Assessing Advisement

Written by Jack Campbell

When I spoke with the Assistant Principal Mrs. McCarty about Advisement and Access, I learned more about the reasoning for Advisement.

Advisement was created by a group of teachers and administrators who sat down, looked at data, and decided that we needed to work on certain skills. They also acknowledged that every grade level has different needs, so they decided to make it grade-specific.

It takes a lot of time for programs to get started. The change from having two Access periods to one Access period and Advisement is especially hard because students look at Access as their own personal time. There were a lot of students who were not using it. Instead they stayed home, they went out for lunch, or they went to King Soopers. When we look at our day in school, by law we need to say that it’s instructional time, and with two Access periods a week, a large chunk of that time wasn’t spent in school. Down the line, if teachers and students say that it’s a waste of time they will think about their next steps. Teachers and administrators want this to work, but overall we need more time and planning.

A student says:

Kenoi, Salvador 12 - “Advisement is a waste of time, you have nothing to do, all you do is sit there and do nothing. They are supposed to be helping seniors get ready to go off to college and they are not, they are supposed to help them with all of their stress and they are doing nothing about it. I would rather have it go back to being Access/Access.”

Freshmen are learning how to be high schoolers and how to stay organized with all of their classes. For Sophomores, Advisement is a dedicated time for them to work on their Sophomore Project. Juniors are able to work on improving test-taking skills and take practice SAT work. They would be able to help you if you are not college ready, if you are not ready to go to college they will help you figure out what your next step could be. Advisement for Seniors is dedicated to the Senior project and their high school graduation.

The teachers that lead each advisement are;

-Freshman- McCague, Jessica and Cohen, Joseph -Sophomore- Brant, Jennifer and Nisenson, Douglas -

Junior- Ables, Joni and Yutzy, Curi

-Seniors- Orsini, Denise and VandeVusse, Nichole

I believe that if we used Advisement as a study hall and let students travel like Access but it would be a day that you can’t skip. This would give students time to ask questions to teachers and everyone would be required to attend. If we were to change what we needed to do in Advisement I would say that we could change the rule about no travel and let students go ask teachers questions. This would be a time for students to finish their homework and make sure that they understand what is going on in their classes.