Exemplary middle and high schools are populated by teachers who have meaningful relationships with their students. Those relationships serve as part of the core rationale for a school’s existence. Through these nurturing mentor relationships students learn about themselves and about getting along with others.

By creating and maintaining an emotional landscape that supports a student’s individual journey he/she becomes a life-long learner. The added benefit, of course, is that students who feel connected to their schools, through their teachers and their peers, feel respected and safe. Emotional safety is key if students are to focus on academics and succeed in their coursework.

Many schools do a wonderful job educating students for life. But most schools fall short because there is no cohesive effort on the part of the faculty to create and maintain relationships with the students. And the students, in turn, are failing at creating healthy relationships with themselves and their peers. That leads to poor academic performance as well as an environment ripe for teasing and bullying.

We owe our students ongoing educational opportunities that support the development of their social/emotional skills, i.e., their EQ (Emotional Intelligence).

Annie has a vision of what school could be. She’s created this special Advisory Program Development Workshop to help educators and administrators come together as a team to:

1. Create a school conducive to learning, where students and teachers experience themselves as respected, contributing members of the community.
2. Create healthy relationships within that community: student to student, student to teacher. These relationships are built on mutual respect, compassion, and conscious choice-making for the greater good.
3. Improve parent-school communication. To keep parents in the loop vis-à-vis academic expectations and also to provide parents with ongoing parenting education opportunities. In this way the “team” includes parents so that they are encouraged to support their student’s academic success as well as the child’s social/emotional development.

Annie’s Advisory Program Development Workshop participants will:

• Increase their familiarity with the psychological/emotional needs of adolescents
• Understand how the current school environment and curriculum does and does not meet those needs
• Explore best practices of how Advisory Programs help create a support system for students and a more positive culture for the whole school
• Create program goals and educational objectives for thematic Advisory curriculum
• Develop* a robust Advisory Program curriculum

*Annie has consulted with schools to develop customized Advisory lesson plans to cover an entire school year.