Five minutes per day; 25 minutes per week; 100 minutes per month; 800 minutes (13.3 hours) per school year. This is how long students spend with their peers and advisors during morning advisory (homeroom). Since the beginning of morning advisory at PRISMS, there have been arguments about whether homeroom meetings are meaningful or not. Some students suggest that there is no point in morning advisory because five minutes is too short for any meaningful conversations. However, from my experience, morning advisory helps establish a close relationship between students and advisors. It also offers us a chance to learn something new on a regular basis.
At the start of the year many students do not know each other or the faculty that well, despite the small size of the school,. Morning advisory offers a chance to establish closer connections to peers and teachers. In my advisory group, Savva is a perfect example. He joined PRISMS as a junior in September, 2016 for his interest in STEM. Within a week of being Mr. Kemp’s advisee, he developed a close relationship with Mr. Kemp and with Joshua, another advisee with whom he has common interests. All Mr. Kemp’s advisees have also got to know each other more personally by the end of the year. So, as a result of communication on a daily basis, students can get to know more about their peers and advisors.
Five minutes may not be enough time for deep conversations, it is enough time to be exposed to intriguing knowledge that you may not have known or paid attention to earlier. During morning advisory today (May 31), we discussed Internet restrictions in China. As of September 2015, more than 3,000 websites, including Google, Facebook, and YouTube, have been blocked. However, these restrictions did not serve their purposes well. They merely led to the rise of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) in China. Chinese people found all sorts of ways to “get over the blockade” (circumvention technology) to get access to some commonly used websites in the US. This conversation stirred up my interest in network safety and control over news and knowledge. Similar experience is frequent in my morning advisory meetings. Students can discover new interests and learn more as the result of morning advisory.
Five minutes is only half of the break time between classes. However, morning advisory granted us a chance for new relationships and discoveries. I think the five minutes is well-used every morning and we should therefore preserve the morning advisory.