Middle school appears to be a struggle for all kids experiencing it. There are so many changes happening both inside and outside the body. These kids have no idea how to deal with their emotions, and really need an adult figure to look up to and guide them. These feelings and changes alone are overwhelming, but combined with the stress and pressure of school make it so much worse, seemingly unbearable, at times. This is where having an advisory can come into play.
Paraphrasing Burkhardt and Kane's work, an advisory is a small group of students that meets regularly with an assigned faculty member. This faculty member provides insight and support, and is also connected with the student's parents through the school. As the article by Burkhardt and Kane states, having advisories helps create more caring schools. Middle school teachers, being trained in this specific age group, are able to be advocates for their students and are able to appropriately support them. Thus, advisors and their students really build a relationship.
In my experience, I could've used that relationship with my teachers in middle school. I remember struggling with balancing my emotions, and figuring out how to be more independent in school. It was a step up from elementary, but not quite high school. It was all very confusing. In my high school, however, advisory programs were implemented my freshman year. There were about 8-10 kids per teacher. I do not feel as though the teacher I had was well enough prepared for his position, but I think he did a really good job at building relationships with each one of us in the group. The part he seemed to struggle with was offering us academic advice, but he tried really hard. Although I originally did not see the point of this advisory, I think it was a really eye-opening experience. I talked more with kids I had never really associated myself with before, and I saw them in a whole new light. I think that this experience, with the right educator, could be extremely beneficial in a middle school environment.
Advisories, however, are just a branch of a much larger educational topic called teaming. Teams are made up of teachers whose goals are to better their school community. According to the article, “Organizational Structures that Support Meaningful Relationships and Learning”, the “Five characteristics of a successful team are (a) having a culture of discourse at their center, (b) having a clearly defined purpose that guides their work and measurable goals that they can achieve (c) being able to define and commit to norms that guide how the team operates, (d) being disciplined in maintaining their focus, (e) communicating effectively within the team and with those outside the team”. Teaming allows for more personalized learning and student contact. The best example of this is advisories, as discussed above. Teaming also helps create a platform for collaboration among teachers. The teachers in a team are welcome to share what has and hasn't worked in their classrooms, leaving a possibility for growth. Discussion like this promotes new ways of teaching and new opportunities in every classroom, which can help learning be more individualized. This is crucial for middle school, as a teacher is trying to juggle so many learning styles, and could use a helping hand when they run out of ideas.
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Thank you for sharing your own truth and narrative. It's easier to see the importance of these components of middle school when we did not have access to them during our own schooling.
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