Four years ago, the 2017-2018 school year saw a host of new changes to SASPDHS—one of the most notable was the removal of the old morning homeroom session. Replacing it was a series of new alternatives—beginning with Common Ground and closing with our current program of Advisory—occurring during the Flexi timeslot, another new addition. Of all of these, only the last has been retained in full. Much as the Class of 2021 right arrived alongside these changes, they now prepare to graduate as the last class to participate in the transition.

Since it is my last year here, I’d like to make a final review of my experiences with Common Ground and those that I’ve heard about, and to explore what this says about our current Advisory model.

Of course, I’m relying primarily on personal anecdotes and my own, narrow and I welcome efforts to conduct a rigorous survey of attitudes towards Advisory, would’ve loved to if someone collected hard data on attitudes towards Common Ground four years ago. As such, although I do think that my experiences (if not my views) are fairly representative of the average sentiment among seniors at the very least, I welcome anyone with experiences different from mine to share their perspective.

Common Ground: A Retrospective

Common Ground emerged from a rather noble vision of bringing together students from different social groups, grade levels, and academic orientations to create a safe and open micro-community that could help freshmen, new students, and the socially awkward form valuable connections with other students in the community. Such connections would be fostered among a random selection of students (with representation from all grades) was to meet once every two weeks, under the supervision of a similarly random pair of teachers.

For all its lofty—and entirely commendable—aspirations, the program didn’t even last an entire school year, coming to an end in the second semester as the administration finally caved to sustained pressure from the student body. Time has not been kinder to the memory of Common Ground than those who lived it: since its cancellation, it seems to have vanished entirely from the collective consciousness of the student body—those who were there seem determined to forget it, making no effort to keep its story alive. If there is any final verdict on the program, consensus still seems to hold that it was an unmitigated disaster. Not only was it thoroughly unenjoyable for the vast majority of the student body, many of those who did find it at least tolerable (such as myself) expressed that they only felt this way because their supervising teachers were less committed to its vision. But why?

The sheer infrequency of meetings sticks out as a factor that virtually eliminated any chance of there being lasting contact among members and between students and teachers, the vast majority of whom had little prior relationship, but that alone was hardly the only reason for its failure—by the time it was scrapped, even I had started find biweekly meetings too frequent, speaking to the presence of other fatal flaws.

Another oft-cited factor for Common Ground downfall was in fact one of its core goals: grouping together people from different grades. I never really found this to be a critical flaw, and I haven’t seen any reason to change my mind in retrospect. As a matter of fact, I talked a fair amount with the upperclassmen in my group—although this was far more often the result of casual chatting to pass the time than the official icebreakers, an issue I’ll explore in more depth later. In fact, it’s pretty normal for students to interact with students in other grades, whether in clubs or multi-grade level classes (e.g. orchestra, band choir, or, for some upperclassmen, AP courses); on a similar note, students who don’t interact with students in other grades probably don’t interact with those in their own either. This, in fact, connects to a related, but distinct factor, lack of common interests, which I think offers a more convincing explanation: lack of shared interests. As the groups were randomly selected, they contained a veritable buffet of passions and interests (and not in a good way). There was, of course, a good reason not to sort people by their interests, namely that it would result in cohorts simply reproducing existing social groups, and thus prevent the program from achieving its goal of promoting inclusiveness. Nonetheless, the lack of any shared interests was equally damaging, as each cohort had to start from zero in the bonding process, with no prior foundations which they could use to build a meaningful rapport or sense of collective identity. That the groups were larger than most class sections (numbering in the high teens and low twenties) did not help.

The final attribute of Common Ground that I would pin its failure on would be icebreakers. While icebreakers can help establish a tentative acquaintance between strangers, in my experience the ‘marginal benefit’ of icebreakers diminishes quite sharply after the first couple of rounds, as engaging in genuine, passionate discussions and partaking activities that everyone is genuinely enthusiastic in become much more important in establishing a sense of common ground (pardon the pun). The wildly varying experiences that people in different Common Ground groups had, and hence the views they developed, provide a great deal of support for this view. Besides being broadly unpopular, Common Ground had also developed a reputation of extreme inconsistency—whereas some teachers fully committed to organizing icebreaker after icebreaker (with students largely expressing the above view in response) others were allowed much more input in what activities took place, with the resulting activities rarely had bonding as an expressed goal: my group, for instance, elected to share junk food and watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Unsurprisingly, the latter groups led to a more enjoyable experience. Yet, at the same time, these groups also (arguably) bonded more. Engaging in an activity that we all enjoyed made us more comfortable, and hence more likely to talk to each other. Go figure. Had our paradigm been allowed to run its course, there’s a chance that I might even have become friends with some of the other people in my group. However, our halcyon days of teledrama watching were not to last, as the inconsistency in Common Ground meeting agendas was ‘solved’ near the end of the first semester by the implementation of more precise guidelines on what we were supposed to do during meetings. After about a month or two of universal icebreakers, we walked into the PAC for a Community Meeting at 12:15 on one fine Tuesday to hear that no more Common Ground meetings would take place for the remainder of the year.

Altogether, then, it seems reasonable to pin the failure of Common Ground on the three factors of infrequency, lack of shared interest, and icebreakers (with an added dose of overly large groupings). Thankfully, Advisory has addressed all of them to at least some degree.

Advisory: An Appraisal

After having dissected the corpse of Common Ground, it seems apt to (briefly) apply a similar analysis in appraising our current homeroom-equivalent program of Advisory, different though their goals may be.

Advisory meetings occur with twice the frequency of Common Ground, and although the result is still only one meeting per week, this already makes for a huge difference. As a result, it feels like an actual part of the school experience rather than a sudden, occasional occurrence.

More importantly, however, Advisory teachers teach most of the students in their Advisory groups, meaning that people are likely to have regular interactions with both their teacher and Advisory-mates outside of Advisory as well. The fact that most members are taking a shared subject (if not necessarily a class) further provides precisely the kind of shared external experience that Common Ground so sorely lacked. True, it can, at times, lead to a dearth of diversity, such is the case with my current advisory, which is a regrettably homogeneous cohort of male physics students, but other times it can brings together a remarkably broad group of people who share but a single crucial similarity, as with my group last year.

I wouldn’t consider the icebreaker problem to be completely solved, but it’s nice to see that the mandatory activities and discussions are increasingly ones that serve a real purpose (for seniors this had included college prep and discussion of important issues such as suicide or racism). There’s also some room for improvisation, which, at least in my group, has allowed to us to interspace the ‘official programming’ with our own discussions and even activities. As important as it is to learn how to cook with a microwave or discuss the kinds of discrimination (or even violence) that the PoC among us might face in university, I think the latter self-guided activities have an important role to play as well, and should perhaps be given more recognition and emphasis.

Overall, Advisory seems to have built on the shortcomings of Common Ground to create a much more effective homeroom experience, though not one without its shortcomings. Although the Advisory model does not allow for quite the amount of dialogue between grade levels that a successful Common Ground might have, inter-Advisory group exchanges like the one between seniors and freshmen at the end of the previous semester has enabled some interaction. This relative success does not preclude the presence of many remaining shortcomings—such as the fact that sophomores apparently still partake in Project Wayfinder activities, which I lack the energy to critique—but I’m confident that the administration will be able to build on past and current experiences alike and consider student feedback as it continues to develop the Advisory program.

Article by John Chen.