The return of Advisory class at SLHS!

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Autumn Mann

Mrs. Dubridge shows off her Shark Wars wins.

Autumn Mann, Staff Writer

This year 2021 is bringing good news back to Saint Louis High School! Advisory has finally returned! As everyone knows, this past year has been full of new and many different things to adapt to. Sadly, due to COVID, SLHS decided against having Advisory at the beginning of the school year. Yet, as students and staff return to in-person learning, they learned that Advisory is back. However, this year will be a little different from past years. Advisory will begin Jan. 28.

Advisory allows students and teachers to have extra time to focus on schoolwork and things they need to get done that they might not have much time for. Another thing that is different is instead of having one teacher with a mixture of students from different grades, there will be four teachers or so assigned to a grade. Freshmen will have five advisors; Kisser, Landis, Peak, Stedman, and Stowell. Sophomores will have four teachers; Dubridge, Kuhn, Nobis, and Puffpaff. Juniors will have three advisors; Beery, Burleson, and Everitt. Seniors will only have three advisors; Biehl, Busch-Grabmeyer, and Reeves. Advisory will happen every Tuesday and Thursday. 

Normally, Advisory would have been full of groups of kids mixed with all different grades in the high school. These classes would participate in games with the whole school being a part of Shark Wars. Shark Wars is a mixture of competitions in which each advisory competes to win the Shark Wars. Fortunately, SLHS will still be participating in Shark Wars this year but small competitions.

The principal of SLHS, Eric Huff, states, “I had initially decided to put a ‘pause’ on holding Advisory/WIN classes to reduce the number of transitions we made between classes each day due to concerns with COVID.  However, since students have done a good job with masking and sanitizing their work areas, we have so far managed to limit COVID exposures in school. Because of this, I feel the risk of transmission is not significantly increased by adding an additional class two days per week. I believe the addition of Advisory time can be valuable for students needing to catch up on work, and it will also allow teachers more flexibility to connect with virtual students during the school day.” He also that he knows some students won’t use this time to their advantage, but others will greatly benefit from this opportunity given. 

Sophomore Evelynn Gutierrez stated, “I’m excited about Advisory because I have some friends in my Advisory, and I’ll have time to work on school.” She believes that Advisory is very useful for kids because it gives people time to work on late work and other work. Gutierrez doesn’t really like that Advisory is just going to be full of her grade because she’s going to miss her old Advisory class.