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Making Room for Council

I am spending July at home, with the three kids, trying to be at peace with my pact to not do work and just enjoy time with my kids... But the baby is taking a nap and the older kids are occupied, so I am breaking my pact for just a little while to write just a short blog post on advisory and Council.

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I left the math classroom last August and entered administration as a middle school dean. While deaning gave me plenty of opportunities to counsel students and talk shop with teachers, I really missed being in the classroom. Teaching is part of my identity. Discussing ideas with a room full of 14 year olds is exciting, inspiring, challenging and incredibly fulfilling. 

So while the new gig didn't afford me the chance to teach math, it did give me a mini class to take on: advisory. While not quite the same as a class that meets everyday, the weekly hour-long advisory sessions and daily attendance encounters, were my favorite parts of my daily routine. Social-emotional learning is a key attribute of my ethic of teaching, that of care. Part of taking care of students is building their self-reliance by making sure they have the tools to navigate social situations and solve problems creatively and constructively. While Poly's middle school has a solid advisory curriculum and tradition, I found space to integrate a bit more community building and problem solving with my group. 

Two experiences influenced my advisory facilitation: IFSEL's training on Open Session and learning more about Restorative Discipline. Open Session is a powerful way for students to practice empathy and problem solving. Restorative Discipline is worth a whole other blog post, but in short, I learned that its essential element, a restorative circle, is hard to do well when times are hard if students don't have a circle practice when times are good (I have a few resources on restorative discipline here; also read these books: Better than Carrots or Sticks and Restorative Justice Pocketbook).

As a 7th grade team, we set aside occasional advisory time for Open Session (here are helpful Open Session resources). Within my group, in addition to the lessons that all the 7th grade advisories completed, I made space for an expanded check-in to incorporate a mini council circle. We called it check-in circle. 

Students took turns creating a check-in circle by choosing a theme and writing three questions. They also chose a quote to open/close circle and brought in items for the center piece and talking piece. It didn't take much longer than our usual check-in and I found that it really helped focus our advisory period. Moreover, it helped students get to learn about each other and elicit their buy-in as they got to choose the topics. 

I created these documents to help my students with the process:






I was blown away by the thought and care students put into designing their check-in circles. 

Also, I have this book on my bedside table to further my Council Facilitation skills: Circle in the Square.

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