Advisory Change: Good or Bad?

As our classes change, our advisory does too, and almost everyone has a different opinion on it. Some students rely on the class as a space for relationships to be built, and a space for comfortable talks with classmates and teachers. On the other hand, some students find the class awkward and limiting in conversation, complaining of a lack of spark between classmates and teachers.

We know what most of the students think in vast arrays of opinions, but what do the teachers think? Math teacher Mrs. Schaefer shares “I think it helps us develop relationships with new students, but hinders our past relationships, because we are only given about two weeks to finalize it.”  

Some hoped that Advisory would be the one thing that stayed the same throughout high-school. Now that it’s not, we’re going to have 6 (for sophomores) and 8 (for freshman) different advisory classes. We now have the opportunity to meet many more students and teachers, but it’s at the cost of having one stable class to rely on. When we asked Catherine Goodall, a Sophomore at Green Level, about her views on this topic, she replied similarly, saying “I don’t like this new change much because I liked my teacher and being in the library. I also liked having at least one class that’s reliable and the same while everything else changes.”

On the other hand, some students see the point of view such as meeting new people, like Ethan Batchelor. He shares, “I liked my class before, but I like my second semester teacher too. She is my teacher currently and I am looking forward to extending that relationship with her, and hoping to have some friends in my class, and hoping to meet some new people. I think it was a great change by Mrs. Summers!”

The class was a safe space for many students like Bella Lain who shared that “My homeroom was a place I looked forward to each week because I had formed comfortable connections with both my teacher and the other students in the class. I will miss having that place where I can talk about everything going on in my life and be offered support from teachers and my peers.” 

Helen Molina, a freshman in Green Level, has her own opinion on this topic, saying “I don’t like this new change, I think we should have kept the same advisory classes for at least a year because if we kept it, we would have been able to get to know more people then if we constantly kept changing classes. We aren’t going to be able to make any lasting relationships. We also won’t get to know our advisors well.”

We agree with Helen because even though our Advisory is supposed to help us meet new people, we won’t be able to build strong relationships with students and teachers we only meet in a semester.