Most independent schools have advisory. Far fewer have an advisory that works. The difference is not a better binder of activities. It is alignment: a clear purpose, a structure designed to serve that purpose, and advisors who are supported to do the relational work the role really asks of them. When those pieces are in place, advisory becomes the place where students are genuinely known. When they are not, the experience comes down to luck of the draw.
I have spent 20 years in student life, and advisory is one of the most common things deans tell me they want to do better. So in a recent episode of The Table, I sat down with my business partner Alan Brown, co-founder of the Advisory Alignment Collective, to talk through why advisory matters, why it is harder than people admit, and what advisors actually need to succeed.
Key takeaways
- Having advisory and having an advisory that works are two different things. The gap is usually design, not the advisors.
- Name advisory’s purpose first. If everyone on campus answers “what is advisory for?” differently, that is a sign of misalignment.
- Being an advisor is harder than people credit. With no content to lean on, the role asks for presence, listening, and relationship building.
- Advisors need three things: alignment, connection with each other, and real support.
- The Advisory Alignment Collective works in two phases: an advisory audit for administrators, then an advisory playbook for advisors.
Why advisory matters
Advisory is how a big place feels small. Even an 80-person middle school is too large for every student to feel seen at every moment. Advisory creates the micro community inside the school, the small group where a student can feel known, feel like they belong, and feel that someone would notice if they were not there.
Alan put it plainly: the schools he loved as a student were the ones where the adults made him feel cared for. That is the promise advisory is built to keep. For some students, school is eight hours a day in a place where they do not otherwise feel seen. Advisory is the mechanism that gives them a space to be themselves, to make mistakes, and to stay connected to the larger school.
The gap between “having advisory” and “an advisory that works”
When schools tell Alan their advisory is struggling, the first instinct is usually to fix the advisors. But when he looks under the hood, the problem is rarely the advisors. It is the design. Groups that meet once every two months. A curriculum of four lessons a week that leaves no room to relax. Students who barely know each other. Those are structural decisions, and they pull advisory away from connection no matter how skilled the advisor is.
This is a clear case where the presenting problem is rarely the actual problem. Before you train a single advisor, you have to ask the question most schools skip: what is advisory actually for at our school? Advisory is not like teaching BC Calculus, where the material is the same everywhere. Its purpose is different at every school, and if you have not named that purpose, you cannot tell whether your design is moving toward it or away from it.
Being an advisor is harder than people give it credit for
There is a common assumption that any good teacher will be a good advisor. Those are not the same skills. A history teacher has content to lean on: a topic, an activity, a goal for the period. Advisory takes the content away. What is left is the harder work of building a relationship for its own sake, in 15 minutes, with a group of students you did not choose.
That shift, from doing to being, is the heart of the role. The skills it asks for are listening, facilitating a group, helping students feel known by sitting in a circle and asking how their day is going. Those skills do not always come naturally just because someone is around kids all day. And not every advisor is even a teacher, which is a good thing. The point is that we rarely name what the role requires, and naming it would take the pressure off.
What advisors actually need: alignment, connection, and support
Three things separate advisors who thrive from advisors who white-knuckle it.
Alignment. Everyone needs to be rowing in the same direction. When you ask people on a campus what advisory is for and get a different answer from each one, that is a clear sign something is not aligned. Advisors deserve the same clarity you gave them for the rest of their job: a purpose, and something close to a job description for the role.
Connection. Being an advisor can be surprisingly lonely. You are in a room full of people, but every other adult is off with their own group. Schools build in department time and division time, but almost never enough time for advisors to connect with each other. If we ran our advisor meetings the way we want advisory to run, giving time to connect, to share what is working, and to ask questions, advisory would feel far less lonely.
Support. Advisory is almost always a secondary job, the thing that comes after everything else, sometimes not even in the job description. That makes it easy to leave advisors alone with the hard parts. When a group is not gelling or a student is struggling, no one should have to carry that by themselves. You don’t have to do this alone, and neither do your advisors.
Underneath all of it is presence. As Alan reminded me, people remember how you made them feel. A warm, at-ease advisor and a frazzled one create very different rooms, and students read that energy instantly.
The two phases: audit, then playbook
This is the work Alan and I built the Advisory Alignment Collective to do, in two phases.
Phase one is the advisory audit, for administrators. It is a six-module progression for the team that leads advisory. Before anyone trains an advisor, the audit examines the container: how groups are formed, whether there is a clear purpose statement, whether the role is defined, even where students meet. A group wedged into a room with no walls will struggle in ways that have nothing to do with the advisor. The audit also helps schools settle mission, vision, goals, and responsibilities, so the foundation is set before phase two.
Phase two is the advisory playbook, for advisors. This one is not about how to do advisory. It is about how to be an advisor. It covers building relationships, troubleshooting when they go sideways, modeling the reset when you get something wrong, and the internal work too: knowing your own triggers, knowing what depletes or recharges you, and managing the many layers of relationship at once. Advisors are juggling the whole group, the bonds between students, and their own connection to each individual student, all at the same time.
Who benefits most
Any school with advisory could benefit, but the schools that gain the most are the ones ready to honestly assess the container and make structural changes, not just check a compliance box. What you put in is what you get out. Advisory can be more than just fine. When it is designed with intention and supported with real tools, it becomes a place where students are known. That is a strong student life system, and a sustainable model for the relationships that students carry with them long after graduation.
Advisory is not a homeroom with a different name. If this conversation resonated, and you are a head of school, dean of students, director of advisory, or someone who cares deeply about this work, you don’t have to figure it out alone.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between having advisory and having an advisory that works? Having advisory means the program exists on the schedule. An advisory that works is designed on purpose: it has a named purpose, a structure that supports that purpose, and advisors who are equipped for the relational work. The common failure point is design, not the advisors themselves.
Why is being an advisor harder than being a teacher? A teacher has content to lean on. Advisory removes the content and asks the adult to build relationships for their own sake, often in a short window, with a group they did not choose. That calls for presence, listening, and facilitation, which are real and learnable skills that do not automatically transfer from the classroom.
What do advisors need to succeed? Alignment around a shared purpose, connection with other advisors so the role feels less lonely, and ongoing support when groups or individual students are hard. Underneath all of it is presence, because students remember how an advisor made them feel.
What is the Advisory Alignment Collective? It is the program Bridget Johnson and Alan Brown built to help schools do advisory well, in two phases: an advisory audit for administrators that examines the program’s structure, then an advisory playbook for advisors focused on how to be an advisor, not just what to do.
