This year, the school has once again changed the leadership period, now called advisory. Instead of having one 50 minute period once a month, they’ve now changed it to two 30 minute periods at the start of the day on Mondays and Thursdays. Although this may seem like a better and more productive way to do it, it’s really not the case.

Teachers try to push students in their advisory periods to participate and give their insight on school issues. There are students who try to make advisory a useful time, but most of the advisory groups do not participate and say little to nothing during the time. Senior Urie Conis would rather have more ELT (Extend Learning Time) than sit through a 30 minute period where no one does anything.

“I think it’s a waste of time. I’m struggling in some classes, and I could be doing work in those classes instead of wasting my time in advisory where we talk about nothing. [My advisory teacher] usually asks us questions. A lot of times I don’t say anything, I just pass the stick and sit through it. [I don’t participate] because I feel it’s unnecessary. It doesn’t appeal to me and it’s not helping me at all,” Conis said.

Instead of having two advisory periods a week, (which totals to an hour a week) and just one 50 minute ELT block, why not just have more ELT? If you take the advisory out, that leaves another hour of time for students to catch up on their homework and get more help before big tests. With that extra time, there shouldn’t be any question that exam scores will go up, and students should be able to pass all their SOLs.

Advisory needs to be an elective or an after school activity, not a requirement for all students. It’s taking up the time of students who don’t care, and teachers who lead non-engaging advisory classes. Senior Liam McGehee would also prefer not having advisory periods.

“I usually don’t show up that much just because I have late arrival so half the time I’m not there. But when I am there, it’s usually a time that I use to catch up on other homework or a nap because I feel like the subjects we talk about usually aren’t that important. [My advisory] usually has a presentation to talk about some issue that we have in the school that I feel doesn’t really need talking about. I usually don’t say anything, I occasionally put in my point just to keep the conversation going, but I would say [advisory] isn’t very useful, just because a lot of the problems we talk about aren’t actually big problems in our school,” McGehee said.

It just once again proves that the school needs to understand that advisory shouldn’t be an activity forced upon students rather than more academic help. It would be nice to see some teachers or counselors put together an advisory after-school club, so some actual productivity gets done. It would make a lot more progress instead of students choosing not to participate and take naps or stare at their desks.