The Importance of Mission-Based Advisory

Post-pandemic, students are yearning for connection. This has made the shared purpose that school mission statements and core values provide for a school community critical. And, I argue, one of the best ways to realize this collective “why” is through advisory. Done well, successful advisory programs are designed around the needs of students, giving them the freedom to shape their experiences and the space to express their fears, hopes, and needs. That kind of model takes planning and resources, but also the tying together of advisory pedagogical practices and school missions.

While advisory is not a new concept, their necessity as a complement to robust academic curriculum is more important than ever.  Whether you are in a public school, independent school, or charter school, students’ needs continue to evolve, even more so as we better understand the extent of the pandemic’s impact on their learning. Just as our academic curricula build foundations for student success, our advisory curricula must do the same for social-emotional and executive functioning skills. The most successful of these can tie together this skill development while building school community and connectedness through a shared mission.

Effective school missions communicate a shared vision and unify stakeholders around common goals. This is especially true when they are systematically implemented and institutionalized, including through advisory. The issue arises, however, when missions are not widely known or emphasized, preventing students from defining their own identities while feeling a connected part of a cohesive school community.

The school mission is not mere words in our handbooks or on our walls, but should instead be a part of the ethos of your identity as a school and the everyday actions of all community members. Danny Mucinskas and Shelby Clark, writing for the Harvard Graduate School of Education, remind us that once a strong mission and its intended impact on students has been established, it’s crucial to embed these ideas into the schools’ pedagogical practices. This includes critical advisory components, such as teaching intercultural understanding, encouraging social impact activities, and fostering social and emotional skills aligned with the school mission.

Most importantly, this type of advisory positively impacts the entire student experience no matter the grade level. John Stegeman states in his article Trend Lines: Clarifying the Purpose of Advisory Programs that “by developing an advisory curriculum with a scope and sequence that is vertically and horizontally aligned with other school activities, students can grow the metacognitive and reflective capacity to guide themselves into adulthood, the social and emotional awareness to feel secure in themselves and their relationships, and a sense of community in the school that promotes belonging and shared purpose.” He notes that these types of advisory curriculums share three critical factors to their success:

1. They help young adolescents “become fully actualized adults.”
2. They support educators in building relationships while establishing school values, norms, and cultural patterns.
3. Finally, they promote school-wide traditions while also providing micro communities that increase students’ feeling of belonging and ensure that they each have a trusted adult in the building.

To be successful, schools should offer staff ongoing professional development and integrate the advisory curriculum into larger school strategies (again tying advisory, the student experience, and school mission together). This shared purpose should drive all decisions about the advisory program, including the scope and sequence of the curriculum and what activities are included.

This should, of course, be a collective effort. Evie Blad explains in her EducationWeek article on making advisory meaningful, “schools need to make the case for advisories and other social-emotional learning programs with teachers and invite them into designing how they work. And they need to make it clear that the teacher’s role is to facilitate conversations, not to take the place of school counselors, psychologists, and social workers.” One successful model is ensuring that the advisor is not the sole adult delivering the content of the curriculum, a model that has worked well at our school because it allows others to take the lead when an advisor feels less comfortable handling a conversation or leading an activity.

No matter how you design you program, I encourage you to always keep in mind the importance of the work you are doing. As Stegeman reminds us, students are contending with a myriad of challenges, ranging from the mental health crisis to the rapid pace of technological and social change, making the future harder to predict or plan and work toward. The hypercompetitive academic culture in some schools, combined with the impact of social media, lead to a culture of competition and comparison which exacerbates the mental health crisis, making it harder to equip students with the resiliency and collaboration skills they’ll need after they leave our buildings. In short, learning and the overall student experience can be stifled if they feel like they don’t belong at school or if environments aren’t designed for them. Luckily, the antidote of robust, mission-driven advisory curriculums can help students’ connectedness to the school community, as well as foster their growth and overall success.

Jake Sumner is Head of the Upper School at the Fay School, an independent, coeducational day and boarding school in Southborough, Massachusetts.

References

• Danny Mucinskas and Shelby Clark How to Make Mission Matter at Your School, (Harvard Graduate School of Education), 2022
• Evie Blad, How Schools Can Make Advisories Meaningful for Students and Teachers (Education Week, 2019)
• John Stegeman, Trend Lines: Clarifying the Purpose of Advisory Programs (NAIS, 2021)