Advisory

One of the newest ideas we implemented this year in our middle school is our advisory program. It's not the typical advisory program. As a PBIS school, we have added to our menu of interventions for students with behavioral needs at the Tier 2 and Tier 3 levels. Last year, we knew we still had the top "5%" we needed something more for. Enter advisory.

We have academic AIS courses for ELA and Math that usually meet every other day for 45 minutes. We added an additional AIS course, called Advisory to that list. Students selected for advisory were identified based on needs in the following areas:

• motivation
• attendance
• behavior

Some of these students had skills in ELA and/or Math but were not sharing those in academic settings. There were other barriers we needed to work through to reach them. Using our minor incident report data, discipline referrals, and attendance records, we were able to identify students most "at risk" in the building and schedule them in this course. Our commitment was to schedule not more than 2 students at 1 time in the same section. We began the year with 6 sections overall. One period (2 sections, A/C and B/D days) was facilitated by a teacher and the other two periods were led by a Teaching Assistant. We purchased the Advisory Book for each teacher/TA assigned to this course. (The book is intended to serve as a resource of lessons.) 

Book available at https://originsonline.org/bookstore/advisory-book-revised-edition-0

Each marking period, MIR data and report card information for each advisory student is reviewed. Once students are showing consistent improvement, our goal is to transition them out of the service. There are two reasons for this.

1) When we move successful students out, we can move students in crisis into the program.

2) When we move successful students out, they are given the opportunity to grow wings.

I had to talk with two young men who have been in advisory for most of this year. Both of them have shown remarkable improvement. One beamed with pride as I talked to him about how proud we all were of his turnaround this year. In a few weeks, his schedule would change and we would like him to take an elective in place of advisory. He kept nodding and smiling when I shared this good news. The other young man was not as pleased. He didn't want to leave advisory. Sure, he could admit he didn't technically need the support anymore. He was doing very well behaviorally in school. But, there was one thing...

He really connected with his advisory mentor. 

He didn't want to lose that connection. 

THAT's the power of most interventions, isn't it? When students feel like they matter and are noticed, they most always deliver. The balance is found when when we can successfully release students so they can fly on their own. I have no doubts both of these young men will do just that. Just watch.