West Newbury- Have you made a connection? Do you feel Advisory is personalized to your needs? Do you agree with this new program?
As Pentucket Regional Middle School works to improve, they are making many changes, but one change causes mixed emotions.
Last year Pentucket participated in a skills program, which was used as a study period. Students could study for tests they had in the upcoming weeks, make up tests or quizzes that they had missed, go to their teachers for extra help or to get work that they had missed while being absent.
This year things have changed. In place of skills is a program called Advisory.
Dr. Lay, Pentucket Regional Middle School principal, said, “It’s just a different name,” when asked why Advisory was chosen in place of skills. When NELMS came to Pentucket last year, it was one of their suggestions. “I wanted to call it something different so we could look back at skills differently,” she said.
“The goal of Advisory is to promote healthy student development, support academic success and bridge the divide between healthy development and academic success. The adult advisor helps to ensure that all young people have an adult who knows them well. Advisory helps create stronger bonds among young people, usually cutting across the typical exclusionary school groups that form in schools,” noted by Larry Dieringer, of The Advisory Guide.
Mrs. Martin, a teacher at Pentucket Middle School, when asked if she felt that she had made a bond with students, and have built stronger relationships with them, said, “ I have the same bond that I had when we had skills.”
On the other hand Pentucket teacher Mrs. Eppoliti said, “For some of my advisory yes, but some no. I think that the Advisory program still needs to be developed a little bit.”
“When school is more based on each students individual needs they are likely to be more successful in school,” said Dieringer. I asked a student if she felt advisory was personalized to her needs. “Not at all,” says Emma Vargo, an eighth grader at Pentucket. “On the days I don’t have chorus, I have to play K’nex with six other boys and can’t leave the room.
Is this so called “Advisory Program” sending the right message?
When asking Dr. Lay if she thinks the Advisory in our school will establish into a strong family-school connection, she said, “That’s my hope, the underlining feeling of being safe with a trusted adult creates a tight nit community, which in turn, creates academic success.”
When asking Mrs. Eppoliti what she would do to improve Advisory she said, “I would call it something else because I feel that teachers, students, and parents have the wrong feeling about Advisory.”
I also asked Dr. Lay if she felt that once our school gets to know the Advisory structure and program better the students who don’t enjoy it now will like it more. “I do because it feels awkward for most anybody whenever you try to bring something new to an organization it takes people a while to accept it, and then learn how to improve it.”
“ The Adolescent Health Survey found that adolescents’ sense of connectedness to school is the single most important associated with significantly lower rates of emotional distress, suicidal thoughts and behaviors, violence, substance abuse and sexual activity,” said Dieringer.
The Advisory program is meant to be linked to our school mission, teaching students to learn with excellence respect and responsibility.
When asking Mrs. Eppoliti if she thought Advisory was linked to our school mission she said, “I do. Advisory helps to foster open communication, which is part of our mission.”
From another point of view, “No, I don’t,” says Mrs. Martin. “We aren’t teaching responsibility or to be respectful.”
It is said in The Advisory Guide article that Advisory programs promote academic success. Is the program at Pentucket promoting academic success?
In one of Mrs. Martin’s quotes she said, “I feel that if homework isn’t being done at home or test can’t be made up after school this would be a good time for it.”
In another quote she said,” I think that academics should take president over everything and students should take responsibility for their grades and not have fun.”
I asked Dr. Lay how she felt. “That’s an excellent question. On Monday morning’s teacher meet to set goals and talk about what excellence respect and responsibility look like in our school.” She alluded to the fact that if we look at advisory as what it could be, advisory would be one way to see excellence respect and responsibility in our school.
When Advisory was put into place students had an option of what Advisory period they would like to enter. For example, a few choices were Japanese, Karaoke, and Gym. They could only choose one of the Advisory classes to enter their name into. A drawing then took place, and if you were lucky enough you got your choice. The only issue was there were only a certain number of students who were put into one Advisory class, and for the kids who didn’t get put into one had to stay with their original Advisor. Was this fair to the all students?
For the students who didn’t get put into their choice, will they get the opportunity later in the year? I asked Dr. Lay this question during her interview and she said, “Our original plan was for students to stay with their Advisor all year. Specialist wanted to have the same students all year so they could build strong relationships with them and form a bond with them, which is our main goal of Advisory. For me it’s still up in the air. There is still room for decision making, but I still want respect the specialist since they have built stronger relationships with the students.”
The universal feeling in the school is that there should have been a clear definition of what Advisory is before it was implemented.