What exactly is an advisory team?
An advisory team is a team of teachers who all share the same students. We work together with the students not only to teach them the curriculum they need to learn but also work together to get to know one another and trust each other. It is important for students to trust their teachers so they can come to them and ask questions about anything. We do group activities together to build relationships- especially among the students. Some of the students may not know other students and we want to make sure everyone knows each other and they all work together. We truly care about each and every student that walks in our classroom and we want to get to know them and see how they work with other students too. Not just on the typical curriculum work but how they work together on your everyday life challenges. Being a young adolescence is tough, they are adjusting to middle school, their bodies are changing, and making (and sometimes losing) relationships, it is important we help them in every way we can to help them adjust to these changes. This is what advisory teaming is all about.
WHY IS MY CHILD ACTING THIS WAY?
IS MY CHILD SICK?
ARE THEY BEING BULLIED AT SCHOOL?
WHY WON'T MY CHILD TALK TO ME ABOUT THEIR PROBLEMS?
These are all common questions parents of young adolescence will ask themselves. The links we have below will help you answer these questions and many other questions you have. Please contact us if you have any other questions about your child specifically and their school work, how they behave at school, and anything else.
The following link is to a website with great articles for parents, kids and teens. They have topics such as: Understanding Puberty, Sleep Problems in Teens, Encouraging a Healthy Body Image, Connecting with your Preteen, Your Changing Voice, I'm Growing Up- But Am I Normal?, Delayed Puberty, Myths About Acne and many other topics to help everyone!
http://kidshealth.org/parent/growth/growing/adolescence.html
The link below is an excellent website to go to for information on the changes and challenges your children have gone through, are going through right now, or maybe these have not happened yet. The topics vary from Adolescence overview, Development, Sexual health and body image, Identity formation and Drugs and alcohol. All very important topics to research at this point in your child's life.
http://www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife/topic/adolescence/helping-your-teen
The following link is a clip of a news cast that talk about how important it is for children to make friends in middle school and how it will effective long term.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1ZTFErgbzU
The following link takes you to a video where you can watch a speaker talk about how the teenage brain works and an explanation of why they do the things that they do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWUkW4s3XxY
Here is another link that parents can watch that tells of the most effective ways to communicate with you children.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoGCIkcJ42E
This is a great video for all teens to watch. It is a speaker that came into a school, giving the teens such a powerful message that many of them couldn't stop wiping the tears from their eyes. The speech was so simple yet so powerful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI0Twlt1aek
Our team goal is to help our students in every way that we can. We want them to feel welcome to ask us for help on homework, group projects, how to study for their test, how to interact with their peers and in many other ways. At this time in the students lives, there are many things changing so we want them to feel comfortable and welcome in the classroom! During one of our classes in college we read three great books that really helped us understand all of the difficult challenges students can have. The books are Taming of the Team by Jack Berckemeyer, This We Believe: Keys to Educating Young Adolescents, and Managing the Madness by Jack Berckemeyer. All three do an excellent job helping us relate to the students, give you ideas of what to do to help them become involved and welcome, also how to have fun with them. We highly recommend these to all of our parents whether or not you are wondering about what you could do to help your children. They are wonderful books filled with so much information. The research in these books is very well done and in great detail, they asked many teachers and administrators with years of experience on what they have learned over the learns and what has helped them.