Advisory

Making time for planning and connection

Commonwealth Academy believes that when nurtured in a caring and responsive environment, our students can thrive and achieve academic excellence.

Our fifth through twelfth grade neurodiverse students build their communication, executive functioning, and social-emotional skills through strategic, conscious, and purposeful activities each morning. Our Advisory Program is designed to help students learn how their brains work so they can harness their exceptional talents, recognize their strengths, and honor the innate value of their peers.

With our enhanced Advisory program, we provide time and space to consciously and purposefully build a positive, cohesive school culture, and support the needs of our neurodiverse student body. In addition to providing concrete lessons on developing executive functioning skills, the scope and sequence of the advisory program incorporates the need for social connection and social-emotional learning among our students. It facilitates the communication and interpersonal skills needed to address complex topics and world events. Practicing these skills as part of a cohesive framework fosters positive interactions both inside the school community and provides a lens for engaging in respectful conversations beyond the school walls. 

For Neurodiverse students, struggles with attention, social connections, flexible thinking, and organization can impact their ability to develop the needed social skills and executive functioning. Providing time specifically targeting self-awareness, identifying and practicing strategies to improve executive functioning, and providing daily time to develop connections with peers and faculty is vital to the success of our students. Laying a foundation of common language and school values helps teachers and administrators frame conversations around classroom norms including respecting themselves and others. 

Built around The Advisory Book by Linda Crawford with additional weekly executive functioning lessons and supports, the Advisory Program provides both the knowledge and practice the students need to harness their strengths and grow their understanding of themselves, each other, and the world. In turn, these skills underlie a school culture that celebrates diversity, emphasizes both individual and group strengths, and encourages students to embrace both their own unique and authentic selves as well as valuing others.