Advisory: Are We Wasting Time or Simply Not Using it Correctly?

By Megan Viso

Advisory, a designated time in high school for college guidance and academic help, often leaves students, especially those here at Jenks High School, with a variety of challenges and experiences. While the intention behind advisory is definitely pure, there is a lot of room for improvement that could transform the period into a more useful and beneficial use of our time at school.

Firstly, the mere 30 minutes of advisory time every day at Jenks, gives students barely enough time to actually complete homework and/or get the adequate help they need with it. Speaking from personal experience, from checking in with your advisory teacher to walking back across campus to the teacher you actually need help from, leaves barely enough time to get the help you truly need, which definitely isn’t the most efficient use of the student’s nor the teacher’s time.

“It’s nice to use it as academic free time, but it’s not enough time to go and do just about anything, unless it is a quick errand that you need to get done before you move onto another thing,” said an advisory teacher at Jenks High School who asked to remain anonymous.

Additionally, students who don’t need help and stay in their advisory classroom often get into the mindset of “well I don’t have enough time to finish my assignment, so I’m going to just scroll through my phone instead.”

“It just turns into TikTok time for me,” said Kenzie Lewis, Jenks High School Senior.

This mindset, which stems from the amount of time students receive for advisory class, often causes students to fall behind in their work. The short advisory periods cause procrastination habits to rise–with only 30 minutes to spare for homework, most students neglect the valuable time provided for them and pick up their screens.

While I do believe that it is important for high school students to have time set aside for academic help, the system that is set up at Jenks proves to be more inconvenient than beneficial for most students.

By the way that our system is set up at Jenks High School, from a student perspective, advisory seems like a lazy, leisure time to do nothing, but from an academic standpoint, it is intended to be a time to excel in our college plans and future, especially through our ICAP lessons.

I am bringing up this topic over advisory at Jenks because of my personal experience, and the experience of others, which has not been the most pleasant.

According to U.S. News, “Advisory helps students establish a closer relationship with a trusted adult in the school.”

Beginning their sophomore year following through to the end of their senior year, most students at JHS have, or should have, the same advisory teacher for all three years, however, this is not the case for me. While many other students have been able to foster a close relationship with both their advisory teacher and class, I have had to switch every single year, putting me right back where I started again and again.

Although there are downsides to advisory, it does give students a “brain break” from the busy school day before they must move onto their next classes of the day.

In an effort to gather ideas on how to improve Jenks advisory, I spoke with a student from a different High School in Tulsa, Bishop Kelley, to see how they organize and utilize their college and academic resources and time.

According to Bishop Kelley Senior Natalie Human, Bishop Kelley does not meet or really have a set “advisory time.” Instead, they meet once a month to talk about what they could do to improve throughout the year. Similar to Jenks, their college counselors are always available to the students, however they regularly pull students out to talk about GPA goals, transcripts, and even anxiety for college.

Instead of having an advisory class everyday for a short period of time, we could have it twice a week, Thursday for club meetings and Tuesday for ICAP lessons. By implementing this system, we could have longer class periods throughout the week, with the exception of the two advisory days, and longer advisory periods on those two days. This system would allow more time to be allotted for academic help for students and time to connect with their teacher.