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

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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.