Leadership Project: Developing a Comprehensive Advisory Curriculum
Narrative for Leadership Project
"Developing a Comprehensive Advisory Curriculum"
Currently at my school, our students meet twice a week for seventy minutes each day in Advisory. For the past three years of my school' existence, we did not have an Advisory curriculum until now. For this reason, we felt that it was important to use this valuable instructional time to implement a solid and effective curriculum for our Advisory classes. Research has shown the importance of “personalization” between student and Advisor, which creates a sense of connectedness. This “increased school connectedness is also elated to educational motivation, classroom engagement, and better attendance; all of which are linked to higher academic achievement (Blum & Libbey, 2004). This lack of consistency is something we as a leadership-action team, which consisted of the Principal, a second Counselor, the Lead Teacher, Coordinator and myself, wanted to improve upon in order to increase school connectedness as a whole. We were hoping that, as the research has shown, that with this connectedness between Advisor and advisee, that we would see an increase in attendance on these days and more importantly a strong mentor relationship between Advisor and Advisee, which would produce overall student success.
As an Action Team, we found that on Advisory days we had a very high absenteeism rate and tardy problem. I began to interview different students to find out what the reason was for their absenteeism and the most prevalent response was that they felt that Advisory was a "waste of time" since they just "sit around and do nothing." I brought this back to the Action Team and we began to brainstorm ideas for an effective Advisory curriculum. At a staff Professional Development, teachers were asked to come up with what they felt the foci of Advisory should be and it was decided that the focus would be around college preparedness. The teachers were then asked to develop lessons around this focus for the entire year.
Given the fact that we are in an inner-city school which is plagued with the stressors common in inner-cities such as poverty, gang violence and substance abuse to name a few. So as a result, our entire student population served as our underserved and marginalized population. We wanted to ensure that our students all have access to an education that grants them equitable access to a quality education in high school and beyond. Therefore, as an Action Team, we decided that our Advisory Curriculum would be one that focused on a college preparedness model and allowed for teachers to be a type of academic advisor to their advisee students.
As a pilot school, we are a shared-decision making entity and all decisions are run by the staff and decided on as a whole staff. The staff was presented this idea of developing a more comprehensive advisory curriculum and as a staff was asked to identify what they felt should be the focus of such a curriculum. Each team gathered in grade levels and brainstormed ideas for a curriculum. The consensus was to have a curriculum that involved more academic guidance and provided them a more direct path for college. As a result, the teachers began to develop themes around their curriculum and charted them.
Since we began the conversation and up until now, I would say that we still do not have a comprehensive advisory curriculum, as was our original intention. However, the conversation began and the teachers did feel there was a need for one. I did not play an active role in this development unfortunately, as my role evolved into other areas. I did however, conduct student interviews in which I asked my students the reason for their absences in this class and the response was common across the board with them feeling that Advisory was useless, “we don’t do anything important,” “it’s a waste of time.” Based on this and also teacher sentiment we did feel that there was something more to be done. However, the teachers also felt overworked and felt it was too much work for them to fully prep for another class, given that they already have more than 2 classes to prep for. Nonetheless, we continued to have these discussions and although a set curriculum was developed, teachers did begin to take a more positive relationship with their students with regards to their academics.
My role then began to evolve into one where I provided the support to the teachers as needed with their lessons. I provided data to the teachers such as transcripts, college requirements and presentations in order for them to develop a more academic guidance support to their advisees. I trained interested teachers on how to interpret student data and transcripts. Additionally, I provided them with requirement information for high school graduation and college admission. I felt that with these tools, teachers would be able to provide for their students a more academic based approach in their advisory lessons. I found that teachers and students were more involved in the academic progress and success of all students.
The CPSEL’s that were met in my leadership were the following:
· 1.1 Identify the development of a shared vision for the achievement of all students based upon data from multiple measures of student learning and relevant qualitative indicators
· 1.2 Communicate the shared vision so the entire school community understands and acts on the schools mission to become a standards-based education system.
· 1.5 Shape school programs, plans, and activities to ensure that they are integrated, articulated through the grades, and consistent with the vision
· 2.2 Promote equity, fairness, and respect among all members of the school community
· 2.3 Guide and support the long-term professional development of all staff consistent with the ongoing effort to improve the learning of all students relative to the content standards
· 5.1 Model personal and professional ethics, integrity, justice, ad fairness and expect the same behaviors from others
· 5.4 Make and communicate decisions based upon relevant data and research about effective teaching and learning, leadership, management practices, and equity
· 5.6 Demonstrate sills in decision-making, problem solving, change management, planning, conflict management, and evaluation
Results and Solutions
Although a comprehensive Advisory Curriculum was not necessarily fully developed and implemented, I would say that we were effective in beginning the dialogue about the need for one and we did make progress in implementing a more instructional focus to our Advisory program. Student attendance improved slightly on days of Advisory, however there still remains a big need for improvement. I believe that one of the challenges I faced in this area of developing a comprehensive Advisory curriculum was teacher buy-in and fidelity. Our teachers feel over-worked and as a result did not feel motivated to fully develop another lesson into their planning. Something I have advocated is to allow more teacher planning time, so as a result, during our week-long Summer Institute, we will be giving the Teachers an entire day to work solely on the development of a more comprehensive Advisory Curriculum to be implemented this next school year.
What I have learned from my leadership project is that flexibility and collaboration are extremely vital in order for an idea or project to be successful. My original project was not to build an Advisory Program but something very different, however, I was forced to adjust to this new project and though the process I encountered many challenges that although stressful, provided me with an opportunity to grow professionally and forced me to come out of my comfort zone. In addition, this experience allowed me to challenge myself professionally and personally. Although much of this project was stressful and in my opinion, was not a true success, it allowed me to see my strengths and also my areas for growth. As a future leader, I must be ready to face the curve balls that will be coming my way and learn to face adversity.
Connection to CPSEL's
This year, I have taken a more active leadership role at my school. I feel that I have become stronger in the area of instruction, which is an area I have not been too strong in. The collaboration and the research that I conducted in this project allowed me to become more familiarized with the development of a cu
