Here at AHC, each student has an advisory class and attends a 30 minute advisory meeting three times a week. During these get togethers, students and their advisors do various activities such as: having an assembly, celebrating birthdays, catching up on homework, or simply taking a break from class.

According to Director of School Counseling Amy Schmidt Stowe, explained that Advisory class is a program that “flushes out the rest of school.” She continued that it “enriches the whole school community” in academics and by providing student services including those of the Counseling Department and the College Counseling Department. Director of Student Activities Phyllis Ouelette is in charge of scheduling Advisory Class meetings. 

The Counseling Department is one of the departments that takes part in planning programs for Advisory class. Stowe mentioned that Advisory programs mainly focus on “social/emotional learning, looking after [oneself], and interacting with others.” The department also talks “to advisors and students and evaluate[s] their answers for next programs,” she added. Stowe described their method as “scaffolding”; which is a developmental way of helping students reach a level of understanding of the topics they learn.

As to the importance of this class, Stowe emphasized the fact that it is really based on what Father Moreau once said, “the mind will not be cultivated at the expense of the heart.” Meaning it is a class to expose LOTAs to a “mix of educating the head and the heart,” as Stowe rephrased. She further expressed Moreau’s words are the “reason for what we have here at AHC in the way of program.”

In general, Stowe found that student’s thoughts about Advisory class varied depending on the day of the class and what is planned. Opinions range from students loving to be together with others to hang out and talk or to do a program, to some students who shared that they wished for Advisory to be “more chill time to study.”

For freshman Marina Buziak, Advisory class is a good time to get a head start on homework. She thinks that such a class exists “to catch up on current events in our school, eat snacks, and relax.”

In junior Jessica Madruga’s opinion, Advisory class is like a homeroom that students might have to get organized. Madruga likes that it is a “very chill place to start the day.”