Form III Advisory

Running a successful advisory is a completely different challenge to structuring a successful class, because in the absence of any defined curriculum, getting the students to contribute their identities to space and then responding to the interactions of those identities often improvisationally becomes key in maintaining a cohesive, engaged and positive energy group.  I can speak to my first two advisories at THS and comment that they couldn't be more opposite in personality and tone to one another.  The first was full of high flying athletes and A-type personalities.  They instantly bonded and there was never a shortage of jokes or candid conversation starters.  3 of the 7 went on to campaign for Student and Honor Councils and almost all played leadership roles in their respective activities around campus.  We spent most of our advisory periods telling stories and jokes and there was hardly ever a "down" moment.  In contrast, my second group began the year much quieter seeming to want to sense whether the space would be safe before getting involved.  There was a lot of anxiety about starting high school, friendships didn't emerge as quickly and there were multiple moments early on where it was like pulling teeth to get anyone to say anything.  One this that did stand out was that this group was highly academic and their intellectual interests and accomplishments were off the charts.  Both years I started was has come to be called Interform Olympics in which all the Form III advisories choose an activity and then over the course of the year, the Form III advisories would play against each other in a home advisory's activity in a round robin tournament.  It has been great to see the bonding within my advisories as they compete against another advisory and it has always been a great way to break the ice and create a sort of identity for ourselves.  With my first year advisory, our chosen activity was Cornhole and we would crush the visiting advisory to the soundtrack of ACDC.  This simply wasn't the personality of my second year advisory, and we instead opted for the highly cerebral card game of Presidente.  By the end of the year, we had bonded so closely over playing Presidente that my advisees would rush me through announcements like upcoming calendar events in order to get as many games in as possible.  There was no way that I could have seen that the advisory would ever achieve this level of enthusiasm at the beginning of the year, but it was amazing to see the friendships and memories that formed by the end.  I learned that just had to open the spaces for their personalities to shine and then to follow their lead.​

I am really excited about the potential of Form Level Deans and Mr. Steve Cloran's appointment as the Form III Level Dean and I am looking forward to working with him on his initiatives.  One that I plan to suggest to him would be building websites to portfolio their experiences through Haverford.  I know building this website has been a hugely beneficial process for me and I think the same can be true for the students.