Advisory Module

I recognized my school in Brown's piece on advisories: "Unfortunately, over time many advisories became little more than a place for teachers to take attendance, pass on school announcements, and give the students a few minutes for study and completing homework -- just like the old, traditional homeroom. In most cases, such situations are due to not having identified clear goals and sufficiently planned ways to achieve those goals." That, in a nutshell, seems to be what happened at Woodstock. Having surmounted what is probably the biggest obstacle for some schools -- time -- our advisories have succumbed to a lack of direction. Advisories in my school are used for any number of things, few of which relate to meeting the social and emotional needs of adolescent learners. In fact, Woodstock made headlines this spring by using some advisory time to admonish girls to adhere to our rather outdated dress code while their male counterparts played games.

So it seems the first "action step" in revamping our advisory program is to decide what it is we want to achieve with it. Brown lists a lot of possible goals, far too many, I think, to achieve in 5 25-minute blocks a week. Of the ones he listed, the ones that appeal to me the most would be:

1) Ensuring that every student is well known by at least one adult;

2) Ensuring that every student feels like a valued member of a small team

3) Assisting in the social and emotional development of young adolescents

But identifying goals will probably be the easy part. Much harder, I think, is to design a curriculum or possible activities that teachers can use to achieve those goals. And this is where I get a bit lost. The module contained several links to sites with get-to-know you activities, but those can only go so far. At a certain point, an advisory has to go beyond mere team building if they are going to truly meet students' social and emotional needs. In his podcast, Wellbacher mentioned how amazed he was with students' willingness to open up about themselves in advisory.  That's the kind of advisory I want! But how do you achieve? How do you get kids to open up to you? How do you make the transition between having fun and building a team and talking about serious matters? I've never been able to make that shift, and I don't really know where to turn for help.