Fifteen minutes.

That’s how long the middle school advisory period was.

I was visiting a middle school where teachers struggled with advisory. They weren’t sure what they were supposed to be doing with the time, and some had started to wonder whether the time was useful at all. However, the administration believed there was a cohesive plan throughout the building.

With two very different pictures of the same fifteen minutes, I wanted to see what advisory actually looked like, so I sat in on an advisory.

Students came in. Some opened their Chromebooks and started playing games. Others rushed to finish an assignment from the night before. A few talked with friends or put their heads on their desks.

On the board was the date, a few announcements, and a fact about the day.

Eventually, morning announcements came on and took about six minutes.

Most students weren’t listening.

The teacher was at the desk taking attendance.

And when the bell rang, everyone got up and left.

Fifteen minutes. Gone.

I’ve seen many other versions of the same thing, too. A teacher is given a topic and says, “Oh, today we’re supposed to talk about this. So…anyone have anything to say about that?”

Silence.

“Okay. Go ahead and do whatever you want until the bell rings.”

And honestly? I get it.

I’ve talked to enough middle school teachers about advisory to know that “I don’t know what to do with this time” usually isn’t a lack of willingness.

It’s a lack of direction.

Most middle school teachers already have plenty to do. They know their students. They know how to plan a lesson. They know how to teach their content. 

What they haven’t necessarily been given is a clear answer to a different question:

What am I supposed to teach during advisory?

And that’s where I think we need to start.

I think the answer is hiding in plain sight. It’s in the things we find ourselves reminding students to do, helping them figure out, and sometimes getting frustrated when they don’t do them independently.

We keep expecting students to know how to be students.

Think about the things we get frustrated with middle schoolers for not doing.

• They forget to charge their Chromebook.

• They don’t write down their assignments.

• They get home and realize they have three things due tomorrow but no idea where to start.

• They can’t figure out how to ask a teacher for help.

• They don’t know how to plan their afternoon around homework, sports, activities, and everything else happening in their lives.

• They give up when something feels hard.

• They struggle to have a conversation with a peer when they disagree.

And then we say things like, “They need to be more responsible.”

Or, “They need better organization.”

Or, “They need to learn how to manage their time.”

Of course they do.

But when were students actually taught how to do those things? 

We tend to notice these skills when they aren’t there. But organization, planning, communication, persistence, responsibility, and independence aren’t things students simply have or don’t have.

They are skills. And skills have to be taught.

That’s why we often describe middle school advisory as the place where students learn how to be students.

Not another academic class. Not fifteen minutes of announcements. Not a time to fill because there happens to be a block in the schedule.

A place where students can practice the student success skills they need to navigate school more independently.

I’ve also seen what happens when advisory works.

One of my favorite examples happened the week before progress reports.

The teacher greeted students at the door. The board directed them to pull up Google Classroom and look at their assignments.

Students turned to a partner and talked through what they were seeing.

• Did they know what everything was?

• Was anything missing?

• Was there something they needed clarification about?

Then they each identified two things they wanted to address. Maybe an assignment was missing. Maybe it hadn’t been submitted. Maybe they weren’t happy with the grade.

Then they made a plan.

The teacher gave them a few minutes right then to get started, and before they left, they wrote down what they needed to do next.

There wasn’t a big lesson.

There wasn’t a worksheet.

But there was a lot of learning happening. 

And here’s what made this advisory so effective: It wasn’t a standalone activity.

In the weeks leading up to this, students had been learning and practicing the skills they needed for this very moment.

They’d learned how to log in and check their assignments. They’d practiced writing emails and having conversations with teachers, using scripts to build their confidence. They’d explored different organization strategies, tried them out, and reflected on what worked best for them. And they’d learned how to identify a problem and choose a first step toward solving it.

The teacher hadn’t simply told students to be more organized, responsible, or independent. She’d taught them how.

And now, with progress reports around the corner, students had a real reason to put those skills to use.

They weren’t practicing organization on a pretend assignment. They were looking at their own work, identifying their own needs, and making a plan that mattered to them.

That’s what made those fifteen minutes so valuable.

That particular activity worked because the teacher had access to the students’ assignments. An advisory teacher who doesn’t teach those students’ content areas would need to approach it differently.

But the underlying idea can work anywhere:

Teach the skills. Give students opportunities to practice. Then help them put those skills to work in situations that matter to them. 

That is advisory.

Teachers shouldn’t have to figure advisory out on their own.

If you’ve ever been handed an advisory period and thought, Okay…what exactly am I supposed to do with this?  –  you are not alone.

And you probably don’t need another person telling you that advisory is important.

You need a clear purpose, a plan for teaching the skills, and enough flexibility to make it work for your students. 

That starts with a shared understanding of what students should be learning during advisory. From there, teachers can build on those skills over time, giving students opportunities to practice and apply what they’ve learned. 

A seventh-grade science teacher and an eighth-grade art teacher don’t have to run the exact same advisory.

But students should still recognize the purpose.

This is where we learn how to be students.

And teachers should be able to walk into the room knowing, I know what I’m doing here.

Because fifteen minutes can make a difference when those minutes are building toward something. 

Give students a place to learn how to plan, communicate, persist, ask for help, manage their work, and navigate relationships  –  and suddenly advisory isn’t taking time away from learning.

It is learning.

And you don’t have to figure out what that looks like by yourself.

Written by Dana Januszka 2026

Want to build a more purposeful advisory?

Our BASIC Advisory Course helps schools create a shared approach to advisory while giving teachers practical, ready-to-use middle school advisory lessons and activities that make that time meaningful. The goal isn’t to make every advisory look the same. It’s to give teachers enough structure to know where to start  –  and enough flexibility to make it their own.