Chelsea Middle School Advisory Program

The Chelsea Middle School Advisory Program is ideally, a time when teachers and students examine "real-life" issues and character education traits. Advisory groups focus on issues that relate to students in their roles as people, as learners, and as members of the community. The ultimate goal is for students to understand themselves better in each of these roles. Throughout the year, students explore topics as varied as developing personal goals, celebrating accomplishments within and outside of school, and examining the factors that enhance and interfere with their learning. The advisory group is intended to offer students a safe, supportive forum for dealing with issues of significance to them. Advisors provide advisees with an attentive ear, caring support, and sound advice throughout the year.

Listed below is a tentative schedule of our advisory meeting dates and the lesson topics.

8-Sep-11          Responsibility

15-Sep-11        Respect/Bullying

22-Sep-11        Sportsmanship

29-Sep-11        Responsibility for a Safe School

20-Oct-11        Attitude

27-Oct-11        School Pride/Cleanliness

3-Nov-11         Kindness/Stop Bullying

10-Nov-11       Patriotism

17-Nov-11       Cyber Bullying

1-Dec-11         Stop Gossip / How it Hurts

8-Dec-11         Acceptance

12-Jan-12        Bullying/Stop Harassment

19-Jan-12        Success

26-Jan-12        Good Judgment

2-Feb-12          Integrity

9-Feb-12          Courage

16-Feb-12        Good Citizenship

23-Feb-12        Perseverance

1-Mar-12         Punctuality

8-Mar-12         Service to others

26-Apr-12       Respect for Peers/Friendship/Bullying

3-May-12        Self-Discipline

During the meetings of the CHMS school leadership team, we would discuss that we could not just focus on bullying/harassment, but that we also needed to focus on creating well-rounded students who had good character. This involved teaching the aspects of good character and then analyzing these ideas within small advisory groups.  For instance, during the first advisory class time, we discussed what types of reponsiblity a person may have. We decided that this idea of having responsibility not only to ourselves, but to others was important so we started with this. This provided our foundation for our advisory. We used the information below to discuss repsonsiblity.

 The Six Types of Responsibility

Moral Responsibility to other people, animals, and the earth. This means caring, defending, helping, building, protecting, preserving, and sustaining. You're accountable for treating other people justly and fairly, for honoring other living things, and for being environmentally aware.

Legal Responsibility to laws and ordinances of your community, state and country. If there's a law you believe is outdated, unjust, discriminatory, or unfair, you can work to change, improve, or eliminate it. You can't simply decide to disobey it.

Family Responsibility. This means treating your parents, siblings, and other relatives with love and respect, following your parents' rules, and doing chores and duties at home.

Community Responsibility. Unless you're a hermit who lives in a cave, you're part of a community. As such, you're responsible for treating others, as you want to be treated, for participated in community activities and decisions, and for being and active, contributing citizen. If your neighborhood park is full of trash, don't wait for someone else to pick it up. You can read local and community newspapers to stay informed. When you're old enough, vote in elections. If you're feeling really responsible, you might even decide to run for office.

Responsibility to customs, traditions, beliefs, and rules. These might come from your family, your community, your heritage, or your faith. Learn what they are and do your best to respect and follow them.

Personal Responsibility. It's up to you to become a person of good character. Your parents, teachers, religious leaders, scout leaders, and other caring adults will guide you, but only you can determine the kind of person you are and ultimately become.

After the teacher lead the discussion, the students created a six types of responsibilities poster (See below) with each type of responsibility listed. The students would discuss what would be an example of family responsibility and put this example in the appropriate location. The students provided examples for all six types of responsibility.

The advisory lessons that followed also were created on the idea of creating responsility, but we now delved into being respectful of others. This lead into our first lesson on the different types of bullying, and what to do if you are being bullied. And now you have to stay tuned for examples of our advisory lessons which will be provided in the next blog post :)