This year at Manhattan High School, students sit in Advisory twice a week while enduring the same, repetitive Advisory lessons. Although the announcements and upcoming events are helpful to know in these Advisory slides, The Mentor Editorial Board feel that two Advisory lessons are one too many.

Advisory lessons can range from “how to be productive” videos to creating one’s schedule for their next year in school. Some of these lessons are helpful and useful, while others just take up time.

Students meet with their Advisory twice a week (Monday and Thursday) for an hour and 39 minutes. In both of those class periods, advisors are to give a lesson and are encouraged to show the daily slideshow prepared by the Advisory committee. These slide shows have some upcoming events, announcements and the Advisory lesson for the day. 

One of the many changes that happened this year because of COVID-19 was the no FlexTime rule. This means that students are no longer allowed to travel to different teachers’ rooms to ask questions and get help. If FlexTime isn’t an option this year, as the school year is coming to a close with only seven weeks left, it would be beneficial to students to have this time to get work done instead of having to sit through a lesson for most of the hour.

These lessons seem to be required of teachers to show, but many don’t show them. It’s very hit-or-miss when it comes to different advisors. For the Advisories that aren’t shown the slides or given the lessons, the students miss out on announcements and are pushed into doing tasks on their own such as scheduling classes for the next school year.

A major complaint that students have given about these lessons is that they are not useful and they are very repetitive, especially what is put on the slideshows. During these lessons, students are required to watch or participate in the activities, but not everyone participates equally. So, even if the lesson is targeted at helping the students, not everyone benefits.

The only positive things lectures in Advisory contain are the announcements, updates, future events and the compassion video. The Advisory lessons take up the majority of the class period and are not useful or worth students’ time, as this time could be spent on what students need to complete. If there are state requirements that need to be met or important things that need to be said, then that is what should be on the slide show, not other random things to take up time.

Instead of having two Advisory lessons a week, MHS should have one day for the lesson and the other for studying, FlexTime and to work on homework. This way, all Advisory lessons could be planned and be something useful, rather than something that’s thrown together that sometimes doesn’t even seem relevant.