Introduction
At independent
schools today, when parents desire the final outcome to be admission to
a top tier college, school officials may find themselves spending more
time developing a curriculum than addressing the developmental issues
of teenagers. High-level science and math courses, AP foreign language
classes, and accelerated summer programs have become the norm in the independent
school setting. Teachers also feel the pressure of making sure
they cover all the material in the curriculum to ensure that students
will successfully complete APs, SATs, and other standardized assessments.
However, one part of the curriculum that often goes by the wayside
is advising and with it the emotional and social support a student may
need to navigate his or her high school years. Teachers of adolescents
must realize that their teaching extends beyond the English, history,
Spanish, calculus, Greek and art class. Nevertheless, advisory
usually cannot be scheduled as a class. A successful advisory program
must become integrated into the day-to-day interaction between teachers
and students. A solid advisory program will follow a curricular
method which focuses on academic advising, helps create strategies for
a student to make mature social choices, and provides basic counseling
when a student faces an unsolvable problem.
Academic Advising
In an attempt to help a student feel empowered to control his or her educational
destiny and more importantly to maximize his or her potential at the high
school level, the advisor must guide the student to make the best course
selections, which reflect the student's ability and potential achievement.
In order to accomplish this the advisor must know four things about
each students. First, the advisor
must know the curriculum of the school and the graduation requirements.
One would think that a teacher at a school would know the curriculum
and the graduation requirements, but most teachers concentrate on one
subject matter and often do not keep up with the curricular changes that
may occur throughout a student's four-year career. Therefore, it
is important that the administration provides enough support and professional
development so that teachers can remain current with the required curriculum.
Second, the advisor must
know the student's college or career goals. This requires the teacher
to meet with the student, ask questions, and listen to what the student
has to say. For example, it is important for an advisor to know
if a student desires to become a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer because
the teacher can help the student select the courses that will prepare
the student for the particular college program.
Third, the advisor must
help the student realize what his or her learning style is. If
a student knows how he or she processes information, then he or she will
improve the quality of his or her education. There are a number
of learning style inventories available that an advisor can provide to
the student, so the student may come to
understand how she best learns information.
The advisor and student can review the results and make this a
part of their on-going discussion when they review the advisee's grades
and future goals.
Finally, the advisor
must help the student realize how he or she is motivated. Again
this involves taking the time to listen to the student, but it is important
to help the student realize if she is motivated by solving problems, helping
people, providing service, producing some physical actions (whether athletic
or artistic), creating a product (whether it is a bridge or a painting),
or designing "things that work."
If an advisor can help
the student assess these four areas, then the advisor can use these reference
points as a foundation for academic advising to help the student understand
what he needs to do to accomplish her goals. For example, if a
student desires to become an engineer but he finds higher level math courses
difficult to understand, then the advisor must help the student realize
what is motivating this desire to be an engineer. The student may
come to realize that the motivation is coming from parental pressure or
from another source. The advisor then may turn to the student's
strengths in the humanities curriculum and focus the student's attention
on his strengths and his appreciation for those courses. As a result,
the advisor may ask the student to research the professional fields that
require a strong aptitude for language, history, psychology, and other
fields related to the humanities. The advisor is not telling the
student what field he should pursue, but helping the student to determine
that on her own. Once the student realizes the careers that match
his academic strengths, then the advisor can help the student shape an
academic program to meet his educational and professional goals.
This process of advising
a student regarding his academic goals will have more positive results
in the long run because the student is discovering what is important to
him. Using William Glasser's Choice Theory as
a principle for advising, the advisor learns what is essential to the
student's internal motivation. Glasser's Choice Theory
is centered on five basic "genetic needs" that all humans possess:
Survival
Fun
Knowledge
Empowerment
Love
(41-59)
The typical student attending an independent school will have his "survival"
needs met unless he is failing miserably and is facing expulsion. However, does the school provide a forum both in and out of class for
the other four needs to be nurtured?
The advisory system can
meet the student's needs for knowledge
and empowerment by following
the process outlined above. The student who realizes his learning
weaknesses and strengths by taking a learning inventory and reviewing
it with his advisor is gaining a sense of "self" knowledge and empowerment
to have some control over how he learns in and out of the classroom. Also, the process of examining his academic strengths and researching
professional fields that match those strengths can fulfill the student's
need for fun. In addition, if the student realizes that an adult
is taking the time and effort to help the student come to this realization,
then his need for love is being met. Ultimately, the student, however,
is in control of his academic program and in control of his future.
Glasser's basic needs
model taken from his Choice Theory
provides a framework for advisors to use when dealing with their advisees.
Students in general launch the school year with a sense of freshness
and a desire to do well. At this point, when students receive their
new books, new clothes, new schedules, they view learning as fun and knowledge
as good. However, as the weeks ,
roll by the routine becomes monotonous and the stress increases geometrically,
the students often become resistant not so much to the educational
process of learning but to
the school process of meaningless
homework, countless tests and quizzes, and regimental schedule. As John Dewey eloquently states in Democracy and Education ,
The instinctively mobile and eagerly varying action of childhood, the love
of new stimuli and new developments, too easily passes into a settling
down , which means aversion
to change and a resting on past achievements. Only an environment
which secures the full use of intelligence in the process of forming habits
can counteract this tendency (49).
It is the advisor's responsibility
to assist the student through the "settling down" in order to help the
student make constructive changes in her life, to set new goals so she
doesn't rest "on past achievements," and provide an atmosphere of dialogue
where the student can explain her frustration or loss of "love for new
stimuli." Let's face it, schools are not always the best places
for a student to gain an education and to foster 'the love of new stimuli
and new developments." The advisor must have his finger on the
pulse of the student in order to detect when a student reaches the point
when she is "settling down," feeling an "aversion to change" and "resting
on past achievements." The advisor can become the most significant
individual in a school who can assess the environment
to make sure that the leadership of the institution realizes the necessity
to "secure the full use of intelligence in the process of forming habits
[that] can counteract [the] tendency" for students to become lackadaisical.
The relationship between
advisor and advisee can improve the overall quality of a school, but more
importantly, it can ensure that the five basic needs of Glasser's Choice
Theory are being met. For example, if a student's survival needs are met, and she
has a support system to make sure her needs for fun, knowledge, and
empowerment are met, then she will come to feel that the school
is ultimately satisfying her need for love.
An advisory system that is able to accomplish what has been outlined above
will help students come to know themselves. The individual relationships
between advisor and advisee will help foster the student's sense of self.
However, it is important to point out that all teachers are advisors
to all students. Therefore, in a strong advisory system, a teacher
is never not an advisor and as a result never steps out of his role as
the key support system for students. Consequently, if a sense of
balance, especially among Glasser's five basic needs, is a state of being
based upon our decisions of how to spend our time, then students need
to know themselves in order to make the best decisions for themselves
(Bender 52).
These decisions that
a student must make, especially the academic decision about which standardized
test to take or which college to attend must ultimately be about who they
are. Therefore, she must know herself, and in order for her to
gain this "self" knowledge the advisor and each of her teachers must know
her and foster the development of the "self." Kim Bender asserts
that a strong sense of self will help students cope with the numerous
choices they face with regards to course selection, extra-curricular pursuits,
friendships, and the college application process (54). Her premise
is based upon the student's relationship with their families, their classmates,
and their teachers (54), which is why the advisor's role in getting to
know the student is significant to the student getting to know herself.
In summary, the advisors role for academic advising centers around helping the student to discover
her learning style, to select a challenging but realistic academic program,
and to realize how much is enough. Now this will vary from one
student to another, but if each student possesses a good sense of self,
then the entire school environment will possess a nurturing and positive
attitude.
Social Advising
The role of advisor providing
guidance for teenage students in their social situations has become more
expanded since the advent of households with two incomes. This
places more pressure on advisors to become more involved in the welfare
of the student outside of school. In addition, the latest research on brain development of teens yields
significant information for advisors to consider when they deal directly
with social issues of an advisee. Also, helping students to make
sound decisions with regards to alcohol and drug consumption has become
just as important as teaching math, science, or literature. According
to Barbara Strauch's survey of literature on adolescent brain research,
"Adolescence, some neuroscientists now warn, may be one of the worst time
to expose a brain to drugs and alcohol" (Strauch 21). Nevertheless,
even if one would share this information with a typical teenager, one
would find that the peer pressure on the teen would prevail over the knowledge.
Does this mean that an advisor should ignore this knowledge and
not share it with an advisee? Of course not. However, the
advisor must discuss with the student what is at stake both in and out
of school. In addition, the advisor must avoid preaching and attempt
to persuade the advisee to look at the big picture. Listening and
questioning will become key characteristics of an advisor / advisee conversation
at least as far as the advisor is concerned.
There are three things
that an advisor can do to help students cope with the myriad of social
pressures that bite at their heals as they walk through adolescents. First, the advisor should help the student identify and discuss social
pressures. Inevitably, students will face tough decisions: to drink or abstain, to use drugs or abstain, to have sex or abstain.
These are tough decisions, but they must be dealt with directly.
Initiating a dialogue about drugs, alcohol and sex "sends the message
that you care, that you are clued in, and that you are realistic" (Riera 13). Students engage in these behaviors for a number of reasons:
to reduce stress, to feel good, to be included, to demonstrate love, to
fit in, to act cool, to avoid depression, to relax, to be comfortable
in new situations, and a host of other reasons. The advisor can
help the advisee discover why she engages in certain risky behaviors.
This conversation will not occur on the first or second meeting.
The relationship between
the advisor and advisee must be based on mutual trust and respect, and
those two characteristics take time to develop. As a result, the
first time the subject of "risky behavior" is initiated, the advisor will
probably find himself in a one-sided conversation. However, the
conversation should center on helping the student think through these
issues. The conversation cannot afford to be interpreted as an
interrogation or prying into the personal life of the student. Otherwise, the student will never trust the advisor enough to engage in
full dialogue on these subjects. Also, the conversation needs to
focus on the health and safety of the advisee. It is the advisor's
responsibility to know facts about risky behaviors with regards to the
basic legal implications, the school's alcohol and drug policy, programs
that can help teenagers at risk, referral procedure, and the tendencies
of the student population as to what risky behaviors they participate
in. The advisor will not use all of the knowledge to bombard the
student with a plethora of questions or statements, but he should use
this knowledge as needed.
Second, an advisor should
help a student develop strategies to cope with the social pressures. Generally, it is too late to create a strategy to escape trouble when
one is in the midst of the trouble. Strategies need to be generated
before a situation occurs. It is similar to developing an escape
route for a family in the event of a house fire. Knowing what to do before
the problem occurs will help reduce student panic, stress, and irresponsible
decision-making. Telling a teenager to just say no
is not realistic. Sitting down with an advisee and discussing these
tough topics, offering opinions and insights, creating strategies, exchanging
ideas, talking about "what if" scenarios, and generating mutual understanding
of what is reasonable will give the student some of the tools that she
will need to respond to a situation where she is facing the choice to
drink or not to drink, to be included or excluded, to engage in sex or
to abstain. These are tough choices.
Third, the advisor must
remain rational and supportive when a student stumbles. Teenagers
will make mistakes; therefore, the advisor needs to become the support
system when a student faces the disciplinary consequences of a poor choice.
For example, if a student is suspended and placed on disciplinary
probation for violating the school's alcohol and drug policy, the student
will need support from the advisor. The support is clarifying why
what the student did was wrong, helping the student cope with the punishment,
and valuing the experience as a life lesson. This will help the
student make a more mature decision in the future when facing a similar
dilemma. In summary, an advisor will realize that developmentally,
teenagers live in the moment and in any given moment a teenager's decision
whether good or bad will seem defensible and in the moment
is the teenager's home base (Riera, 9). Ultimately, if the advisor
can move the student to think about the question, "How will I feel about
myself tomorrow?" The advisor will have provided a tremendous service
to the student.
Advising Turned Counseling
In The Winter of
Our Discontent , John Steinbeck
writes, "When a condition or a problem becomes too great, humans have
the protection of not thinking about it. But it goes inward and
minces up with a lot of other things already there and what comes out
is discontent and uneasiness, guilt and a compulsion to get something
- anything - before it is all gone" (197). The wisdom expressed
by John Steinbeck will strike a chord with any one who works with high
school students. The need for high school students to have a support
system, especially in this day and age of "get into the best college,"
may be paramount to anything else they receive in their course load. Students need to rely on "experts" to help them sort through the stress
of everyday life, so they don't seek the "protection of not thinking about
it" and to help avoid the "discontent and uneasiness" of being a teenager.
Teachers involved in an advisory program must provide a safe haven
so "a condition or a problem" doesn't "become too great."
It is safe to say that
teachers by their nature desire to solve problems. This characteristic,
as noble as it seems, often becomes a hurdle to helping a student resolve
issues. An advisor must learn the difference between his advising
role and his counseling role. Also, he must accept the paradox
of taking what may seem to be a passive role
in order to be active .
Often the terms advising and counseling are synonymous, but the
two terms are quite different. The following comparison between
advising and counseling provides a thumbnail sketch of the two terms:
Advising Counseling Task orientedProcess oriented
Talk Listen
External RealityInternal Reality
Behavioral Context Emotional Context
Acting Out Self disclosure
Reactions Feelings
Prescriptive Evocative
Advisor has data Student has data
Solve Problem (short term)Growth Maturation (long term)
"Fix" it Clarify Feelings
Do something Let process work
Sense of urgency Patience
Advice Self Discovery
Closure Open Ended
(Source: The Stanley H. King Counseling Institute Notebook)
An advisor must be comfortable switching roles from someone who controls
the conversation and the agenda, to someone who listens and receives the
agenda from the student. The advisor must determine when a student's
problem is solvable and when a student's problem is unsolvable. For example, if a student whose parent just died shares her pain with
her advisor, then an advisor must recognize that this is not a solvable
problem. Therefore, the advisor may clarify the student's feeling,
become an active listener, and help the student realize her internal reality.
Also, the advisor must realize that the student's feelings
are unique. Therefore, even if the advisor has suffered the same
loss, the experience is not similar.
The counseling situation
puts the student in control, and according to Glasser's model offers the
student empowerment over her feelings and emotions. In a counseling
context, the advisor helps the student clarify and give appellation to
the feelings that she is experiencing. In other words, tagging
the feelings with words such as grief, sadness, anger and
acknowledging that these feelings are real and reasonable will give the
advisee a sense of empowerment over the difficult situation. The
advisor does not tell the advisee how to feel. Much too often the
advisor with good intentions will tell an advisee not to feel sad
or not to cry
and things will get better. However, one cannot help how one feels. Therefore, the advisor
is in the position to clarify feelings, to listen to what the advisee
is saying, and to provide a process in which these feelings can freely
be explored. As a result "the goal of psychological health
then is not to dispose of anxiety, the existence which is a given, but
to learn how to transform such anxiety – and to direct that energy
into work, art, relationship, or some kind of meaningful engagement in
the world" (Riera 279).
The advisor's role as
counselor is to let the student discover how to transform anxiety to achieve
equilibrium, which will require time and patience on the part
of both the student and the advisor. After all, teenagers struggle
to maintain their levels of involvement and achievement for almost a year
when attempting to adjust to a death, a divorce or some other serious
crisis (Riera 281). Another important fact that an advisor
needs to consider when counseling an advisee is to realize when a referral
to a psychologists or psychiatrists is necessary. This step may
save the student's life. Nevertheless, the relationship between
the advisor and advisee needs to remain intact. The advisor should
approach the issue with caution and sensitivity by suggesting that the
advisee may want to consider seeing a psychologist or psychiatrist and
offering the benefits of working with a professional counselor. The advisor needs to make it clear that he is not passing on the problems
of the advisee to someone else. Therefore, the advisor must keep
the lines of communication open. The advisor must remain present
for the advisee, continue to acknowledge the feelings of the advisee,
and show support for the advisee even when she begins receiving professional
counseling.
Conclusion
In an independent school that possesses a strong advisory program the advisor is the central figure
in the student's school life. As
a matter of fact, the advisor may act
as a safety net by anticipating problems before they occur. The
advisor monitors the academic, social, and personal life of the advisee.
Teaching in an independent school goes far beyond the subject expertise
of the teacher. It centers on teaching life: how to live it; how
to cope with it; how to deal with it; and how to love it. Teaching
is no longer simply a matter of giving
instructions in math, science, English, or history, but it requires listening,
caring, and supporting a student in all facets of her development. At an independent school, an investment must be made, so teachers can
teach the whole child. An advisory program, therefore, requires
commitment from the administration to provide the funds and time for professional
development, so all advisors have the skills and know how to deal with
any crisis a student brings to the table.
WORKS CITED
Bender, Kim. "Encouraging the Development of Personal Ethics." Independent School .
National Association of Independent Schools. Spring 2001.
Dewey, John. Democracy and Education . Macmillan. New York. 1916
Glasser, William. The Quality School: Managing Students without Coercion. Harper Collins. New York. 1990.
Riera, Michael and Joseph Di Prisco. Field Guide to the American Teenager
. Perseus Publishing. Cambridge, MA. 2000.
Stanley H. King Counseling Institute for Teachers. Note book from Counseling Conference. Colorado Springs, Colorado. Summer 2003.
Steinbeck, John. The Winter of Our Discontent . Penguin. New York. Library Biding, 1999.
Strauch, Barbara. The Primal Teen: What the New Discoveries About the Teenage Brain Tell us About Our Kids . Doubleday. New York, 2003.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
American Student Achievement Institute. Indiana State University. http://asai.indstate.edu/default.htm.
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National Association of Independent Schools. Spring 2001.
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Glasser, William. Choice theory in the Classroom . Harper-Collins. New York, 1998.
Glasser, William. The Quality School: Managing Students without Coercion. Harper Collins. New York. 1990.
Krathwohl, David, R. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Affective Domain. Edited by David R. Krathwohl. Longman, Inc. 1964.
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