The Advisory Period: A Fresh Dive

Kevin’s Advisory: Class of 2027

Advisory.

Let me say it again: advisory. Freshmen may know it as the “rest period,” the “forced friend group,” or the “chaotic mess of teenagers all trying to get their opinions across.” It is a period that takes 35 minutes out of your seven hours at Sequoyah. It is time for a teacher to impart life lessons and wisdom to young students. It is a place where differing opinions are welcomed, and a core part of some students’ lives.

One may raise an eyebrow when first introduced to advisory; if school is about learning and achieving academic excellence, why is there a co-curricular session in the middle of morning classes? Isn’t school about learning and achieving academic excellence, instead of being forced to socialize with people you may not even want to hang out with?

Well, the freshest class at Sequoyah has a lot to say about the topic. Before getting into how advisory sessions actually function on a day-to-day basis, The Barefoot Times reached out to freshman advisors to learn how each advisory period is structured and examine some of the challenges of being an advisor.

“[The] biggest challenge for me as an advisor is to make sure the students feel the experience is meaningful,” said Kevin Delin. “Sometimes meaningful may be just journaling and chilling out, but I want to just make sure everyone is sort of excited–where you can kind of hang, where it's comfortable.” 

Sequoyah freshmen also had a lot of opinions about advisory. Gibson Buffa ’27, a member of Delin’s advisory, saw the value of the support that comes from having an advisor. “I see it as a way to…talk to your advisor. If you ever have any issues or anything like that, you talk to your advisor,” he said. “We should have more time with our advisors, who know stuff and could teach us a lot.” Meanwhile, James Wagner ’27, a member of Leslie Margolis’s advisory, thinks advisory is “a way for students to form long-term friendships [and] make good friends.”  He also noted, “It’s also a really good time to study.”

Giuseppe Mazzotta ’27, another member of Delin’s advisory, considers advisory “more like a home… it's a place to kind of recuperate for a moment.”

From the information that The Barefoot Times has gathered, there have been generally positive impressions of the advisory period; some, like Mazzotta, even consider it a well-needed break in the middle of the day. Others find it to be a great way to learn from their wise advisors.

This raises an important question: what do the freshmen have to say about the fact that advisory competes for time with programs like Health and Wellness, College Counseling, and Math and Spanish Review? As you can imagine, freshmen have a slew of differing opinions.

When asked how he felt about advisory time being allotted to other programs, Wagner stated, “I think that it's fine most of the time, but sometimes I feel like it's a little over the top. I think we're like…at the tipping point.” Owen Hawxhurst ’27, another member of Delin’s advisory, argued that “Advisory has been [replaced] by literally everything else. It’s like the throw-away period even though it's arguably more important than [stuff like] Spanish Review.” When asked if he enjoyed the advisory period, Hawxhurst responded with: “Yes. Definitely. Even on Friday [when we don’t have advisory], because I’m looking forward to Monday.”

Finally, Delin expresses his desire for advisory to be viewed as something valuable: “I think learning goes on best when you have breaks in the day. You need to recharge. It's sort of like saying…do I really need to sleep? Nothing happens when I sleep. Well, obviously something important happens when you sleep. I wish it was more a break time as opposed to, as you say, ‘sacrificial time’. I think the school can look at advisory as something a little more special rather than something that is there, if convenient.”

While there is no definitive consensus on advisory, positive impressions from both students and advisors are a great starting point for the newest class at Sequoyah. After all, these students will be stuck with each other for four long years.