Parks has started the new school year of 2023-2024, and this time, something new was added to the bell schedule. Every Wednesday, instead of going straight to Nutrition, students head to their Advisory class. In this new period, students gather in a classroom and learn a lesson with a teacher they may not necessarily have for one of their seven classes. The lessons differ from week to week, ranging from community-building tasks to Second-Step SEL lessons.

Ideally, these Advisory activities will help students grow socially, emotionally, and academically. However, this change in the schedule has gotten a mixed bag of reactions from students. The purpose of Advisory is to form relationships and enhance different skills, but a lot of students are still lost on what exactly the class entails. To some, Advisory is a nice period in which students get to interact with one another, and to others, it is an inconvenience and merely a stretch of time that stands between them and Nutrition. Cruz Beller, a seventh-grader says, “ I don’t like it because it’s boring and we don’t do anything fun but write down stuff every Wednesday. It just takes up time in the day.” Meanwhile, people like seventh grader Kairi Nguyen say, “I think that Advisory is fun because it lets us connect with others.” There are also people who like the idea of Advisory, but think that it should be executed differently. One student has said, “I believe that the idea for Advisory is great. The concept is well organized and it is a great idea. Though, I think that the class can get a little boring sometimes. Second Step is good for students to learn about social skills, but sitting in a classroom doing Second Step Lessons can sometimes get tiring. This isn’t an insult to the Advisory teachers at all, but there could be some time in between these Second Step lessons to do something a little more exciting.”

There are a lot of different reactions and responses to this new class, which is no surprise for a widely diverse campus. Nonetheless, this change isn’t showing signs of going away anytime soon, so students should try to make the most of it and focus on the positive things they can take away from Advisory.