One of the truisms that someone once told me about schools is that you can always tell what is valued in a high school by what is scheduled. If something is part of the schedule, then it has value.

It’s not enough to say that we care about kids if we don’t create a structure in our schools that reflect that ethic. For us, that is manifest by our advisory program. I’ve long said that an effective advisory program is the soul of a school.

So what is advisory at SLA?

At its most basic, it is a class that meets twice a week. The class is a four-year loop of around 20 kids and the same teacher for all four years. The curriculum is the community. (or vice versa.) There are topics that get dealt with… 9th grade is a lot about the adjustment to high school, the second half of 11th grade and the first half of 12th grade is all about college… throughout there’s a focus on social / emotional growth, school issues, and life issues. But most of all, it’s a place for adults and students to be together, talk about issues that matter to them, and have a community that grows and changes and gets deeper over time.

For parents, it means knowing that your child has at least one adult in the building whose job it is to see your child as more than a student in a classroom.. to see them as a whole person.

For students, it means knowing that there’s a teacher you can always go to… and it means knowing that there are a group of kids who you will go through school with, experience the conversations and growth together. They may not always be your best friends, but that community will be there, even as friendships and relationships and classes change. It’s the chance to learn how to have conversations with adults and kids together that isn’t centered around English or Science or Math, but around the issues that the community brings to the table together…. or about the things that don’t quite fit into a "traditional" curriculum.

For teachers, it’s that reminder — in the schedule, planned — that our kids are more than just what we see in our subject areas. It is the scheduled part of the day where the primary objective is nothing less than the ethic of care. When there are twenty kids that you have to see as a whole person, who you know that you have to help navigate high school, that mindset carries over into every class, every interaction.

That’s how we’ve chosen to privilege the ethic of care in our schedule. There are lots of ways to do it. And we didn’t invent it. For folks looking for a wonderful resource on how to structure a four year advisory program, I recommend "The Advisory Guide: Designing and Implementing Effective Advisory Programs in Secondary Schools" (Carol Miller Lieber, Rachel A. Poliner). It’s a great resource, and it’s a great way to start thinking about what advisory can be.