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By Brett Schlossberg
Student murmurs about the change in advisory meeting day have been buzzing around the halls of the Upper School this year. This school year, the change of advisory from Friday to Wednesday has divided opinions.
Mrs. Ronda Zents, the Upper School assistant principal, felt there was a good reason for this change.
“Friday is a day when we have the most absences of both our students and our teachers in any given week,” Mrs. Zents said. “…a handful of students would miss advisory on Friday and miss important programming, and we would have advisors that need to be absent and they would miss the chance to meet with their students. So by moving it to Wednesday …it provides a nice change of pace from tutorial, and then it also optimizes attendance for students and teachers.”
More students and advisors being at school on Wednesday than on Friday offers a better dynamic in advisory since more people are there with more energy. Alexandria Tookes 25’ observed this difference.
“I feel like then [on Wednesdays], I’ll have more energy to participate in advisory activities because, like, um, on Fridays, no one really feels like doing anything during advisory,”Alexandria said.
Friday is the end of the week and students have less homework they need to get done that day because they are able to do work over the weekend. Alexandria thinks that makes students more tired and ready for the weekend, but Samuel Scroggs ‘26 has a different opinion of students’ behavior on Fridays.
“I prefer [advisory] on Fridays cause it’s basically a free [and] like you can choose what you wanna do,” Samuel said.
In the Upper School, there are a plethora of options of activities to do during tutorial. Students usually talk to their friends, do homework or go get help from a teacher. Joshua Cruz 26’ prefers advisory on Friday.
“It’s the end of the week, there’s not much I can do,” Joshua said. “I don’t have to worry about it, but on Wednesdays I have something planned for morning tutorial, but then it just pops up out of nowhere and they tell us it’s time for advisory.”
Such a sudden change will divide opinions among anyone affected. Mr. Andrew Jones, a social studies teacher and tenth-grade advisor, originally was skeptical of the change but warmed up to it.
“I felt that having advisory on Friday was a great way to end the week,” Mr. Jones said, “but we ran into a lot of issues last year with [absences] and we just never got the momentum going in advisory that we had hoped to, but now that it’s on Wednesdays there’s less disruption to, uh, our advisory time.”
Advisory is a time during the week when students can get to know their fellow students better and be able to get help from advisors if anything is troubling them. Some people like advisory, and some people don’t and that is their preference. It is impossible to make everyone happy and to agree on everything. Regardless, it is the school’s policy, and they run the advisory program in the students’ best interests.
“When one student is absent, it changes the group dynamic, um, that student is missed, so it has meant less of that this year in moving it to Wednesday.” Mrs. Zents said.