Advisory Revisited

This year the school has decided to add a new class called advisory. In the beginning and middle of the year it was on white days for thirty-five minutes. The school has already changed advisory to Fridays for a longer period of time. Advisory is now fifty minutes. The school changed advisory to Fridays to give the advisors more time with the students, and to allow the advisors and students to do more. 7th grade math teacher Mrs. McCarthy, says that having it every white day was overwhelming for her, and it was also taking away a lot of academic time. She prefers having advisory on Fridays. Not everyone likes the new change though.

7th graders Paige Bois and Sydney Wilson, both have different opinions. Paige Bois likes having advisory on white days because they were there for a shorter amount of time, and they had the class more often. Sydney Wilson likes having advisory on Friday, but she does enjoy having a shorter advisory class. 6th grade math teacher Ms. Adams likes having advisory on Fridays. She does wish that she could see her advisory students more often though.

Ms. Adams and Mrs. McCarthy both enjoy being an advisor. Mrs. McCarthy says that being an advisor has given her the chance to step out of her teacher role, and enjoy the accompany of children. Mrs. McCarthy and all the other advisors were given a list filled with topics. All advisors were supposed to fill in each topic. This decides what the teachers and students will be doing. Some of the topics were team building, academic support, physical activity, and self awareness. Ms. Adams allowed her students to help her pick the activities they would be doing except for academic support. Ms. Adams’ advisory group has gotten the chance to help out younger kids from the elementary school with their work. The teacher said it was a nice way to see her students helping younger people. Mrs. McCarthy picked what the students would be doing. She said that she choose the activities because she felt like there was not enough time given to choose with her class. Some of the things they will be doing are taking a outdoor bike ride and some minute to win it games.

Ms. Adams likes to run the community service topic. She likes to run this because she gets to see 8th graders as role models to the younger students. Ms. Adams says her 8th grade advisory students love to help others. Mrs. McCarthy enjoys running the team building topic. She enjoys teaching this because it helps the students work together more.

Due to the change in advisory some students wish they could decide when advisory would be. 7th grader, Molly Sawyer, likes advisory on Fridays but wishes that the class was in the afternoon. She said that this would help kids get their energy out. Sydney Wilson would like advisory to be for thirty minutes. She would also like it more if it was everyone's 1st period. Paige Bois has a different opinion. She wants it to be on white days for thirty minutes. She enjoys having it like we did in the beginning of the year.

Molly Sawyer thinks that advisory should focus more on meeting new people and making new friends. She still hasn't got to know every person in her advisory. Some advisories have just been doing fun activities like watching movies, going outside, and playing board games. Both Ms. Adams and Mrs. McCarthy hope that students actually get something out of going to the class.

Changing advisory to Fridays has had some positive feedback and negative feedback. Some want it back to white days, and others love having it on Fridays. Overall though, most kids do enjoy the class and having a fun break from the exhausting week.