Michelle Valencia
Staff Writer
Advisory has been a class period that has witnessed a significant amount of changes over the course of the years. This school year, both administration and staff came together and decided to change the way Advisory was going to look and be done.
Prior to the pandemic, Advisory was only held once a week and has since been changed to four times a week.
The administration wanted Advisory to not just be a class required to graduate. The Advisory Committee wanted to implement more academic support and a better way for both students and teachers to bond so they created activities like Character Strong and Weekly Goals for each Advisory period.
Although these activities are helpful to a certain extent, many students have expressed that they have quickly become very repetitive and boring.
“At first, the activities that we did in Advisory were fun and interesting because we had not done them before, but because they were so greatly pushed onto us to do them every single week they became less enjoyable,” junior Owen Wilson said.
While a large majority of teachers still continue to do these activities with their students, some have branched out and begun to add their own twist to Advisory. Some of these teachers include, manufacturing teacher Paul Panula and math teacher Kayla Grahn.
“Having Panula for Advisory is fun since he likes to do his own activities. We’ve done stop motion short-films, fun partner games, small projects in the shop. We’ve also done important activities like how to prepare for interviews, learning how to sew a button and a few other things,” Wilson said.
As some teachers like Panula are making more elaborate activities to keep their students interested others are taking a smaller but still impactful approach.
“I try to create an environment where I can reach and bond with the kids, sometimes we play games, other times we spend Advisory talking to each other and other days we are kind of on our own doing what we need during that class period,” Grahn said.
A balance of Advisory slide activities, additional peer bonding and everyday life skills would transform Advisory to a place where students will want to meet and thrive.
“I definitely think we should all implement alternative activities into the class period, this would not only greatly benefit the students but also their teachers. I think especially for juniors and seniors it’s important to also have the opportunity to be able to learn life skills and if that’s through Advisory then that would be great,” Panula said.
Though, it’s important to note that Advisory will not be going away, it is however important to find new ways and alternative activities for students to be able to learn from and enjoy.
The Pioneer Press 