Comments on: Notes From Homeroom

By: Ben

Ben — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 18:14:36 +0000

I’m spending a lot of time thinking about advisories nowadays. We meet for 30 minutes every two weeks. The committee in charge of planning for advisories gives us about 5-10 minutes of activities, so far only consisting of surveying the students on what they’d like to do in advisories.

I appreciate the ideas you (or y’all) have presented here. I plan on attending the advisory committee to share my concerns and bring ideas w/ which to improve them this week. Hopefully that’ll help. If not…well…I’m going off the reservation with their advisory plans. It’s supposed to be about building relationships, but so far that definitely has not been supported by its structure. I have seniors. They could tell on day 1 no staff member really had an idea of what advisories were about. Now I have to convince them that I’m okay, and I’m actually there to help.

I’m bringing in donuts and coffee next time around.

By: Dina

Dina — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 17:29:15 +0000

Potentials for logos/commandments, notwithstanding your design experience:

http://www.scionspeak.com/
(courtesy of Tom Woodward)

http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/motivator.php
(courtesy of Graham Wegner)

By: A. Mercer

A. Mercer — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 02:57:24 +0000

Yo sÃ©, Dan, yo sÃ©

By: dan

dan — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:42:16 +0000

My response to commentary’s been kind of a nonstarter lately. Sorry, everybody. Dunno how anybody gets anything done these days.

By: Lori Jablonski

Lori Jablonski — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:52:14 +0000

Hi Dan,

We tried it too…about five-six years ago. Class was 40 minutes long. Kids knew each other very well…I was the only fish out of water.

It latest just over a year. Quickly ditched the binder myself. Ate donuts, yep. Burritos too (great place across the street…I took orders, collected money, called in and ran over during my prep.) We split up the booty for kids who couldn’t pay (the team building thing in action).

What Are You Listening To? became my favorite feature. Each week one kid brought in 3-4 tunes…played them to the class and explained their significance, etc.

Some of my charges still write to me from college (ok they Facebook me..but you know…)

By: A. Mercer

A. Mercer — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 03:36:56 +0000

Is that last pictures one of the potential logos?

By: Jason Dyer

Jason Dyer — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 22:47:14 +0000

We started our new advisory in the *middle* of the year. I had seniors.

It wasn’t pretty.

By: Bill Fitzgerald

Bill Fitzgerald — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:24:24 +0000

FWIW, I shared the recommended activities of the advisory binder with my students — it was good for a laugh; and then we got on to the more serious needs of the advisory: building relationships that created trust so that when kids really needed support they had a place to go.

And yeah, donuts help. As does a good name — here’s looking forward to more exploits of the Buhemoth.