Philosophy: An advisory is a small community within the school. Students remain with the same advisory for four years, so they will get to understand and know each other and the advisor very well. Advisories become great support systems, because the students are able to have close relationships with the advisor and each other. It’s like an extended family. With an advisory system, every student has an adult in the school who cares about him or her deeply.

Student’s Role:
Students come to advisory everyday. The advisory is the student’s family group at school, with its own name, culture and personality. Students are expected to become respectful, caring and productive members of the advisory group.

Advisor’s Role: The advisor leads the group, facilitates team building, and plans advisory activities with input from the group. The advisor helps the students work on issues through activities, discussions, speakers and trips. The advisor plans trust-building activities and helps the group form an identity. The advisor sets up advisory rituals and structures to help student’s succeed, tracks each student’s work and learning and enriches the advisory with an array of learning activities. The advisor gives students a voice and choice in planning and facilitating advisory and strives to build students’ leadership skills. The advisor helps students manage their time, plan work, and complete projects. The advisor works cooperatively with parents, mentors, and other staff.

Getting Started – Orientation

Team Building
• In the first few months of advisory, spend a lot of time with activities and discussions that help the students get to know and trust each other.
• Have group discussions about how the advisory can support each other more and how it can become closer. Let the students lead the discussion.

Day-to-day work in advisory
• Scheduling: In advisory, ask students to plan their day and week in homework notebooks. Set goals for upcoming tests and long-term projects.
• Checking In: Look over student work and projects. Monitor homework.
• Schedule One-on-Ones: Schedule individual meetings to have with students during the week.
• Discussions: Plan discussions to have with your advisory.
• Peer Help: Advisory is a great place for students to help each other with academic work and interest exploration.
• Advisory Activities: You may read a book or a play together, do community service, make group decisions, do a Pick Me Up for the school, do presentations for each other, share your project work, etc.

General Advisory Ideas
• Talk with other advisors about their advisory schedules and what activities are working well for them.
• Talk with advisors who have been doing this for a while. They will have some great ideas for involving students, problem solving, and activities.
• Involve the students in the decision making and planning. The more investment they have in advisory, the more active and enthusiastic they will be.
• Have the students make a mission statement for your advisory.
• Build a large monthly/weekly calendar together to schedule work and activities.
• Team students with a buddy.
• Plan getting-to-know-you activities that go beyond just knowing someone’s biographical basics. This could be done through discussing each other’s values, goals, future dreams, likes/dislikes, etc.
• Be on the lookout for students who need encouragement, and try to get them involved with other students on an individual basis. Teaming them with buddies who are accepting and outgoing may help the excluded student be more involved and comfortable.
• Use veteran advisors and the principal for coming up with strategies/contracts/meetings to help students.

Advisory Goals:
*DEVELOPING SELF - Skill assessment and learning style recognition; study, time management and decision-making skills; health and wellness; setting, monitoring and evaluating goals: personal and academic; and self-reflection and self-evaluation.
*MAKING A LIVING, A LIFE, A DIFFERENCE - Roles, responsibilities and relationships; service-learning; and career exploration.


Ideas/Examples
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Research

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