The Cherry Creek School District (CCSD) mandates advisory classes each week for students across all schools. The class focuses on building trusting relationships with the teacher and fellow classmates. At Smoky, the class is 40 minutes long and usually goes over topics like upcoming events and preparing students for the future. 

However, many students believe that advisory is unnecessary and a waste of time. On advisory days, other classes are shortened to fit advisory in the schedule, but that causes people to not have as much time to work. It leaves the question: Is it worth it to make the schedule shorter just to have a short class that many students think doesn’t teach anything and fulfill its purpose of building relationships?

“I feel that advisory doesn’t help me with anything and is a waste of time for students, and it is not worth it to cut out time from other classes just to have advisory,” Jonathan Fonseca (10) said. Lots of students agree with what Jonathan said and also agree that advisory is unnecessary.

Students think advisory is not effective.

“Advisory does not build relationships between students and teachers. In my class, not many people talk to each other and students never seem to want to participate in activities but sometimes I do like advisory as a time to do my school work,” Cameron Weidmann (10) said.  

Students work on homework rather than interacting in advisory class.

“I like doing school work and talking to friends but the things that we do in class to make students get to know each other never form friendships and people only talk to people they already know,” Benjamin Luedtke (11) said.

Advisory may not be fulfilling its purpose of building relationships with classmates and teachers. Students agree that every class is different, but one thing they all share in common is that they don’t match the idea of what advisory should be in their books. In addition to this, students also agree that doing work in advisory is a better use of time than interacting with the teacher or other students like the district intended.