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Today's guest blogger is Erin Westgate, a social psychologist and assistant professor of psychology at the University of Florida. You can follow her on Twitter @ErinWestgate. How do I get kids to pay attention in class?
When I was in 5th grade, I competed fiercely with my classmate Travis. Not to win multiplication races or come out on top in spelling. Instead, we'd ignore our teacher to focus on our real passion: designing ever-more-elaborate plans for the perfect mousetrap.

We were far from the only bored students finding ways to occupy time in ways our teachers didn't always appreciate. School can be a particularly boring place for students. For instance, middle schoolers report being significantly more bored at school (32 percent) than they are at home (23 percent). Such feelings can trap students; bored students not only do worse, but performing poorly may lead students to feel even more bored down the road!

When we see "bad" behavior, it's tempting to blame the person. But bored students aren't bad students. Almost 80 percent of boredom is due to the situations we find ourselves in, not to who we are as individuals. Boredom alerts us that what we're doing doesn't feel meaningful or that we're having trouble paying attention. And it does the same for our students.

In small doses, boredom is a healthy warning that something is off in our environment, in the same way that pain alerts us that something is wrong with our bodies. The challenge for educators isn't fixing boredom; it's preventing it in the first place. Here are some ways to fend off boredom while teaching:

Dial in on difficulty. If activities are either too hard or too easy, students may struggle to pay attention. While it may seem obvious that easy things can be boring, so can overly difficult challenges. A student who proclaims, "I'm bored" may actually be struggling. Scaffolding difficult concepts and providing individualized assignments help students learn to calibrate.

Make it meaningful. Even when appropriately challenged, students may feel bored if they don't care. Meaning is subjective; there's no right or wrong. Rather, it comes from feeling that what you're doing is valuable, makes sense, and has a purpose. Research shows that helping students draw connections between class materials and their own personal goals, for instance, can boost interest and performance.

Gamify lessons. Many fun teaching strategies reframe activities to make them more meaningful, more challenging, or both (e.g., turning review sessions into a "game," adding time limits to "race" against). And keep in mind, we all have trouble paying attention when we're hungry, tired, or preoccupied with pressing matters.

Boredom in the classroom-or anywhere-stems from a lack of meaning and attention. Rather than dismissing it or looking for easy fixes, we can use student boredom as helpful feedback for what is (and isn't) working in our classes.

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What Students Truly Mean When They Say They're Bored (And What to Do About It) (Opinion)

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Today's guest blogger is Erin Westgate, a social psychologist and assistant professor of psychology at the University of Florida. You can follow her on Twitter @ErinWestgate. How do I get kids to pay attention in class? When I was in 5th grade, I competed fiercely with my classmate Travis.

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and https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/stress-coping/cope-with-stress/index.html

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In their article "Learning Disabilities in the United States: Advocacy, Science, and the Future of the Field", Louisa Cook Moats and G. Reid Lyon state that "no disease or significant health problem in this country is given much attention until political forces are motivated by parents, patients, or victims expressing their very real and heartfelt concerns about their quality of life" (Journal of Learning Disabilities, May 1993). They offered a perspective on the distinguishing characteristics in the field of learning disabilities in the United States including five reasons why such strong advocacy and legal safeguards was needed for individuals with learning disabilities in the United States:

1. Although American educational policies reflect the intent to accommodate individual differences, classroom groupings are diverse, and most curriculum and teaching in graded classrooms are aimed at the common factors among those groupings.

2. In the United States, the responsibility of schools is to provide equality of opportunity, not equality of condition in educational experiences.

3. We typically finance our schools through local property taxes, and there are tremendous inequities in per-pupil expenditures from district to district.

4. Education reform movements in this country have not focused on public responsibility for educating all students.

5. Social, medical, and educational services to children in this country have never been a national priority, as they are in many other industrialized nations.

We want to hear from you! Please complete the short survey via the button below to let us know how you think the reasons Moats and Lyon shared in their article align with the need for advocacy for individuals with learning disabilities today.

LD Today

Research has helped us come a long way since 1968. We now know that 1 in 5 individuals in the United States have learning and attention issues. LDA's mission is to create opportunities for success for all individuals affected by learning disabilities through support, education, and advocacy. We monitor and disseminate research findings and are committed to advocating for and protecting the rights of all individuals with learning disabilities, or "the 1 in 5".

About the "1 in 5"

The State of Learning Disabilities: Understanding the 1 in 5, published in 2017, is the most recent research report from The National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD) . Their report used data from the 2015-2016 school year and research to illustrate challenges and opportunities facing children with learning disabilities and attention challenges.

[from 1-in-5 Snapshot, NCLD, 2017]

"1 in 5", or 20%. That may sound like a small percentage. What does it really represent?

Based on the 2019 population, 20% would represent 65.6 million individuals in the United States who have learning and attention issues (U.S. Census Bureau). That does not sound like such a small number.

There are approximately 56.6 million students in elementary and secondary schools in the United States (Educationdata.org). 20%, or 1 in 5, would represent 11.2 million students with learning and attention issues. That does not sound like such a small number either.

What else can NCLD's report help us understand about these 11.2 millions students?

Approximately 8.25% are identified in school and receive some specialized instruction or accommodations through an IEP or a 504. Less than half of the total number of students estimated to have learning and attention issues. What about the other 11.75%, or 6.65 million, students?

Students with learning disabilities drop out of high school at nearly three times the rate of all students. How many of those other students are actually part of the 11-12% of students who have not been identified as having learning and attention issues?

Unaddressed learning and attention issues contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline. A large study found that half of young students with learning disabilities or related issues had been involved at some point with the justice system. How many more are actually part of the 11-12% of students who have not been identified as having learning and attention issues?

Enrollment in college and completion rates are lower than the rest of students their age. How many of those other young adults are actually part of the 11-12% of students who have not been identified as having learning and attention issues?

Barriers to Success for the "1 in 5"

[from 1-in-5 Snapshot, NCLD, 2017]

These barriers to success are not only barriers in education. The NCLD report includes that only 46% of working-age adults with learning disabilities are employed compared with adults who do not have learning disabilities. Adults with learning and attention issues are twice as likely to be jobless as their peers without learning disabilities. How many of those other adults are actually part of the 11-12% who were not formally identified when they were in school?

[from 1-in-5 Snapshot, NCLD, 2017]

"An equitable society is one in which all can participate and prosper" Policy Link

According to the Center for Public Education, equity "is achieved when all students receive the resources they need so they graduate prepared for success after high school". LDA works to help individuals with LD participate and prosper in school and in society.

A Few Ways LDA Helps the "1 in 5"

Empowering Parents

Parents are often baffled by the problems presented by a child with learning disabilities. Often this "invisible disability" does not become obvious until a child reaches school age. Even then, difficulties may be subtle and hard to recognize. LDA has put together multiple resources to help empower parents to help prepare their children with LD for success.

Online Coffee Connections are designed for parents, caregivers, and educators to safely discuss the challenges and strategies for supporting children with disabilities in a world of blended education. Online Coffee Connection meetings are a new FREE benefit for all LDA members, and are made possible by our partnership with IEPequity. Coffee Connection meetings cost $10 for nonmembers to attend.

Equipping Teachers

Since almost five percent of all students in our nation's public schools are classified as having specific learning disabilities (SLD), every teacher can expect to find students with learning disabilities in the classroom. Success for these students requires a focus on individual achievement, individual progress, and individual learning. Despite obstacles, recent research tells us that we can teach these students how to learn. LDA has put together multiple resources to help equip teachers to support students with LD for success.

LDA is a proud partner of the Educating All Learners Alliance, an organization that brings together disability, civil rights, education not for profits, advocacy, and policy organizations to advance equity and serve the special education community. They have recently revamped their website, which is filled with new and ever-growing resources, events, news, and more.

In response to remote learning, LDA developed a COVID-19 Resource Center website with resources for educators including tips for: teaching online, accessible apps, accessible lessons, monitoring IEP goals, and learning opportunities.

Early Intervention

LDA knows that accurate identification through a thorough evaluative process, is the first step to ensure that individuals with Learning Disabilities receive the services, supports and accommodations that are required for academic and life success. LDA advocates for early identification, which increases the possibility of successful intervention.

Children need adults to advocate for them; but those children do grow up. Learning disabilities are brain-based difficulties. One does not grow out of having a learning disability. We know that too many people go through life unidentified - based on the NCLD research, approximately 11.75%. LDA continues to advocate for access to identification throughout the lifespan.

Building Self-Advocacy Skills

Self-advocacy skills is just one topic that can be found in the resources on The LDA Podcast channel. On Episode 5 of Season 1, Toby Baker shares how she learned to advocate for herself to get where she wanted to be. Toby has self-identified as having ADHD and a learning disability and was discouraged by her high school teachers to go to college. Now, she is earning her Ph.D. in Global Leadership, and has won LDA's 2020 Harrison Sylvester Award for her research of adults with LD.

Learning Disabilities Association of New Jersey Inc. is currently piloting our new STAMP program, a community for elementary and post-secondary students to embrace their learning disabilities through education, communication, and self-development. For more information on getting involved or bringing the STAMP program to your state, please email stamp@ldaamerica.org.

"An equitable society is one in which all can participate and prosper" Policy Link

Advocacy is about taking action: taking action for yourself; taking action to represent the rights and interests of someone else; taking action to bring about change for groups of people by working to influence social, political, and economic systems; taking action to establish or protect legal rights through attorneys and the legal or administrative systems. LDA advocates for an equitable society for the "1 in 5".

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The State of Learning Disabilities Today

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In their article "Learning Disabilities in the United States: Advocacy, Science, and the Future of the Field", Louisa Cook Moats and G. Reid Lyon state that "no disease or significant health problem in this country is given much attention until political forces are motivated by parents, patients, or victims expressing their very real and heartfelt concerns about their quality of life" (Journal of Learning Disabilities, May 1993).

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Research shows that some students regularly receive higher amounts of homework than experts recommend, which may cause stress and negative health effects.

Research suggests that when students are pushed to handle a workload that's out of sync with their development level, it can lead to significant stress - for children and their parents.

Both the National Education Association (NEA) and the National PTA (NPTA) support a standard of "10 minutes of homework per grade level" and setting a general limit on after-school studying.

For kids in first grade, that means 10 minutes a night, while high school seniors could get two hours of work per night.

Experts say there may be real downsides for young kids who are pushed to do more homework than the "10 minutes per grade" standard.

"The data shows that homework over this level is not only not beneficial to children's grades or GPA, but there's really a plethora of evidence that it's detrimental to their attitude about school, their grades, their self-confidence, their social skills, and their quality of life," Donaldson-Pressman told CNN.

But the most recent study to examine the issue found that kids in their study who were in early elementary school received about three times the amount of recommended homework.

Published in The American Journal of Family Therapy, the 2015 study surveyed more than 1,100 parents in Rhode Island with school-age children.

The researchers found that first and second graders received 28 and 29 minutes of homework per night.

Kindergarteners received 25 minutes of homework per night, on average. But according to the standards set by the NEA and NPTA, they shouldn't receive any at all.

A contributing editor of the study, Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman, told CNN that she found it "absolutely shocking" to learn that kindergarteners had that much homework.

And all those extra assignments may lead to family stress, especially when parents with limited education aren't confident in their ability to talk with the school about their child's work.

The researchers reported that family fights about homework were 200 percent more likely when parents didn't have a college degree.

Some parents, in fact, have decided to opt out of the whole thing. The Washington Post reported in 2016 that some parents have just instructed their younger children not to do their homework assignments.

They report the no-homework policy has taken the stress out of their afternoons and evenings. In addition, it's been easier for their children to participate in after-school activities.

Other studies have found that high school students may also be overburdened with homework - so much that it's taking a toll on their health.

In 2013, research conducted at Stanford University found that students in high-achieving communities who spend too much time on homework experience more stress, physical health problems, a lack of balance in their lives, and alienation from society.

That study, published in The Journal of Experimental Education, suggested that any more than two hours of homework per night is counterproductive.

However, students who participated in the study reported doing slightly more than three hours of homework each night, on average.

To conduct the study, researchers surveyed more than 4,300 students at 10 high-performing high schools in upper middle-class California communities. They also interviewed students about their views on homework.

When it came to stress, more than 70 percent of students said they were "often or always stressed over schoolwork," with 56 percent listing homework as a primary stressor. Less than 1 percent of the students said homework was not a stressor.

The researchers asked students whether they experienced physical symptoms of stress, such as headaches, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, weight loss, and stomach problems.

More than 80 percent of students reported having at least one stress-related symptom in the past month, and 44 percent said they had experienced three or more symptoms.

The researchers also found that spending too much time on homework meant that students were not meeting their developmental needs or cultivating other critical life skills. Students were more likely to forgo activities, stop seeing friends or family, and not participate in hobbies.

Many students felt forced or obligated to choose homework over developing other talents or skills.

"Our findings on the effects of homework challenge the traditional assumption that homework is inherently good," said Denise Pope, PhD, a senior lecturer at the Stanford University School of Education, and a co-author of a study.

A smaller New York University study published in 2015 noted similar findings.

It focused more broadly on how students at elite private high schools cope with the combined pressures of school work, college applications, extracurricular activities, and parents' expectations.

That study, which appeared in Frontiers in Psychology, noted serious health effects for high schoolers, such as chronic stress, emotional exhaustion, and alcohol and drug use.

The research involved a series of interviews with students, teachers, and administrators, as well as a survey of a total of 128 juniors from two private high schools.

About half of the students said they received at least three hours of homework per night. They also faced pressure to take college-level classes and excel in activities outside of school.

Many students felt they were being asked to work as hard as adults, and noted that their workload seemed inappropriate for their development level. They reported having little time for relaxing or creative activities.

More than two-thirds of students said they used alcohol and drugs, primarily marijuana, to cope with stress.

The researchers expressed concern that students at high-pressure high schools can get burned out before they even get to college.

"School, homework, extracurricular activities, sleep, repeat - that's what it can be for some of these students," said Noelle Leonard, PhD, a senior research scientist at the New York University College of Nursing, and lead study author, in a press release.

Experts continue to debate the benefits and drawbacks of homework.

But according to an article published this year in Monitor on Psychology, there's one thing they agree on: the quality of homework assignments matters.

In the Stanford study, many students said that they often did homework they saw as "pointless" or "mindless."

Pope, who co-authored that study, argued that homework assignments should have a purpose and benefit, and should be designed to cultivate learning and development.

It's also important for schools and teachers to stick to the 10-minutes per grade standard.

In an interview with Monitor on Psychology, Pope pointed out that students can learn challenging skills even when less homework is assigned.

Pope described one teacher she worked with who taught Advanced Placement biology, and experimented by dramatically cutting down homework assignments. First the teacher cut homework by a third, and then cut the assignments in half.

The students' test scores didn't change.

"You can have a rigorous course and not have a crazy homework load," Pope said.

Editor's Note: The story was originally reported by Sandra Levy on April 11, 2017. Its current publication date reflects an update, which includes a medical review by Karen Gill, MD.

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Why Homework is Bad: Stress and Consequences

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Research shows that some students regularly receive higher amounts of homework than experts recommend, which may cause stress and negative health effects.

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When high school junior Nora Huynh got her report card, she was devastated to see that she didn't get a perfect 4.0.

Nora "had a total meltdown, cried for hours," her mother, Jennie Huynh of Alameda, Calif., says. "I couldn't believe her reaction."

Nora is doing college-level work, her mother says, but many of her friends are taking enough advanced classes to boost their grade-point averages above 4.0. "It breaks my heart to see her upset when she's doing so awesome and going above and beyond."

And the pressure is taking a physical toll, too. At age 16, Nora is tired, is increasingly irritated with her siblings and often suffers headaches, her mother says.

Parents are right to be worried about stress and their children's health, says Mary Alvord, a clinical psychologist in Maryland and public education coordinator for the American Psychological Association.

"A little stress is a good thing," Alvord says. "It can motivate students to be organized. But too much stress can backfire."

Almost 40 percent of parents say their high-schooler is experiencing a lot of stress from school, according to a new NPR poll conducted with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health. In most cases, that stress is from academics, not social issues or bullying, the poll found. (See the full results here.)

Homework was a leading cause of stress, with 24 percent of parents saying it's an issue.

Teenagers say they're suffering, too. A survey by the American Psychological Association found that nearly half of all teens - 45 percent - said they were stressed by school pressures.

Chronic stress can cause a sense of panic and paralysis, Alvord says. The child feels stuck, which only adds to the feeling of stress.

Parents can help put the child's distress in perspective, particularly when they get into what Alvord calls catastrophic "what if" thinking: "What if I get a bad grade, then what if that means I fail the course, then I'll never get into college."

Then move beyond talking and do something about it.

That's what 16-year-old Colleen Frainey of Tualatin, Ore., did. As a sophomore last year, she was taking all advanced courses. The pressure was making her sick. "I didn't feel good, and when I didn't feel good I felt like I couldn't do my work, which would stress me out more," she says.

Mom Abigail Frainey says, "It was more than we could handle as a family."

With encouragement from her parents, Colleen dropped one of her advanced courses. The family's decision generated disbelief from other parents. "Why would I let her take the easy way out?" Abigail Frainey heard.

But she says dialing down on academics was absolutely the right decision for her child. Colleen no longer suffers headaches or stomachaches. She's still in honors courses, but the workload this year is manageable.

Even better, Colleen now has time to do things she never would have considered last year, like going out to dinner with the family on a weeknight, or going to the barn to ride her horse, Bishop.

Psychologist Alvord says a balanced life should be the goal for all families. If a child is having trouble getting things done, parents can help plan the week, deciding what's important and what's optional. "Just basic time management - that will help reduce the stress."

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School Stress Takes A Toll On Health, Teens And Parents Say

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Teenagers say their parents often don't realize how overwhelmed they feel about school. Psychologists say parents can help children manage their expectations and live a more balanced life, even if it means not racking up as high a GPA as their friends.

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If even one person in a school knows him well enough to care, a student's chances of success go up dramatically. In small groups that can focus on a range of subjects, teachers and students are forming new bonds and setting new standards for a personal education.
When teachers at Kentucky's Fairdale High School were planning the start of their Essential School program, principal Marilyn Hohmann likes to recall, some of them spent a full week shadowing students through their daily schedules. By week's end, they were overwhelmed - not by the demands of student life, but by its passive and anonymous nature. If their program could do only one thing, they decided, it must be to turn those qualities around, to energize the students into forging an active personal stake in their own education. Today, Fairdale schedules a daily half-hour Teacher Guided Assistance period for all students - an advisory group in which 17 mixed-grade students work individually and together on both personal and academic matters. A whopping 90 percent of students call it the best thing about their school.

At Pasadena High School last year, all 650 ninth graders began an Essential School program that called for an hour-long advisory period three days a week. In groups of 20 to 30, students met with their teacher-adviser for activities designed to foster leadership, build self-esteem, and resolve conflicts. By the end of the year in this urban California high school with a 75 percent minority student body, the ninth-grade attendance rate was 96 percent -twice as high as for any other grade in the school.

The faculty at Bellefonte Area High School, a small school in a mostly white, blue-collar Pennsylvania community, voted to go slowly this year on the startup of their Essential School program through the state's Re:Learning project. But though only two-thirds of Bellefonte's ninth-grade class will follow an Essential curriculum this year, the whole school decided to institute a daily fifteen-minute Active Communication Time (ACT) period, scheduled into the lunch hour. To help teachers who are uneasy about what to do with the time, the school provides a handbook of guidelines and suggested activities for the 15-student groups. And advisers are backed by a team of professionals that is called in for counseling, guidance, or intervention when a serious problem arises.

Making a student's education more personal is the base on which all the common principles of Essential schooling stand; and in many schools like these, advisory groupings are emerging as one way to work toward this aim. If even one teacher in a school knows a student well and cares what happens to her, the theory goes, chances increase dramatically for that student's academic success. More, advisory groups can promote the principles of unanxious expectation, trust, and decency in students' relations with their teachers and others, both in school and outside it.

But are advisory groups the path toward personalizing a student's school experience, or merely a lightweight substitute for paying individual attention to intellectual development in the classroom itself? Should life issues be included in advisory sessions, or should their focus be primarily academic? Where is the line between teacher and guidance counselor, between adviser and parent-substitute, between private dilemmas and social or intellectual obligations? As we looked at such programs in a dozen Essential schools nationwide, it became clear that advisories serve as a lightning rod for many of the most provoking questions facing school people today. Whether the advisory group is "essential" -a key tool in a school's commitment to the principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools -is a question individual schools must explore as they move toward change.

What Are Advisories For?

One view of the advisory's purpose assumes that to know a student individually means to know his mind well -the better to work with him in a classroom context. For best results, argues the Coalition's Director for Schools, Bob McCarthy, the system should match advisers with students they actually teach, not arbitrarily as it sometimes done. Further, the purpose of an advisory session should be to work on developing, both individually and in a group context, the inquiring habits of mind that mark a scholar. Socratic seminars, book discussion groups, debate on school and community issues, and philosophical investigations might all augment one-on-one coaching in this model of the advisory relationship.

But many of the programs we looked at were shaped along much different lines. To know a student's mind well is not enough, they posit if his education is truly to have meaning in the real world, it must address his situation in society too. The advisory group is used, in these schools, to practice skills in group dynamics and human relations that can be used for everything from governing a school to making the most personal decisions. And the individual commitment teachers make to their advisees aims to forge bonds that include the student's home and private life as a crucial part of schooling.

In practice, if we try to separate advisory groups into two models, the academic and the personal, the lines between them will quickly blur. "Kids don't let you do it," says Bob McCarthy. "They are going to push you to take an intellectual discussion into a concrete realm that makes sense in their world." Likewise, advisory groups may discuss the most personal of issues while applying principles of evidence and argument that train students in critical thinking. "If you start a discussion about what you'd do if you were drafted to fight for oil against Iraq," says McCarthy, "the answer has to be worked out against a real investigation of the political and economic situation in the Middle East and the West."

In fact, some of the best advisory group discussions start with historical, literary, or scientific situations that pose compelling moral dilemmas. In her 1984 book Making Decisions, from which several exercises are reproduced here, Nancy Faust Sizer sets out such cases in 26 pairs -one drawn from students' own environment, one from the world at large to encourage analytical thinking and moral reasoning. Emphasizing respect for the reasoning process over the actual outcome of the decision, she argues, allows students to "compare, dissect, resolve" their common and individual principles. (Published by Longman Publishing Group in White Plains, New York, the book is currently out of print; for more information contact Nancy Sizer, P.O. Box 472, Harvard, MA 01451.)

In the end, it seems, the main point of a good advisory program is to help the student feel that it matters what he is doing with his mind and his life and to recognize the ways in which the two relate. "The adviser is often the only adult in school who has a clear notion of a student's whole schedule, whole day, and whole life," says Rick Lear, a senior researcher at the Coalition of Essential Schools. "It makes the system much more sensitive when a kid has a problem. The adviser has a sense of whether the problem lies in an academic area, or with a particular teacher, or in some life problem. Advisers become advocates for kids in the system -sometimes they are even referred to explicitly by that title."

Is it really necessary to make formal time for teacher-student interaction in order to attain a more personal education? "Very good teachers often have this kind of relationship with their students already," says Kent Lowry, a teaching intern and adviser at New York's Scarsdale Alternative High School, where advisory "core groups" have long been in place. "But setting aside a time especially for that purpose means things that might otherwise slip through the cracks can be caught. I've always enjoyed chatting with kids when I run into them informally, but it's rare for that kind of discussion to come to any real conclusion. Our core groups have the time to work through an issue. It's enormously satisfying, for kids and teachers both." Making advisory groups a formal part of a school's system also means that every student -not just the most engaging, or the easiest to talk to -gets personal attention, Lowry notes. "It communicates that everyone is valued here," he says.

How Advisories Differ

In practice, the advisory groups we saw included a broad mix of purposes and techniques. Sometimes academic or even remedial in nature, sometimes almost purely social or personal, they have grown from each school's own vision of its needs and priorities, its students and its community.

The adviser-student relationship may be as simple as a brief daily encounter in which students can touch base with someone who has a special interest in their progress. It may have a primarily administrative focus, with the adviser monitoring attendance, helping plan a schedule, and meeting to discuss grades and future plans. Or it may provide a steady arena in which intellectual habits and challenges are addressed.

"One of the best advisory sessions I have seen was at Paschal High School in Fort Worth, Texas," says Coalition Chairman Ted Sizer. "The teacher organized kids into small groups to work on homework in various subject areas. She went from group to group, guiding them individually and encouraging them to help each other out too. The whole purpose was to make sure the students were as ready as they could be to make good use of their formal class time." In this group, students were clearly active learners, and the teacher served as the generalist- coach, who was there to help them teach themselves. This is also the model used in Fairdale's Teacher Guided Assistance (TGA) program, which encourages students to make up tests during advisory time, seek extra help from teachers, or visit the library. "Our groups mix kids from different grade levels," says principal Hohmann, "so a lot of peer tutoring goes on during TGA."

Academic enrichment is also built into advisory sessions when teachers use them as book discussion groups. "Two things could happen at once," one principal says who favors this model for his school. "The kids could stretch their minds by reading interesting works of clear value, maybe introducing controversial issues; and their discussions could generate critical thinking and get teachers and kids to know each other as they explore different important questions through reading."

Building a strong student role in their own government is an important aim of some advisory groups. At Scarsdale, for example, the 75 students of the alternative school gather in a weekly community meeting to vote on governance issues facing the school. Much of the discussion surrounding these issues takes place in the more manageable context of core group meetings. "It takes a while to clarify these things," Kent Lowry says. "When we address them first in small groups, the whole-school meeting is much more effective." In other schools too, student government issues are often addressed in advisory groups. In fact, at the much larger Pasadena High School, principal Judy Codding has brought in Scarsdale's Anthony Arenella and Rosellen Rachinelli to lead workshops in student governance techniques, using advisory groups as their basic unit.

Almost all advisory programs make some effort to help students plan for career and college, though few actually substitute advisory groups for conventional college and vocational guidance counseling. Planning field trips to colleges and career fairs, practicing interviews, and doing exercises designed to identify personal strengths and goals all can take place in advisory groups.

Some advisory groups carry out community service projects; and some schools use the time for special presentations or other activities that bring the school community together. At Pasadena High School, teacher Judy Oksner has brought in speakers from area prisons, local artists, and junior achievement groups who rotate among advisory groups or speak to the school at large. "We also use the time for theater games or athletic round robins -sometimes purely silly competitions just for fun -so that students can get to know those in other groups," Oksner says.

Advising the "Whole Student"

Scarsdale's core groups have developed a tradition of meeting in the students' homes on a weekly rotating basis. This is unusual; but in most schools getting to know the students' home situation is an integral task of the adviser. Many schools expect advisers to call parents regularly not only with problems but with praise for a student's progress; regular home visits and parent conferences are a feature of several programs we looked at. In addition, advisers often check on absent students, make sure they keep up with their work when ill, or arrange professional help if necessary.

Most advisory systems also serve as the first step in resolving discipline issues, either individually or in the group. At New York City's University Heights High School, where "family groups" of around 18 students meet daily, a representative of each group serves on the school's "fairness committee," which resolves discipline problems by consensus. "The term 'advisory' implies an adult giving advice," says principal Nancy Mohr, who frequently leads workshops on advisories. "Our model is based on group work."

Across town at Central Park East Secondary School, an hour-long advisory period is also scheduled daily, and discipline problems go directly to the adviser. "One day I was leading a humanities class and two students from my advisory group were brought in to me with an argument: they had to work together on a math project and one kid wasn't bringing in his share of the work," former CPE teacher Michael Goldman recalls. "When I had a moment I went to the back of the room to talk with them. I knew that the second kid's parents were divorcing, and sure enough, the problem came up because he was living in two different places and the work kept getting left behind. Addressing the question in a way that let the kid know someone cared about his situation made it much easier to work out a solution."

Goldman is among the many teachers who have used "dialogue journals" between students and teachers as a private arena in which to bring up important issues. Others go even further, introducing exercises in group dynamics to train students to open up emotional and behavioral issues. Such teachers see their activities as educating the whole person, not invading a private arena. "If you can't identify what you think and feel and why, you won't get far in an intellectual discussion," one said. "Listening, problem-solving, and conflict resolution are life skills and analytical skills. They require training and practice."

The Problems, the Rewards

Whether their focus is primarily academic or personal, advisory groups require new roles for most public school teachers, and they are often frightening ones. To advise a group well may take training in new skills, and it will certainly take more time, both to prepare for the advisory sessions and to invest in individual students. The results, say those who do it, are well worth the effort; but in the process new questions are raised about the roles teachers and students should play in our educational system.

No one denies that advisory groups make extra work for teachers. If the group's goals are well articulated, to reach them involves careful planning?in essence, an entire new curriculum may emerge, including anything from consensus building and human relations to philosophical explorations, study skills, or career planning. Some schools, believing that the main point is to get to know students better, leave the use of advisory time completely up to individual teachers and groups. Others set up more formal expectations, but allow substantial variation in how to meet them. In either case, preparing for an advisory session is just as important as preparing for a class, and many schools help teachers out with handouts, workshops, and suggestions.

"Typically people start out trying to narrowly describe what they will do, so it won't be overwhelming," says the Coalition's Rick Lear, who often works with schools just beginning advisory efforts. "Then as teachers get to know kids they develop their own sense of what's appropriate and what their limits are. Within any one building there will be a range of responses -those who are more comfortable will make themselves more available to both students and parents." Still, he concedes, advisories do take more time than people once expected. "You're getting involved in the lives of kids," he says.

Some teachers thrive on this; others back off from the intensity of the experience. In his days at Central Park East Mike Goldman, for example, would give students and parents his home phone and set evening calling hours for between six and seven. "I never once had a student or parent abuse the privilege," he says. But one teacher at an alternative school with a high priority on home visits told me that the level of involvement in students' lives was "too much for me. I'm leaving to teach in a more strictly academic situation."

Especially if a school's advisory focus is more broadly defined, some school people balk at giving advice to young adults on personal issues. "Some things are rightly none of my business," one teacher told me. "They're the parental domain-they're not for me to know." In many cases, though, teachers must come to terms with the fact that if they do not care about the personal lives of their students, no one else will either. For schools in troubled communities like Central Falls, Rhode Island, this raises a particularly poignant point: the advisory relationship may be the only haven a student has. "There's a strong community feeling here among students and faculty," says Central Falls High School language teacher Robin Yates, "partly because of the contrasts between the school, the home, and the street. School is a safe place for these kids, and they tend to like it and want to be here."

Once somebody does start to care, in whatever context, the results can be swift. Because 45 percent of Central Falls students come from homes where English is not spoken, the school's substantial bilingual program served as an important predecessor to its new advisory system. "I started using dialogue journals to develop literacy," says Yates. "But the kids kept using them to bring up very important issues. It got down to the most fundamental cultural questions about the meaning of schooling: what the role of teacher and student should be. And that gave rise to the essential question we'll be exploring as we start our Coalition team this year."

Ironically, however, a successful advisory effort can make a teacher's life harder, as more difficult students show up in class regularly. "Now that they're coming, you have to figure out what to do with them," Pasadena High's Judy Oksner says. "They are not only poor academically but they can present behavior problems."

Teachers, or Counselors?

Many teachers are reluctant to get involved in advisory programs because they fear they are unqualified to deal with serious problems that might arise. To address this, most schools encourage continual dialogue between guidance staff and teachers, emphasizing that the adviser's role is to spot problems, not necessarily to solve them, and training teachers to recognize signs of trouble. More serious behavioral or emotional problems, such as drug or alcohol use, are usually referred to guidance counselors or other professionals, although in some schools the adviser takes part in those meetings. The advisory relationship here can serve as a crucial early warning system, school people say. "All I had to read was a hint in her advisory journal that one student was thinking about suicide," one teacher told me. "The safety net went out, and the student got counseling in time to help. At no time did I have to actually sit down with the student and counsel her about her suicide plans -I wouldn't have been prepared for that -but the system saved her."

Others balk at a quasi-guidance role for teachers for a more political reason: they worry that guidance staff will be cut with the change, or that their own work will unfairly be increased. The evidence is that advisories augment rather than substitute for the guidance counselor's job. But other administrative changes may be necessary to put an advisory system into place. A group of perhaps 15 seems the ideal size, for instance; but this may be unworkable given the student-teacher ratio. To solve this some schools ask administrators, librarians, and other non-teaching staff to serve as advisers. Other schools may need waivers from teacher contract clauses or district regulations, especially when advisory groups count as a credit-bearing class.

Any advisory position can get sticky; those who do it best are comfortable working with opposing interests. "Being an advocate for a kid may put you in conflict with your peers," Rick Lear says. "It could be another teacher the student is having problems with."

The new role also can cause discomfort as teachers start thinking of themselves not solely as evaluative educators, but as coaches involved in both the intellectual and the emotional lives of their students. "This may lead to a decision to consider the evaluative relationship itself differently," notes Coalition senior researcher Patricia Wasley. "It ties right in to exhibitions, interestingly -the more you know about what a student is interested in, the more effectively you can coach her to demonstrate mastery. But this more holistic approach requires a significant leap for teachers."

But even teachers who oppose Essential School startup efforts often warm to the advisory concept, seeing it as a chance to improve the tone of a school troubled by apathy or social problems. At Central Falls, a schoolwide committee on advisories met separately from the Essential School steering committee; this year all teachers will serve as advisers, though only the seventh grade will start an Essential team. Similarly, Bellefonte High will introduce advisories schoolwide even as its Essential program begins with more modest numbers. "We saw the tone of our school going downhill in the last few years," says Susan Robb, "and we needed to do something for all our kids. It wasn't necessarily the dropout rate; it was a poor attitude about being in school."

A Change in Tone

Teachers who have worked with advisories for years say their extra efforts pay off dramatically in the classroom. "I've seen drastic changes in students because someone cares about them as an adviser," says Mike Goldman of his years at Central Park East. "Attendance goes up; the kids work harder; study skills and academic performance improve." A good advisory system, he argues, sets a tone in which students want to come. "Small groups don't fall apart," Goldman says emphatically. "The advisory group breaks down the 'house' concept one more step -it sets up a family group within the larger house family."

As new advisory programs get going, even teachers who are not predisposed toward their new role report satisfying results. In Pasadena, says Judy Oksner, one 34-year teaching veteran who "always hated field trips or anything like that" began to have extraordinary success in advisory group activities. "At the end of the year he had the entire group over to his home for a swimming party, where they presented a check to a local charity." The teachers who were most afraid of the adviser role sometimes end up as its biggest fans, the Coalition's Rick Lear concurs. "Teachers tell me they know and understand the kids better; they start to see parents as allies," he says. "As they build better connections, their professional experience becomes richer."

At the graduation ceremony for Scarsdale Alternative High School each year, each senior is toasted in a brief speech by the student's adviser. "It may be teasing or warm, describing their contribution to the school or to the larger society -but for each student it's unique," Kent Lowry says. "For many students it is the highlight of their school career, to be publicly recognized for what is special about them. And it's only possible because we know them." Whether a school is small or large, whether its advisory program is loosely defined or carefully structured, that sense of personal recognition is at the heart of the advisory concept. "I know very few teachers who have worked as advisers for a couple of years and would willingly give it up," says Rick Lear. "It's the hook into kids."

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Are Advisory Groups 'Essential'? What They Do, How They Work

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If even one person in a school knows him well enough to care, a student's chances of success go up dramatically. In small groups that can focus on a range of subjects, teachers and students are forming new bonds and setting new standards for a personal education.

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Academy's for the 2017-2018 year brings new additions to the school-day. For example, the schedule now gives students a break between every set, the longest of which is advisory. Advisory is a 45 minute period that students can treat as a study hall or a time for club meetings . In addition, advisory allows for convocation on various Mondays, as well as any other assemblies scheduled by administration.

For those who are used to the old schedule, the change has been a hard adjustment. However, most of Academy's students are grateful for the advisory time.

Mckenzie Diaz ('19) said, "I like the advisory period because it was always hard for me to get to my clubs after school, but now I can go during advisory. It's really helpful because I do not have to miss any club meetings. Also, if I don't have a club on a certain day, I can get extra homework done."

In addition to allowing students to attend clubs during school, advisory also allows students to work on homework.

Bella Addison ('20) said, "I like the new advisory period because it gives me time to go talk to teachers about questions I have about tests or homework."

However, some students are not as happy about the schedule change.

Mia Torres ('18) said, "In my opinion, advisory period is too short to get anything done, but at the same time, it is long enough to create an awkward break in the school day."

Other students are also unhappy with the changes advisory has made to clubs.

Amanda Rogas ('20) said, "Even though the advisory period allows more students to participate in clubs, I think it's unfair when clubs have to make cuts because the advisory time is so short. When clubs were after school, clubs were able to accept more people and to get more things done."

Spanish teacher, Jose Ruano, agrees with students about the pros and cons of the advisory period.

Ruano said, "Depending on the day, I like the advisory period, but sometimes I think that it makes the day feel longer not only for the teachers, but also for the students."

Academy's advances toward new methods of learning show its dedication to encouraging student success.

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Academy's schedule for the 2017-2018 year brings new additions to the school-day. For example, the schedule now gives students a break between every set, the longest of which is advisory. Advisory is a 45 minute period that students can treat as a study hall or a time for club meetings.

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Say it Louder: pros and cons of advisory period

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With the new advisory period that began the second week of school, many students have mixed feelings about the new schedule. While this 25 minute break gives students many opportunities to either catch up on school work, go to tutorials, or just hang out with friends, some people believe that the co…

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Middle school is a time of transition. Transitioning between schools, transitioning between social circles, transitioning physically and socially from children into teenagers. And like a lot of transitions, things can get a little challenging from time to time, especially when children are left to navigate the many complexities of middle school on their own.

But middle school shouldn't be a struggle! With the right support, middle school can become a time of self-discovery and personal growth that lays the foundation for success, both now and in high school and beyond.
Ready to take the next step? Come visit Friends' Central to see what we're all about!
That's why having a strong middle school advisory program is so important.

What is a Middle School Advisory Program?

At most public schools and even a lot of private or independent schools, student support typically takes the form of a guidance counselor who oversees a group of students. A large part of the job, for guidance counselors, is helping students choose the right coursework and preparing for their next steps academically. They might also be called into action to help a student work through a personal or academic crisis.

And while guidance counselors have an important role to play in the education system, they often simply can't offer the one-on-one support necessary to truly help a student thrive. Though the American School Counselor Association recommends a student-to-counselor ratio of 250:1, the average ratio in the U.S. is closer to a whopping 491:1.

Advisory programs, on the other hand, are designed to create a strong support system that students need to develop academically, socially, and emotionally.

As opposed to a being called upon in response to a crisis, as might be the case with a guidance counselor, advisory programs are meant to be proactive, creating a strong support system and safety net that students can turn to before something becomes a crisis.

Though the specifics of each advisory program will vary from school to school, their primary purpose is to make sure that each student has an adult who can act as their advocate, which is often achieved through a mix of one-on-one and group guidance.

At Friends' Central, for example, each advisor has a group of about eight to ten students who meet with them a minimum of twice a day: During homeroom at the start of the school day, and during an advisory period just before the end of the day. These advisory periods perform a number of important functions, including:

Allowing students to prepare for the school day ahead of them (in the morning) and to get a head start on homework or assignments (in the afternoon)

Giving students the opportunity to seek out help from teachers in classes or assignments

Creating a sense of community and ensuring students know that there is always someone that they can turn to for help, whether academically, socially, or personally

Creating a strong support system for each student by supplying a single point-person (their advisor) who will develop a strong relationship with them and their parents

And all of that personal attention really pays off - there are a lot of benefits associated with strong middle school advisory programs.

Benefits of a Strong Middle School Advisory Program

1. Supports strong academics

Advisory programs are important because they give students time that is specifically designed to help them succeed academically. Exactly how the time is used depends on the specifics of the school, but it is often used to do things like:

Prepare and plan for the day ahead

Get a head start on homework or other assignments, or study before leaving for the day

Speak with teachers about classes or subjects that they are struggling with (especially important for students who might not be comfortable speaking up and asking questions in class)

Beyond simply supporting strong academics, this also helps students develop important skills that will help them succeed throughout the rest of their lives: time management, the ability to plan ahead, self-advocacy, and the ability to ask for help when it is needed.

2. Helps students navigate the social and emotional issues unique to middle school

Advisory programs don't just act as "study halls." They play an important role in the social and emotional health of students.

Middle school can be a tricky time for students, both emotionally and socially, as they begin to create their own identity separate from their parents, siblings, and friends. It's a time of self-discovery and a time for pushing boundaries, and it's not uncommon for students to struggle with all of those changes and the challenges that come with them.

By ensuring that each student has an adult that they are comfortable talking with about these things, a strong advisory program can help students work through common middle school issues like:

Shifting friendships

Conflict resolution

Appropriately expressing emotions

Deaths in the family

Changes in the family, such as divorce

And much more

The key to success is making sure that the student understands that they can always talk to someone about anything that is bothering them, and that adults are ready to offer support and guidance.

3. Create a positive school culture

By helping students work through social and emotional problems as they arise, advisory programs naturally help to create a positive and connected school culture.

They do this directly by reminding students that they are a part of a community of parents, teachers, administrators, and friends that wants them to succeed, be happy, and be healthy. When students feel validated, understood, and accepted, they naturally develop stewardship for themselves and others.

And they do this indirectly by helping to reduce the stress-whether academic or emotional-that can lead to problems in the first place.

4. Creates a proactive safety net and support structure

For an advisory program to be successful, it's important that students and advisors form real, strong, and lasting relationships with one another.

By doing so, they can facilitate a level of mutual trust that allows for deep and meaningful communication. Once that open channel for communication exists between students and their advisors, we find that students naturally will seek advice and help when they need it. And advisors, for their part, gain insight into their students that helps them recognize when there are problems that might need to be addressed.

All of this helps to create a proactive safety net and support structure designed to identify issues before they turn into crises.

5. Facilitates easier communication

By creating a single point-person for each student, advisory programs make communication-at all levels-easier and more intuitive for everyone involved.

For example, a teacher who sees a particular student struggling, or notices an issue developing, can speak to the student's advisor. The advisor can then leverage their relationship with the student to figure out what is going on or determine whether the student is showing difficulties extending into multiple classes (and not just that single class) which may speak to a larger problem.

Or, parents might inform their child's advisor that there is a challenging situation going on at home that the school should be aware of, and the advisor can then notify the relevant teachers and faculty members so that everyone is aware.

And, of course, because of their relationship with their advisor, students often feel more comfortable speaking with them about delicate issues that they perhaps don't feel comfortable speaking with their other teachers or even their parents about. The advisor can then use their position to facilitate communication between whoever should be involved.

All of this leads to a more informed and engaged community striving to help students reach their fullest potential.

The Importance of Relationships

In the end, what makes advisory programs so powerful are the relationships that they help to foster between students and faculty.

These relationships allow for free and open communication, letting students know they can ask for help, and giving advisors insight into the struggles that students are facing. These relationships are what truly support academic success and excellence.

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5 Benefits of a Strong Middle School Advisory Program

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Middle school is a time of transition. Transitioning between schools, transitioning between social circles, transitioning physically and socially from children into teenagers. And like a lot of transitions, things can get a little challenging from time to time, especially when children are left to navigate the many complexities of middle school on their own.

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Middle and high schools often favor setting aside a block in students' schedules for something a little less structured-and a lot less academic-than a traditional class period.

The reoccuring blocks-often called advisories-are adopted as a way to strengthen relationships and help students weather the challenges that may keep them from succeeding academically, including a lack of routines, social isolation, and out-of-school issues that can bleed into the school day.

But problems in the way advisories are designed and carried out can keep them from being a meaningful part of a student's school experience, educators and researchers say.

If a school wedges an advisory into its master schedule as "just another thing to do" or a panacea for its school climate problems, students aren't likely to experience the level of vulnerability necessary to have meaningful conversations or shared experiences there, said Rachel Poliner, a Massachusetts consultant who helps schools design advisory programs.

And teachers themselves need direction and training to support their students in those efforts, a task that can also make adults feel vulnerable at times, she said. Otherwise advisories are likely to look like academic class periods without the academics-desks in rows, teachers leading discussions and activities, and students lacking interest.

"As adults we have a lot of routines and rituals in our lives that keep us organized, healthy, connected to family and friends, and eating the right things, and kids don't have those yet," Poliner said. "So if advisory could be a place where you actually figure out the routines and rituals that would make their lives better, and involve students in crafting them, and then practice them a lot, wouldn't that be more authentic?"

Getting It Right

Done well, advisories are designed around the needs of students, giving them the freedom to shape their experiences and the space to express their fears, hopes, and needs, she said, and that kind of model takes planning and resources. To get advisories right, schools need to offer ongoing professional development and support to teachers who may be uncomfortable with the format, and they need to integrate them into larger school strategies, Poliner said. And they need to be thoughtful about what they're hoping to accomplish by adopting advisories-allowing that purpose to drive decisions about issues like the duration and frequency of advisory periods and how long cohorts of students remain grouped together.

The staff at Wayland Middle School in Wayland, Mass., went through such a planning process in designing its current version of advisories. Administrators lengthened the scheduled time from 25 to 40 minutes, put two adults in every classroom, and integrated advisory groups into academic and social-emotional learning themes that drive projects and activities. The groups emphasize BERT, which stands for Belonging, Empathy, Respect, and Trust.

The center of the strategy, called TAG groups, lets students drive decisions-from how to handle difficult discussions about current events to what kind of rituals they create together to build shared experiences that can form the foundations of friendships.

"Our aim is always to let kids take the lead," said Principal Betsy Gavron, who co-leads a TAG group of 6th-grade students. Administrators and other staff members help lead TAG groups with classroom teachers, sharing responsibility for the program.

Those little rituals-like playing a certain song on a classmate's birthday-help students feel more comfortable when more serious issues come into play, Gavron said. TAG groups have discussed broad social issues like justice, and they've dropped everything to give students a chance to process their emotions the day after a mass school shooting made headlines.

Each grade level at Wayland has a "house mentor," which is a historic figure to center their studies, and students also go on a related field trip with their TAG groups. For example, 6th graders study Henry David Thoreau and take a 10-mile bike ride to nearby Walden Pond, 7th graders study conservationist Rachel Carson and do field experiments together at Cape Cod, and 8th-grade groups take a trip to Washington, D.C., as part of their studies of Martin Luther King, Jr. and justice issues.

Sixth grader Lila Berg said her group's bike trip helped ease her feelings about her transition to middle school. "You know someone really well because they are in your TAG group," she said.

Wayland has about 640 students, which can be intimidating for young students. "We think about it as another way to make a large school feel smaller," Gavron said.

Addressing Multiple Concerns

Advisories are not uncommon and they aren't new. Private prep schools have used them for decades to provide intensive support and academic guidance to their students. And nonacademic student meetings were popular with the growth of the middle school model. But some of the purposes of the student meetings have changed over time.

Advocates for "whole-child education" pitch advisories as solutions to a range of school concerns-from safety and suicide prevention to bullying and academic support.

And more districts have adopted comprehensive social-emotional learning plans, designed to boost student skills in areas like solving problems and building relationships. While those strategies are often more intuitively integrated into elementary school classes, secondary schools often add advisories as a way to "do SEL."

Curriculum companies have taken notice of the trend, offering packaged advisory programs that include discussion prompts and workbooks. But Poliner says schools shouldn't lean too heavily on off-the-shelf solutions without giving teachers flexibility to customize their own approaches and students the freedom to take ownership of their experiences.

That's because the less-structured class periods are often set up as a systemic solution to the individual, sensitive experiences adolescents face, and those students can seem almost allergic to approaches that seem impersonal.

Researchers say students' learning can be stifled if they feel like they don't belong at school or if environments don't seem designed for them. And data support the idea that many students feel isolated or disengaged at school.

A 2017 Gallup Education poll on education described 24 percent of respondents as "actively disengaged in school." Twenty-nine percent of the national pool of 733,471 students in grades 5 to 12 were described as "not engaged," while the remaining 47 percent were considered engaged.

The poll derived its engagement scores by combining student responses to a range of questions about the importance of their schoolwork, whether they feel safe at school, if they "have a best friend at school," and whether they believe "the adults at my school care about me."

But teachers can feel daunted, or even cynical, about schools' efforts to address those issues, and that's especially true if they have fatigue from years of programs that are quickly adopted and discarded before they have a chance to prove their value.

And some teachers feel ill-equipped to talk to students about their emotions or how to build personal skills like self control and setting goals. That's especially true of some secondary teachers, who may have been drawn to the field because of an interest in a given academic subject, like math, principals say.

In some districts, there has been pushback from parents who would prefer lessons on issues like respect and tolerance take place at home. And some have said schools should focus more energy on academic issues instead.

Poliner said schools need to make the case for advisories and other social-emotional learning programs with teachers and invite them into designing how they work. And they need to make it clear that the teacher's role is to facilitate conversations, not to take the place of school counselors, psychologists, and social workers.

Audra Connolly, a 6th grade teacher in Nampa, Idaho, said leading her students in open discussions comes more naturally for her because she recently worked in an elementary school, where "circle time" and daily questions were the norm. She still uses those questions to help start conversations with her advisory students in middle school. And sometimes the conversations turn to harder topics, too. After a gunman attacked a Pittsburgh synagogue in October, she gave students time and freedom to grapple with their understanding of the incident.

"Every kid needs adults and people to build relationships with them," she said. "I'm not just a math teacher. I'm here to help these kids be successful."

In Wayland, having two adults in each advisory allows one to take the lead when the other feels less comfortable handling a conversation or leading an activity, Gavron said. The majority-white district is part of a voluntary school desegregation program that brings in black students from neighboring areas. Before advisory leaders led conversations about issues like bias, they spent a year and a half preparing through professional development, reading, and staff conversations.

But the advisories at Wayland aren't just intense conversations. Sometimes the groups award stickers to peers who showed character strengths and play wacky games that seem perfectly in place in a middle school.

Teachers have a variety of online resources, including a menu of tested group activities they can choose from and space to discuss what's working, and what's not, with their peers who also lead advisories.

"We take care of one another," Gavron said. "The adults can only be good for the kids if the adults are in good shape."

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How Schools Can Make Advisories Meaningful for Students and Teachers

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Middle and high schools often favor setting aside a block in students' schedules for something a little less structured-and a lot less academic-than a traditional class period. The reoccuring blocks-often called advisories-are adopted as a way to strengthen relationships and help students weather the challenges that may keep them from succeeding academically, including a lack of routines, social isolation, and out-of-school issues that can bleed into the school day.

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An advisory is a regularly scheduled period of time, typically during the school day, when teachers meet with small groups of students for the purpose of advising them on academic, social, or future-planning issues. In some cases, other adults and staff members, such as guidance counselors or social workers, may act as advisors or participate in an advisory program. "Advisories," as these meetings are commonly called, may be casual and loosely organized in some schools, or they may follow a prescribed curriculum and clear set of routines determined by school leaders, teachers, and students. Advisories may meet daily, multiple times a week, or only a few times a month. Advisory periods tend to be shorter than a typical class, perhaps as 20 or 30 minutes long, and they are often used as an alternative to more traditional homeroom periods.

The broad purpose of an "advisory period" or "advisory program" is to ensure that at least one adult in the school is getting to know each student well, making sure their learning needs are being met, and encouraging them to make good academic choices and plan for their future. Advisories are designed to foster stronger adult-student relationships and a stronger sense of belonging and community among students. While many advisories pair groups of students with individual teachers for a single school year (in this case, students would move on to a different advisor the next year), advisory programs may also pair students with the same teachers for multiple years (e.g., all four years of high school). Proponents may argue that the most effective advisories tend to be well organized, scheduled frequently and during normal school hours, and focused on specific advisory objectives, such as providing academic assistance or guidance on planning for college and career goals after graduation.

Depending on the priorities and structure of the program, students may receive guidance on a wide range of topics during an advisory period, including course selection, future planning, study skills, social problems, and outside-of-school learning opportunities. In addition to one-on-one conversations with a designated advisor, students may also participate in group discussions or team-building exercises intended to build stronger peer relationships and teach students the value of collaboration, constructive feedback, and healthy peer interactions. Some schools also use "peer advisories," which pair students with peer advisors, which are typically older mentor students or peer tutors who can help fellow student with specific academic problems.

Reform

Advisories are one of many possible strategies that schools use to make sure that students don't "fall through the cracks"-that is, to ensure that their social, emotional, and academic needs are not being overlooked or left unattended. For this reason, advisories are often considered to be a form of personalized learning or academic support focused on helping all students succeed academically, stay in school, and make more informed educational decisions that will help them prepare for the future.

Advisories may also be seen as reform strategy focused on using available school time more intentionally and purposefully. In many schools, advisories will take the place of traditional study halls and homeroom periods, which-in the view of some educators-are often underutilized as learning time or student-support opportunities. In schools that are experiencing high dropout rates, low academic achievement, or other indicators of poor performance, for example, educators may argue that these schools should not squander available time that could be used more effectively-i.e., to help students catch up academically, prepare for college, or receive guidance, mentoring, and academic assistance. Advisories are one of many strategies for using school time more productively.

While advisories may be used in all grade levels, they have become a common school-improvement strategy in high schools, where students have historically had more limited opportunities to build strong relationships with teachers and other adults in the school.

Debate

While the advisory concept is not typically controversial, it is a fairly common for specific advisory programs to become the objects of criticism, usually due to wide variability in the quality of their design or execution. As a reform strategy, advisory programs are often created with good intentions, but these periods can easily lapse into unfocused inactivity or socializing if they are not properly structured and monitored. For example, if school leaders fail to establish clear expectations and goals for advisory periods, or they fail to regularly monitor and evaluate how the time is being used and whether it's being used effectively, both advisors and students may become confused about the purpose of an advisory and therefore critical of the program. If advisory periods are too infrequent or too short, or if too many students are assigned to an advisory group, adult advisors may also struggle to maintain focus and continuity, use available time effectively, or give students the attention they need.

In addition, teachers may not feel comfortable advising students on non-academic problems, or they may feel unprepared or unqualified to be advisors, particularly when it comes to addressing a student's personal, social, emotional, or psychological problems. In these cases, teachers may argue that the advisory role is not part of their job description, and that advising students on non-academic issues should be the responsibility of trained professionals, such as guidance counselors and school social workers.

School leaders and educators may not support advisories for any number of reasons: some may perceive these programs to take instructional time away from the school day, for example, while others may become frustrated if an advisory program is either overly prescriptive or completely unstructured, which may require teachers to spend more time planning and preparing for advisories-a situation that can become problematic or contentious if teachers are already feel overworked because they are teaching large classes, teaching too many classes, or taking on additional professional responsibilities.

As with any school-reform strategy, the success of advisories depends largely of the quality of their design and execution, and schools may need to provide relevant training or professional development to increase the likelihood that advisories will be effective.

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An advisory is a regularly scheduled period of time, typically during the school day, when teachers meet with small groups of students for the purpose of advising them on academic, social, or future-planning issues. In some cases, other adults and staff members, such as guidance counselors or social workers, may act as advisors or participate ...

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The most important class in high school isn’t what you think

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Advisory is not just homeroom or study hall. Here’s why a strong advisory program is the cornerstone of a successful high school.