Advisory Program Practices: Facilitating an Interactive Activity

Blogger: Denise Wolk

One of the challenges to being an advisor is making the shift from a direct instruction role (content area teacher) to simply facilitating an activity with students. The following is a simple, step-by-step guide to facilitating an interactive advisory program activity with students.

1. Tell students what they’re going to do (“Now we’re going to an activity called_____________”.)
2. Give directions for how students should arrange themselves for the activity (standing in a circle/sitting face to face in a circle of four/divided into two lines of students facing each other/etc.)
3. Share some of the skills and attitudes that will make this activity a successful one.  (We’d like everyone to participate with an open mind, use your creativity, and listen carefully to the instructions.)
4. Give directions that are clear and specific.
5. Ask if there are any questions about the instructions.  Then ask for a volunteer to repeat the instructions to make sure everyone “got it.”
6. Do the activity.
7. Debrief ANY activity in two ways:
   
   • First, ask participants what they liked, what was fun, what they observed about their own participation or the participation of others, or what they learned about themselves or the group.
   • Second, link what students learned or observed to situations at school and qualities and skills they need to be a successful student.
     

Now that you have the basics, here are a couple of easy activities to try:

Name and Motion
Objective: This is a great way to have everyone learn each other's names.
Materials: None

1. Have everyone in the small group stand in a circle, including the facilitator.
2. One by one, go around the room and have everyone state their name, share something they love to do, and make a sign/mime/motion that represents that particular activity.
3. Go around the circle and each person repeats the names and signs of all the other participants, before they share their name and sign/mime/motion.

Two Truths and a Lie
Objective: This is fun way to find out more about people.
Materials: 3 x 5 cards, pens/pencils

Give each student an index card.  Have each student write down three “facts” about themselves on the card.  Two of the “facts” should be true while one of the “facts” should be false.  Students should try to create three facts that are all credible.  For example: 1) I have lived in 3 states, 2) I have 2 siblings, 3) My favorite food is pizza.  Each student reads the 3 “facts” aloud to the group and individuals in the group try to determine which statement is the lie. 

Advisory Programs: a Key Element in Creating a College-Going Culture, Part 3

Blogger: Denise Wolk

One of the strengths of advisory programs is their flexibility. Schools can select their goals and create their own design. Another strength is their equal focus on a curriculum and the relationships that teachers and students develop. Every student is known well by at least one faculty member. Advisory combines instructional activities for the group; one-on-one conferencing with individual students and contact with parents; and self-perpetuating routines and rituals that make advisory a safe place and help students to become a cohesive group.

The most daunting hurdle that advisory programs face is some teachers' resistance to expanding their own learning and taking on a new role. Lack of solid planning, a coherent curriculum, and adequate professional development can leave students confused about advisory's purpose and leave teachers feeling frustrated and unprepared. Schools that do advisory well make a significant investment of time, money, and resources over many years. The bottom line is that advisory can't be an afterthought in a high school's redesign and school improvement efforts.

For more information about using advisory to build a college going culture, see the ESR white paper Increasing College Access through School-Based Models of Postsecondary Preparation, Planning, and Support.

 

Advisory Programs: a Key Element in Creating a College-Going Culture, Part 2

Guest Blogger: Denise Wolk

Advisory programs offer opportunities for all students to:

• Experience the kind of adult support, academic advisement, and encouragement that fosters success in school and in life
• Participate in an articulated set of grade-level sequenced activities that focus on personal development and career exploration, college preparation, and the completion of a postsecondary plan
• Enhance study skills and metacognitive skills that promote goal setting, self-assessment, time management, and planning
• Learn and practice 21st-century life skills
• Have a greater voice in school life and develop and strengthen their capacity to engage in respectful dialogue and civil conversation about things that matter to them
• Create stronger bonds with peers, usually cutting across the typical exclusionary social groups that form in schools (Poliner and Lieber 2004)
  
  

Successful advisory programs meet several conditions that build faculty investment and sustainability. Although a student development team (which includes teachers, administrators, and guidance staff) needs to drive the design process, the entire faculty needs to be involved in major decisions around the goals, teacher expectations, content, scheduling, and student groupings. More importantly, professional development must be ongoing (at least monthly) to help teachers become comfortable and competent in this new role; strengthen facilitation and conferencing skills; prepare and rehearse the activities they will be delivering; and share best practices, challenges, and successes. One caution should precede any school's development of advisory programs. Agreements and understandings with union representatives and their members must be negotiated regarding instructional minutes, preparation time, consecutive minutes of instruction permitted, and other details, so that a school's plans are not thwarted in the middle of the design process.

For more information about using advisory programs to build a college going culture, see the ESR white paper, Increasing College Access through School-Based Models of Postsecondary Preparation, Planning, and Support.

Q&A with Carol Miller Lieber on Getting Classroom Management RIGHT

Q: Why is it that in ESR's PBS model teachers have some responsibilities for second-tier interventions?

A: You will notice in the pyramid graphic on page 16 of Getting Classroom Management RIGHT, we suggest that teachers should be responsible for some Tier Two interventions. We look at teachers as a first responder when students get off track with behavioral issues. Think of it this way: sending students to the AP for discipline issues that can be handled between the student and the teacher is like a parent sending their unruly child to a neighbor for discipline when they do something wrong at home. Just like asking a neighbor to be responsible for disciplining our own kids, the AP can't be the only one to fix your problem with a student. Look further into Appendix B for worksheets and practice documents to help teachers develop their skills in handling interventions themselves before involving the AP in the mix.

Q&A with Carol Miller Lieber on Making Learning REAL

Q: Personal academic conferencing with students sounds like a good idea, but how and when do I do it?

A: One way to make it possible to provide personal academic conferencing with individual students is to train all of the students in your class to work independently so you can work one-to-one with individual students while others are engaged in their own work. If you plan to bookend the week on Monday and Friday so there are extended periods for independent or group project work time, you can be providing support and academic conference check ins on a regularly scheduled basis with all students. See Appendix A in Making Learning REAL for a variety of strategies for student conferencing.

Advisory Programs: a Key Element in Creating a College-Going Culture

Guest Blogger: Denise Wolk

In some schools, advisory programs are a key structural element to create a college-going culture. Advisors meet with a group of students on a regular basis-once a week, several times a week, or daily-typically for a total of between 45 and 80 minutes during the course of a week. Dedicating a weekly block of time for this type of focused student development has a major impact on high school culture. First and foremost, students' developmental needs, their interests, and their personal and social growth are at the heart of this experience. Students' development is the content of the curriculum. Second, advisory has the potential to personalize the learning environment for every student, ensuring that each student has a relationship with at least one adult who knows them well and communicates, "I'm on your side and on your case." The student development period also provides a unique opportunity for all adults in the school to share a common purpose and experience a set of common activities with students, regardless of professional roles or teaching disciplines. All adults are learners together as they build their own skills. Regarding postsecondary preparation and the college-going process, advisory programs offer the opportunity for an entire faculty to receive the same information and develop a shared expertise about "college knowledge."

A distributive faculty support models help send a powerful message to faculty that teaching in the 21st century entails more than quality instruction in the classroom. Supporting students' healthy social development builds a more respectful and caring learning environment. Supporting students' personal aspirations and postsecondary planning establishes a stronger academic and college-going culture.

For more information about using advisory to build a college going culture, see the ESR white paper, Increasing College Access through School-Based Models of Postsecondary Preparation, Planning, and Support.

 

Virtual ESR Author Tour

Now that we have introduced you to our two newest titles, Making Learning REAL: Reaching and Engaging All Learners in Secondary Classrooms and Getting Classroom Management RIGHT: Guided Discipline and Personalized Support in Secondary Schools, here's your chance to ask ESR author, Carol Miller Lieber, questions that you might have about either of these new resources!

Click here to submit your questions. Questions will be accepted until Friday, December 11th.  We apologize for the delay in opening the Q&A session (we are not immune from technical difficulties)!  We will have her answer your questions here on the blog.

Introducing Getting Classroom Management RIGHT

Blogger: Denise Wolk

ESR has recently published two new books in the Partners in Learning series. In this blog post we will introduce the second book: Getting Classroom Management RIGHT: Guided Discipline in Secondary Schools, and invite you to engage in a question and answer session with the author, Carol Miller Lieber.

Carol is a national leader in integrating principles of prevention, personalization, and youth development into everyday practices and structures for secondary schools. Carol has taught students at all grade levels and in 1973 co-founded a small urban secondary school in St. Louis. She has served on education faculties at the University of Missouri, National-Louis, Lesley, and Washington Universities. Facilitating healthy development and academic success for every student has been at the heart of her work with ESR. She has supported principals, leadership teams, and faculty in their efforts to personalize learning in large and small schools, create more coherent systems of discipline and student support, and develop effective teaming and professional learning communities. She is the author of many books, including Partners in Learning about best practices in secondary classrooms, the bestselling resource The Advisory Guide on planning and implementing student advisory programs in secondary schools, and Conflict Resolution in the High School.

Getting Classroom Management RIGHT provides resources specifically designed for teachers who work with adolescents and want to create learning environments that foster fairness, mutual respect, student accountability, and self-discipline. It offers research-based tools, skills, and guiding principles that enable secondary teachers to organize and manage their classrooms for optimal learning; prevent most disruptive behaviors; diagnose and respond to problematic behaviors efficiently; and provide the right kinds of accountable consequences and supportive interventions that will help reluctant and resistant students to turn around their behavior.   

ESR's five step approach to classroom management, “Guided Discipline and Personalized Support,” presents case studies and sample responses to familiar problem types; teacher qualities and skills sets associated with effective classroom management; routines, procedures, and group learning protocols that build a high functioning classroom community; essential practices, strategies, and scripts that invite student engagement, cooperation, and self-correction; individual and group strategies for supporting positive behavior; and specific intervention protocols for chronic unwanted behaviors.

Getting Classroom Management RIGHT includes three other notable features:

• alignment to the three-tiered framework of Response to Intervention (RTI) and Positive Behavior Support (PBS) to meet the needs of all learners;
• behavior report forms, problem solving protocols, conduct cards, and learning contracts that can be used in conjunction with teacher-student conferencing and more intensive interventions;
  
• over 60 protocols that offer suggestions for incorporating classroom management topics into school-based professional development and education courses.
  

We hope you will browse through the Table of Contents for Getting Classroom Management RIGHT to get a feel how the book is organized, and then invite you to pose your questions for Carol Miller Lieber.  Details coming soon!

Introducing Making Learning Real

Blogger: Denise Wolk

ESR has recently published two new books in the Partners in Learning series. In this blog post, we will introduce the first book: Making Learning Real: Reaching and Engaging All Learners in Secondary Classrooms, and after introducing the second of the new titles, invite you to engage in a question and answer session with the author, Carol Miller Lieber. Stay tuned for this exciting opportunity!

Carol is a national leader in integrating principles of prevention, personalization, and youth development into everyday practices and structures for secondary schools. Carol has taught students at all grade levels and in 1973 co-founded a small urban secondary school in St. Louis. She has served on education faculties at University of Missouri, and National-Louis, Lesley, and Washington Universities. Facilitating healthy development and academic success for every student has been at the heart of her work with ESR. She has supported principals, leadership teams, and faculty in their efforts to personalize learning in large and small schools, create more coherent systems of discipline and student support, and develop effective teaming and professional learning communities. She is the author of many books, including Partners in Learning about best practices in secondary classrooms, the bestselling resource The Advisory Guide on planning and implementing student advisory programs in secondary schools, and Conflict Resolution in the High School.

We believe that good teaching not only supports the intellectual development of adolescents-it nourishes their spirits and touches their hearts. Students want teachers who care about them; they want coursework that connects to their lives and the world they live in; and they want to be academically challenged and held accountable for meeting those challenges. Making Learning Real showcases proven classroom practices that increase students' motivation, effort, and engagement in learning and enable teachers and students to become partners in a high performing community of learners.

Making Learning Real is organized around seven core practices:
1: Developing Positive Relationships Among and Between Students and Teachers
2: Personalized Student-centered Learning
3: Multiple Ways of Knowing and Learning
4: Establishing Clear Norms and Boundaries
5: Building a Cohesive Community of Learners
6: Providing High Expectations and High Student Support
7: Affirming Diversity in Your Classroom.

A set of readings link theory and research to each of the core practices. The book also includes a guide for assessing student learning, preparation and start-up of the new school year, the first day of class, and the first month of school. Over 60 protocols in a special appendix offer suggestions for incorporating topics from Making Learning Real into school-based professional development and education courses.

For more information, check out the table of contents for Making Learning Real on our website:
http://esrnational.org/esr/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Making-Learning-Real-ToC.pdf

Creating Advisory Programs: Notes from the Field - Part 4

Blogger: Denise Wolk

In my continuing blog about advisory program design and implementation, I offer another one of the pitfalls and strategies for climbing out of the pit for developing and sustaining successful advisory programs.

Pitfall: One person (or a very small group of people) works in isolation to develop advisory activities or session plans that are hit or miss with advisors and advisees.

"The guidance counselor deals with this all the time - she can pump out the lessons for all advisors to use."

"We had to have something so we bought a "canned" advisory curriculum - it's one size fit's all."

Strategies: One of the challenges of advisory program planning and implementation is finding the right balance of people and resources to get the job done with all of the other tasks competing for them. By appointing an advisory program committee comprised of at least one representative per grade level as well as a chair (or co-chairs) for the committee, the work of planning lessons can be spread out among members of the group. Providing that group with release time either during the school year, or over the summer break is a good way to allow them to work together to develop advisory session plans or lessons that align with the school's goals for advisory, and are developmentally appropriate for the various grade levels.