Originally Published in the March 8th Print Publication

The Good: Advisory provides an opportunity for students to get to know other students in their grade that they normally wouldn’t interact with. Often a resting time for students who have nothing better to do. Creates opportunities for clubs and tutorial time, which is useful for a multitude of reasons. You get advisory with the same people for every year of high school (this is a double edged sword) and ASB often encourages 

The Bad: Can be seen as a waste of time if there is no school work to be done, and many students don’t find any friends within their advisory, leading to a lonelier experience that usually sticks around for all 4 years (reminder of the double edged sword). Lessons given in Advisory are generally viewed as pointless and increasingly repetitive. Participation is minimal for most  activities and teachers mostly don’t care as well. Phone policies are very inconsistent. The advisory competitions for decorations are often done by the same members of advisory and don’t actually encourage students to collaborate and get to know each other.

Almost every student who attends North Creek is part of an advisory class. This 30 minute “period” is advertised as a useful time during block days to study up for classes, do homework, teach life lessons and take surveys, or socialize with people you might not see normally.x Teachers get the opportunity to prepare for their next block period and connect with other students in a different setting.

Conceptually, advisory attempts to be the new and improved form of old-school homeroom. In order to increase the appeal of advisory, ASB and admin have arranged many activities, with varying levels of success. It’s an all too common scene to have a motivational speaker on a youtube video playing on all TVs, with little to no attention paid from students or even staff. Competitions between advisories such as door and hallway decorations often go unnoticed, except by the same handful of students that participate every year.

Having that said, the good in advisory lies in the students. Using advisory to prepare for tests, do homework, get help from teachers, rest, or socialize. Using the same vein of logic, failure to find friends in advisory can lead to a pretty miserable experience, since you’re more than likely stuck with the same people for the entirety of your time at North Creek, but this doesn’t affect all students.

Admittedly, the instances when advisory is designated as time for receiving help from teachers (also known as tutorial) vs. when it’s used for club meetings is incredibly gray and often unknown until advisory actually arrives. There is no schedule for these things, and mixed in with drills, the experience becomes quite frustrating to deal with. With the admin deciding to enforce a stricter phone policy this year, advisory has been affected in the same way as normal classes. However, the policy continues to remain unclear and many students are unaware of such changes to advisory. Student opinion on advisory remains generally negative, and the overall consensus is that it needs a revamp, despite being conceptually strong.