The Purpose of Advisory: Our Honest Thoughts

Every Monday, we sit down and listen to our advisor talk about a variety of issues such as bullying, stress, time management, and grit for 40 minutes on a PowerPoint presentation. Unfortunately, we often zone out and complain after. We also often lose our academic assistance time because advisory gets prioritized. But why? While advisory serves as our life lessons and ethics class, many students are left questioning its necessity and its prioritization over academic assistance. 

To understand the real reasons for having an advisory and its purpose, it’s important to recognize student opinions first.  

As students, we often lack insight into what goes on behind the scenes. We only see the lessons in advisory, not the goals behind them. Therefore, we asked students for their thoughts on the purpose of advisory and compared their responses to its actual purpose. 

To get a truly honest view on advisory, some students opted to be anonymous. On their thoughts on the purpose of advisory, one student expressed, “I think advisory aims to teach the things that aren’t taught in curricular classes. These include socializing, cyber safety, and many more topics that could be useful to a student.” 

Similarly, grade 9 students Maria N. and Noel C. noted that advisory focuses on lessons outside of the curriculum, addressing common issues in our daily lives and safety. In contrast, a student who is new to AISG and experiencing advisory lessons for the first time voiced, “Honestly, I find advisory pretty useless unless it’s used for announcements.” 

Although many students may think that their advisors plan the weekly lessons, it is actually the counselors who come together and decide the weekly lessons. They explain the true purpose of our advisory lessons. The counselors shared that the goal of these lessons is to provide a safe and supportive space for students to discuss important topics that will aid in their success both in school and beyond. They hope students can learn interpersonal skills, and learn about themselves, peers, and the world. They stated, “Overall, the purpose of advisory lessons is to support the holistic development of students, and to help them become well-rounded individuals who are prepared for the challenges and opportunities of the future.” 

While initial observations suggest that students’ views align reasonably well with the advisories’ intended purpose, the question remains: Is advisory itself the issue, or is it the way it is executed? 

Advisory lessons cover complex topics like how to deal with our mental health and social relationships that need to be addressed more thoroughly. However, some students feel they haven’t been receiving the benefits or fully understand the goals of advisory. For various upper secondary students, advisory has been part of their weekly calendar for years, particularly for those who have been part of the AISG community since elementary or middle school. 

One student reflected, “Honestly, I have found advisory lessons kind of repetitive. I acknowledge the fact that every year there are new students and so they need to learn this information, but for older students, we go through some similar lessons every year and there aren’t huge takeaways in that.” They added, “I never really understood the reasoning behind advisories as they are right now. Many of these topics have been covered either in elementary or are basic information that many people know, so there isn’t really much purpose behind it for me.”  

Other students explained why they believe advisory may not be achieving what it is meant to. Noel C. stated, “I think that the only issue with advisory is that there isn’t enough time to go in-depth on the topics we’re learning about.” This is true as advisory lessons are limited to only 40 minutes a week. The idea of limited advisory time is shared with other students as they write that advisory is too broad and needs to be more focused on lessons based on the needs of the students, allowing this to be a space for support, which would allow for the supportive environment it was originally intended to create. 

The members of the counseling team outlined the lengthy and challenging process involved in creating advisory lessons. They explained how a few years ago, they began to draw information from various sources to make sure it was relevant. They added, “This was done through surveys (based on the needs), feedback from teachers/advisors, and observations of student behavior and academic performance. The topics range from mental health and wellness, academic success, career exploration, and social-emotional learning.”  

They also mentioned the CASEL domains which refers to the five areas of core competencies in social and emotional learning: collaborative, academic, social, and emotional learning. They include concepts like self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. With lessons focused on perseverance, relationships, and stress management, these competencies are highlighted in our advisory lessons. 

Yet, the negative comments on advisory seem to be never-ending.  

For some, the pressures associated with academic stress and personal life continue to overshadow the positive aspects of advisory, raising further questions about its effectiveness. To add, among the students interviewed, more academic assistance time was mentioned in almost all responses. We asked students how they utilized academic assistance to determine the true value of these 40 minutes. 

As Grade 9 and Grade 10 students in the MYP program, study blocks aren’t part of their schedule. Thus, for them, academic assistance is something to look forward to for their academic studies and mental health. One anonymous student shared, “Sometimes I would spend it doing work and meeting with teachers, catching up with assessments and stuff like that. But most of the time, it really just acts as a break in the middle of the day where you can relax from the first class and get prepared mentally for the rest of the day, which in my opinion is still very much needed.” On the other hand, a teacher who has opted to stay anonymous, responded to the opinion that students need more academic assistance time by acknowledging the importance of it and stating what they’ve observed as they say, “Students do need time to ask questions to their teachers and to their peers if there is something unclear to them in their lessons. They also need time for assignments that they missed (for example when they missed school for a school event), as well as time to do their homework to alleviate the homework charge at home.” However, they also acknowledge the importance of advisory lessons by saying it’s important for life skills.  

Ms. Eileen, when asked about students wanting more academic assistance explained, “Students will always want more Academic Assistance time, but the fact is school is so much more than just academics.  Students can learn just as much in other ways like clubs, service opportunities, sports and things like Advisory.  The Advisory program is there to help foster healthy relationships with peers and teachers, learning skills to incorporate an appropriate work/life balance, introduce and highlight critical local, regional and world issues and address the important issues to teenagers as well as life skills for your post AISG life.” 

Other Grade 9 interviewees, Noel C. and Maria N. explained that they use academic assistance to prepare for upcoming tests, which makes them feel more ready. Another student suggested that more academic assistance time should be added whenever possible. In that same response, the student shared that they valued academic assistance time and advisory time because it was valuable time for students to gain information about CAS and EE work, especially for Grade 11 and 12 students.  

Many students have their solutions for solving and improving the advisory lessons. One student suggested, “They could maybe make the students fill out a form of what kind of support they are looking for to ensure that advisory actually affects us positively.” Another student commented, “Redefine the purpose of advisories so that it is more relevant.” When the teacher was asked to explain the importance of advisory, they answered by saying advisory is important to strengthen the relationships with students. They explained, “It is important that students feel safe, encouraged and understood to be able to ask for help if they need, take risks at school, and thrive. During advisory, we often are prompted to have conversations or discussions that are interesting.”  

 

All in all, students recognize the importance of advisory and how it provides knowledge that the academic curriculum does not cover. Advisory and its purpose becomes lost in its development and execution. Teachers need to create engaging advisory lessons to teach us life lessons and skills in a safe environment that we can’t learn in a lecture in class. In fact, teachers also recognize this issue with students lacking engagement, as one advisor wrote, “However, I feel that students often don’t see the benefits of Advisory. Understandably, they are critical of the content and the way the messages are being delivered, which, I agree, can be delivered in a different way so that it fits better our school and students’ needs.” To resolve this issue, they see within their advisory, they suggested that advisory should be about listening to and understanding each other’s points of views and how to discuss it while being empathetic. Each advisor does try to adapt their students’ needs into the lessons by adapting it. For this teacher, they believe advisory should be less content heavy, they explained, “There is a message that needs to be transmitted, but it is better to do less of the content and have quality discussions.” 

To improve advisory, it is clear that not only student input is needed. In fact, advisors have a strong opinion on how to improve it as they are the ones who put it together. Both students and advisors recognize the importance of advisory, but for its purpose to be executed, change must be made by listening to the thoughts of both parties. 

To gather student insights, the school has established an advisory board. Ms. Eileen commented on the importance of having student insight as they aim to redesign advisory for next year, “I have opened a Student Feedback group for Advisory.  It’s open to all grades and it’s meant to gather their ideas, comments and feedback to tailor the program to the AISG context.  We are redesigning the program to create a more engaging, collaborative approach to the themes and lessons. Participating in the feedback group has been limited so far but I encourage students to have their voices heard and partner with the HDLs and myself to improve the program.”  

For more information about this committee, please contact Ms. Eileen.