The Advisory Program

A strong advisory program is essential to supported our scholars as the navigate through the formative middle grades.  At Drew Freeman, our advisory program work will center around the book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, written by Sean Covey,

 

This program will be based in a daily advisory period, ending with a culminating presentation project.

 

 

Objective:  
The students will read/write/present/engage the ideas in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens in order to be successful in middle school, their personal lives, high school, and beyond.

 

“We first make our habits, then our habits make us.”

-English Poet

 

At the end of the year if the students have forgotten how to number the quadrants on the Cartesian plane they will most likely still be able to be successful in their lives.  But during the year, we would like to offer the students something to take away, not in terms of facts or knowledge, but in terms of life skills.  A great framework to work within in order to achieve this goal is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens.

 

How do we facilitate their exploration and exposure to these habits?  It will have to take on many different forms: posters, reading, writing/reflection, discussion, presentation, and student portfolios (adaptations of students demonstrating effective and defective behaviors).  There will be projects throughout culminating in a capstone project to tie the whole program together.

 

“It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.”

– Edmund Hillary

 

We see it every day, if students could only get past themselves, they could get past the math.  Sometimes learning this material or fitting into the structure of middle school can seem as much of a task as climbing Mount Everest.  These are challenging times for our students and the more tools we can give them, the more equipped they will be to find their way in this world.  This book does a great job of taking the principles developed by Stephen Covey and putting it in language and situations that are accessible and interesting to the audience we are trying to reach.

 

Presentations

 

Presentation Formats:
Advisory teams will present projects in January 2013 to DFMS staff, parents, community and business partners.

 

There are twelve content areas:

1. Get in the Habit 2. Paradigms and Principles 3. The Personal Bank Account 4. Habit 1 - Be Proactive 5. Habit 2 - Begin With the End in Mind 6. Habit 3 - Put First Things First

7. The Relationship Bank Account 8. Habit 4 - Think Win-Win 9. Habit 5 - Seek First to Understand Then to Be Understood 10. Habit 6 - Synergize 11. Habit 7 - Sharpen the Saw 12. Keep Hope Alive

 

  For more information on the Presentation, download the Scoring Rubric.