What is advisement? This is a question that nearly none of the students know the answer to, yet advisement is an integral part of the structure of the schedule in high school.

Every Wednesday, students spend an hour of their school day in their advisement class. Some spend their time during this period completing homework, some sleep, and others just skip school entirely. Because advisement makes other classes 15 minutes shorter, it takes away from valuable instructional time.

Advisement has been a part of our school schedules since middle school. In middle school, it was geared towards solving personal problems between students such as bullying, or having a place where you can talk about how you feel. Teachers were given documents with subjects to cover during advisement, such as how to have good relationships with other students or the dangers of alcohol or drug use. These topic discussions were actually very beneficial for some students.

In high school there is no organizational method when it comes to advisement. There are no discussions on important problems all teenagers face at certain points in their young lives. Teachers let students work on whatever they want, and some teachers just let students leave entirely.

“I use the extra time during advisement to do homework for other classes,” junior Alex Westin said. “I also socialize with my friends because we share the same advisement.”

During the 2014-15 school year, students were assigned a certain teacher to have for advisement. During advisement the teacher would hand out documents about what was going on at school or progress reports. Since last school year, students have had the option of choosing what teacher they wanted for advisement. This leads to many students choosing the same teachers that their friends have, so they can socialize during this period.

There are also some advisements that are organized based off of certain after-school activities. A few of these are latin, debate, football, basketball, mock trial, and even ultimate frisbee. The Latin advisement does do a lot of Latin-related work, but they are a minor exception to the majority of these club-based advisements. While most of these may sound like productive advisements, some allow students to just hang out with their friends. The football, basketball and ultimate frisbee team advisements all are in the gym, and students usually just socialize. Some play with frisbees or footballs, but only with a lackadaisical mindset towards it.

Advisement has the potential to be a productive period, but many students and teachers do not take advantage of what it has to offer. If students began to look towards advisement as an instructional period, then it may actually be a valuable use of everyone’s time.