Over the course of hundreds of biweekly meetings, the advisory program was a familiar aspect of the Pinewood curriculum, serving as the class that teaches students the soft skills necessary to succeed not just academically, but in life overall.
However, this year marks the end of the advisory era, as the six-year-old program was retired and replaced by Social Emotional Learning, a new program at Upper Campus that shares the same goals as the advisory program but plans on a different execution.
Both advisory and SEL focus on Pinewood’s motto, “Shared Values, Strong Bonds.” However, administrators hope that the shift to SEL will improve student emotional learning.
“The feedback we got was that everyone’s advisory experience was different,” Dean of Students Jennifer Bates said. “Many people did not seem to connect to Wayfinder, and it was expensive.”
Sophomore Kayan Patel agreed with this sentiment.
“I don’t think I really learned much about handling my emotions in advisory, and I didn’t like Wayfinder,” Patel said. “I don’t think half of the people answered it truthfully.”
SEL will function differently from advisory. Each grade has an annual theme and one lead teacher who distributes the material along with other supporting teachers. At the end of the year, each grade will also work on a culminating, theme-relevant project. This way, everyone in the grade receives the same content and participates in the same activities rather than every class following its own agenda.
“The goals of the SEL program are to get students thinking about what skills they can develop to manage and cope with this facet of their humanness,” Head of Upper Campus Eve Kulbieda said.
According to school counselor Stephanie Fugita, the transition to SEL will benefit teachers as well.
“The teachers found it overwhelming to have to do the planning around their Wayfinder lesson,” Fugita said. “With SEL, there’s a leader who’s doing the research.”
Despite only having had one SEL lesson, Patel has a more favorable view of the current program.
“I think advisory and SEL are quite similar, but SEL is more interactive,” Patel said.
Fugita also hopes SEL will be a more popular program.
“I think this stuff is really important,” Fugita said. “Aside from academics, I want our school to also really focus on well-being, relationships, problem solving, resilience, and coping skills.”
