007, I was recognized through Duke TIP. In 2012, I graduated as valedictorian of Brazosport High School. I began tutoring mathematics at Brazosport College in 2011 while I was still a high school student, and later studied at Stanford as a member of its inaugural Leland Scholars cohort. None of those milestones erased where I came from. They made the people who helped me get there even more visible.

In my youth, I experienced homelessness before finding stable housing. I have made decisions that put family, safety, and values ahead of the cleaner story people sometimes expect. That uncertainty changed the way I listen when a family says that school is not the only hard thing happening. A missing assignment may sit beside a housing problem, a health problem, a language barrier, a disability, a job schedule, or a child who has stopped believing adults will understand.

I was diagnosed with ADHD and OCD after my time at Stanford. The diagnoses did not change my ability. They gave me language for obstacles I had already spent years learning to navigate. They made me more determined to build explanations around the learner instead of demanding that every learner fit one explanation. I have studied American Sign Language, Spanish, Greek, and Latin, and each language has strengthened my belief that literacy is larger than decoding a page: it is access to knowledge, systems, people, and possibility.

“They can steal your shoes and your shirt, but your education is yours. They can never steal that from you.” Bertha Rios, my mother

Avid Thinking exists to protect that chance: to ask the question, rebuild the foundation, find another explanation, and keep going. We use tutoring, printed books, projects, visual explanations, technology, field learning, and carefully coordinated support because no single doorway works for every student.

We offer scholarship support based on financial need when funding permits, and we take every family’s story seriously. We cannot promise that every path will be easy or that every outcome will arrive on schedule. I can promise that we will take the student seriously, search honestly for the next workable step, and treat the opportunity to learn as something worth protecting.

If you are reading this while worried about a child, or while wondering whether you are already too far behind, please remember that asking for help is not surrender. It is one of the bravest forms of trying. Life is short. Opportunities can be short. When a door opens, we help each other reach it.