Advisory lessons leave GAP in effectiveness, influence

Justice LaMaster | Staff writer

Staff WriterLast year, the Scottsburg High School guidance department noticed a need for the Guidance Advisory Program also known as GAP. According to Counselor Shannon Mount, GAP was created not only because of the offer of the Lilly Endowment Comprehensive grant but in hopes of creating a better student-teacher bonding experience in advisory and creating fewer interruptions in English classrooms.

Although GAP is a great program to have at Scottsburg it is not influential to the student body. GAP is not influential because most of the students do not find the activities to be entertaining and the activities seem pointless to the students. Mount said that the topics that are chosen for GAP were made based on surveys taken in English classes last year by the students.

The issue with the activities being based on these surveys is that a lot of students just go through and click the first answer they see. Mount mentioned that Freshman advisories are the only ones that typically participate in GAP activities.

To improve GAP, it needs to be more student-led and hands-on rather than computerized so that the counselors can see an increase in student engagement regarding the activities. Most students prefer to do hands-on activities especially if they get to pick what they are doing. GAP can be more student-led if the advisors in charge of making the assignments would just give each advisory a set of topics to choose from and let the advisories go from there. This would create an environment that would increase participation and get advisories to collaborate more during advisory. These are things that the administration in charge of GAP is seeking to accomplish.