In our upper school (9-12), advisors meet their groups once a week for 20
minutes. In our middle school (7-8), advisors meet their groups three times
a week for 20-30 minutes. Previously, upper school advisory groups met only
once every three weeks, when intramural and external grades and progress
reports were issued. We believe this will allow advisors and their advisees
to get to know each other better and strengthen the bond between students
and the school. It will also smooth the transition from the middle school to
the upper school.
We will occasionally do a brief training session during faculty orientation.
In the middle school, all advisors meet weekly with others on the middle
school team to discuss social needs and successes; a lot of professional
development of advisors occurs naturally and organically through these
meetings.
I believe research says kids are best off to stay with the same advisor
throughout. We do not rotate advisors in the middle school. In the upper
school, students are allowed to rank their choices for each subsequent year;
I am not sure what amount of turnover happens as a result. I know that when
I was an upper school advisor, most all groups were pretty stable.
Topics in the middle school: goals, preparing for student-led conferences,
activities to raise interpersonal and intrapersonal knowledge, and just
plain fun and games.
Take care,
Bill Ivey
Middle School Dean
Stoneleigh-Burnham School
[ For info on ISED-L see http://www.gds.org/ISED-L ]
Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons, attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license.
RSS Feed, http://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?RSS&L=ISED-L
