Social Emotional Learning and the Impact of Advisory

When students leave school, what do we hope they’ve taken away from their educational experience? Is the priority that they’ve completed a checklist of academic skills before they venture off into the world? Certainly. Are we equally (if not more) hopeful that they’ll have the life skills to make them successful, supported, emotionally intelligent human beings? Absolutely, yes!

WHAT IS ADVISORY?

There are many things that set us apart at Phoenix International Academy and our advisories are one of them. Advisory is our first period of the day, but it isn’t a traditional “homeroom.” In advisory, we focus on specific, measurable objectives to develop students’ social emotional wellbeing. What does that actually mean? Well, we work on self awareness, self management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making. We’ve developed aligned competencies so we can measure the growth students make in their social-emotional growth and awareness (we call these SEGA, for short). We tie all of these skills into real-world situations and give students the tools necessary to navigate difficult situations.

WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?

We follow the same framework we use for project-based learning. We design highly-engaging, open-ended driving questions that we work to answer throughout our advisory units. These are questions that we continuously come back to, revising and enhancing our responses to it over time. It helps focus us on what’s important, assess how our understanding has changed over time, and guides us toward specific learning outcomes. For example, in a unit about Conflict Resolution, students worked to answer the question “How do we solve conflict?” At the beginning of the unit, many students simply said we resolve conflict by involving an adult, but as they explored the question over several months, they learned about all the nuances involved in conflict. They learned how to identify their emotions, how those emotions show up in their bodies, ways to calm/soothe themselves when they’re feeling heated, how to scale the problem to determine appropriate action steps, how to communicate what they’re feeling to someone else, and how to come up with win-win solutions. By the end of the unit, students responses to the driving question had completely changed!

CONNECTING TO RELATIONSHIPS

These advisory units are one important piece of the puzzle. The other is - RELATIONSHIPS! In advisory, we intentionally create very small communities (usually around 10-15 students) so that it becomes a safe, supportive environment for everyone. We have weekly community building circles that focus on getting to know one another and building empathy for others’ experiences. This piece is critical to our core value of belonging. When we know one another on a deeper level, we’re able to empathize with their experiences and connect with them on an entirely new level. We guide our students in developing awareness around others’ experiences, approaching differences with curiosity, and being bold enough to work on repairing relationships when harm is caused. It isn’t easy, but the work they’re doing now is work that will stay with them their entire lives!

THE DATA

We’re really proud of the work we do to develop and nurture such strong relationships and we see those results in our data. We surveyed students at the beginning of the year and again mid-way through the year. 100% of our students reported feeling cared for and supported at PIA. 100%. The intentionality and importance we’ve centered on Advisory clearly shows up in the way students feel on our campus and we take that very seriously. PIA is a special place, often the first place out in the world that students feel totally welcomed to come as they are, and that feeling of acceptance directly translates into students’ academic performance. We focus our energy on student growth at PIA, so we care a lot about how much a student grows academically from the start of the year to the end. According to our end of year assessment results, 89% of our students met or EXCEEDED their growth goals in Math and/or Reading. When we shared these results with them, many immediately turned around to go share the news with one of their trusted adults on campus or commented about how proud they felt of themselves! This is a direct result of building strong relationships that help students feel supported and loved in all that they do!

We believe whole heartedly in the importance of this work and how it shows up in everything we do at PIA. It’s why all of our visitors always comment on how welcoming, safe, and JOYFUL our campus feels. We’re so proud of the work we do and commit to keeping it at the forefront!