How will advisory change?

As of now, the plan is to have advisory lessons less often and only when necessary — what is currently estimated by administration to be once a week. A part of this is due to testing at the end of each semester.

“The goal is to get to December, April and May with as few lessons to go as possible,” connects liaison and creator of some advisory lessons Kari Perkins said. “Between STAAR testing, AP tests and final exams, students are booked. To put any required lessons during those times is unfair to the students.”

The lessons will change as well; many lessons that have been recycled throughout the past few years will have to be looked at and adjusted to fit the 17 minutes allotted for them.

“I know [students] get frustrated by those videos,” Boughton said. “We do, too. I just wish they updated them more. Sometimes, it’s the same exact video for a couple years in a row, and that’s just not engaging.”

In a poll surveying student and faculty response to advisory done by the Hawk Eye, 62.4% of students said they did not do their advisory lesson and 39.6% said their teachers did not make them do it. In the same poll, 65.3% of students said they did not think advisory affected them at all. Perkins said she hopes the new schedule changes that. 

“How a teacher responds to advisory is how a student responds,” Perkins said. “If a teacher thinks it is important and has the discussions like requested, then the class will get involved. Then they all get something out of it — the [teachers] and the students. If a teacher doesn’t find it important, there’s no reason for us to expect a student to.”