Every Wednesday I meet with my advisory. We started together when they were sophomores, and now, three years later, they are big, bad seniors who are almost ready to graduate. Our class started with about 25 students, but with transfers, early graduates, family moves, and schedule changes we have withered down to 16 remaining students and me.
The goal of advisory changes every year; in the past eight years at my school, I have seen the focus change from college prep, community building, social-emotional learning, ECAP, ACT prep, intervention, community service, and even just study hall time (sometimes all of the above). And yet, year after year, even as the goal and schedule change, I get those same students back.
We started together during the pandemic, when relationship building was the most important. I forced them to socialize with me once a day with a silly question, a check-in, or an academic task. When we came back to the actual building, it was weird, attaching faces to names I had seen on my screen, but that was when I actually got to know them. We did team building and got to know each other in a way that just didn’t exist online. I was worried they would forget how to be social, but they were perfectly content to keep on answering those silly questions together.
Their junior year we met every single day. In a non-academic class, that is a lot of time to fill. Luckily, we knew each other better; I knew who would humor me when I asked a challenging question, who would laugh at my dumb jokes, and who wanted to do what was required of them and nothing more. They also started asking the tough questions about their future, contemplating their options after high school, and figuring out how to do it on their own.
And now they are back in my room for the very last year, this time once a week and on a mission to graduate. Some of them did a lot of growing in the past year, and when I look around my room, I see a new focus on academics. After all, their goal is just a few (7!) months away, and they need all the passing grades they can get. Some of them are just as focused as when I met them as sophomores, but there are new challenges now: college applications, FAFSA, letters of recommendation. Either way, they say hello, and then have very little time to mess around now.
I am not sure how I will feel watching my advisement walk across the stage in May, but I will certainly miss them next year as I welcome a new group of freshmen (eek) into my room. Hopefully, I’ll be able to recreate that same rapport, that same goofy banter, and the same level of support. I will have four years to get to know those new students, so I am hopeful we can build some relationships again.
Rachel Perugini
I am originally from Pennsylvania where I earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Shippensburg University. In 2012, I moved to Arizona to teach on the Navajo Reservation; I liked the state so much I decided to stay. I taught language arts, reading, and journalism for three years at Many Farms High School. During that time, I earned a master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction for Reading. In 2015, I moved to Flagstaff where I currently teach 10th and 11th grade English. I have been an avid reader all my life, so I love that my job gives me that chance to read amazing books with my students all day long.