PCM WIN and advisory mixup

The timing and use of both WIN and advisory has been a hot topic at PCM’s high school recently. WIN (What I Need) time is a dedicated period for students to be requested for the class they need, either to get caught up on work or do extra studying for an upcoming test. In addition to WIN time, advisory is another dedicated timeframe where students learn valuable lessons on post secondary school decisions, mental health, learning to have a better school environment and much more. This year, advisory has only been on Wednesdays in addition to WIN time everyday but Monday. Advisory has been placed right after WIN time and has a similar time period being around thirty minutes. Because of this, there have been complaints for not having enough time to teach advisory lessons to their fullest capabilities with such a little amount of time. PCM has decided to change up the WIN and advisory schedules next year to allow more time for advisory.

PCM Principal Kristen Souza has a plan in order for the schedule to accommodate both teachers and students needs. 

“One of the things that we have noticed this year is that advisory just isn’t long enough. We feel rushed, we don’t have time to do activities and things like that. So one of the changes we are going to make is to make advisory longer. We are going to move Wednesday’s WIN to Monday, so now WIN will be on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and then Wednesday will be just solely dedicated to advisory, and it will be in a longer period of time,” Souza said.

It is true that advisory has been rushed and students can tell that the lessons they are learning are short. Students really don’t gain much from them and don’t get to do much other than just sit in the classroom and learn the lesson. 

“It will be less rushed, hopefully there will be more time for activities and discussions and it will hopefully be more of just a sit and get. One of the things that makes the most impact rather than just sitting and getting a lesson is actually putting that stuff into action. If there’s more time, there can be more discussions, more action on some of the topics that are being brought up, creating plans for post-secondary, kindness, coming up with a plan for an action item or maybe going out in the community and doing some more things,” explained Souza. 

Advisory lessons are very important for students and they teach them life skills that regular classes would not. There are many good things that PCM wants to include in their lessons but the short time makes it hard to do so. 

“The people that spend time working on advisories have a lot of really great ideas but it’s hard to fit those great ideas in that small amount of time. So we’re looking at making that change next year. With more time comes more action and that’s what we’re hoping to do,” Souza said.

These changes are expected to happen right away for the 2022-23 PCM school year and they are hoping to have little impact on the actual written schedule. PCM realizes how important advisory and WIN are, so they don’t want to take anything away from students that they already have. 

“It will happen right away next year in September. The time during the day is going to be that same, WIN will happen after the second period and advisory will happen after the second period. We feel really strongly about the topics we are teaching in advisory, and so we felt like if we really want to make an impact and have students want to understand the importance of those topics, we need more time. But we also recognize the fact that WIN is also very important, so we didn’t want to take anything away from WIN so that’s why we are moving it to Monday and having that little bit of extra time with advisory is what we landed on,” explained Souza. 

PCM’s goal is to have advisory be longer without taking away anything from WIN time as it is important to meet students’ needs. With a longer advisory, lessons will have more of an impact on students and they will be able to gain more things from each time they go to advisory while experiencing more activities and discussions. With these changes, PCM is hoping to better improve the experience for both teachers and students during advisory to make sure the lessons being taught have as much impact as possible.