Photo Courtesy By: Nyx Salazar

Last year, everything went online. While teachers were being pushed, no, shoved out of their comfort zones on camera, students struggled, muted and hidden behind their computers, to cope with the sudden changes COVID-19 had thrown their way. As a way to remedy the stress that students have dealt with for the past year and have now brought back into the classroom, administration has decided to incorporate “Advisory” into every student’s schedule.

Principal Dr. Roberts wrote in her welcome letter for the 2021-2022 school year, “Advisory is an opportunity to create space and time within the school environment to allow students and staff to build caring, stable, trusting relationships that support the social-emotional and academic growth of students,” but many students doubt that Advisory is helping at all.

In fact, some students believe that it’s hurting more than anything else.

“It feels very pressuring to be constantly told about what I should be doing and how I should be supporting my school and how I should be going to games. I’d just be going to their things and I’m not getting supported in any way ‘cause I’m not part of a club yet or a sport,” sophomore Emery Morrison said. “[Advisory is] basically just trying to make the school look good and trying to force us into doing things we don’t wanna do after school. I’d rather be in actual classes to be honest.” 

Advisory was introduced as a very community oriented class yet students aren’t feeling as the efforts to build community are beneficial.

“It hasn’t worked, it feels forced,” Morrison said.

Moreover, educational aspects such as school work aren’t being addressed either. Students have an entire 40 minutes to use their time to finish homework, if they get any time at all. 

“It’s just pointless because the teacher just tries to force you to talk to people you hardly know and then you’re not allowed to do homework in there, so you get 40 minutes of basically doing nothing but sitting on your phone,” junior Ella Berry said.

Other students don’t think of Advisory as a safe place as well. 

“I don’t talk about my emotions and a lot of kids don’t because no one wants to speak up,” Berry said. “When kids actually have something wrong they are not gonna want to tell people stuff.”

Other students are a bit more optimistic when it comes to Advisory.

“I don’t think it’s really providing coping skills and anyone to talk to but I think it could,” freshman Ava Chu said.

Most students agree that Advisory has the potential to be a community that students can turn to sometime in the future.

“I feel like Advisory could be very beneficial but I think right now it’s just games and getting to know each other,” Chu said. 

Others disagree.

“It’s just a waste of time, I would say, because we literally do nothing in there,” senior Ima Mervin said.

“As a senior, I feel like this Advisory class would have opportunities to do college stuff like learn about scholarships and application processes, but I don’t feel like it’s gonna be much impactful for underclassmen.”