Among the many new effects that have come into the Gregory School this 2019-20 school year, one in particular directly affected the daily lives of students. Advisories are a place of comfort here at TGS, yet due to the implementation of co-educational advisories, the comfort is now being put into question.
Advisories have always had same-sex teachers and advisees. This has been this way for a simple reason: the communication and connection between advisors and advisees should be open and easy. But, who says a student can find comfort in soley the same gender? The administration realized that students can also openly communicate and find a safe space with people of a different gender, hence prompting the institution of co-ed advisories.
To address the freshman, having come into a co-ed advisory their first year of high school, many opinions were thrown around.
Freshman Lily Snider who has never been in an advisory before claims, “I really like this co-ed advisory and I don’t see any issues about it. I guess I can’t talk about certain things in depth but I feel fine even though I can’t do that.”
Many other students agree with Lily, including sophomore Margo Alter who states, “I really like my advisory because I have really chill boys who are super fun, but if [they were] other boys I don't know how I’d feel. Still, sometimes boys are more fun to be around than girls so it's nice to have a co-ed group.”
Though the lower classmen have strong, interesting opinions about co-ed advisories, the upperclassmen might react differently and provide some insight, given that many of them have been around long enough to develop strong bonds with a single-gender advisory and can really speak to how this change has affected advisory dynamics. However, even they are on the fence about the subject, detailing both the pro’s and con’s.
For instance, Sophie Bergentino claims, “I think it’s interesting. It’s good in a way that you can kind of get different perspectives from different genders. It’s not as personal though because last year we shared things as just girls, and now that there are two boys, we can’t share as many personal things with the advisory as a whole.”
Sheela Gowrisankaran took real-life issues into account. “In Gender and Diversity, we’ve talked about safe spaces for both genders and about separate spaces to make them feel comfortable and prone to sharing. Still, I see the advantage in helping men and women socialize in high school. However, as it actually happens, advisories tend to be either male or female dominated. The issue in my advisory is that we don’t really talk because it is male dominated, and it’s not exactly the community space that it was last year.”
However, some upperclassmen weren’t on the fence at all, including junior Leo Geunstein who talked about how co-ed advisories moved around his connections with people. Apparently the switch up with advisories took boys away from his advisory which he says “changed the dynamics of the advisory.” He talks of the dynamics last year saying, “they changed up the advisories so drastically when our advisory finally had a good routine and people had slowly become familiar with each other.” He goes on to say that while the co-ed advisory works fine, he would have preferred to keep it the same way it used to be, and the bonds that could have solidified further collapsed.
The next step in seeking further answers about the co-ed advisory dilemma is Ms. Babbitt, head of the upper school. Ms. Babbitt explains the reasoning for switching to co-ed advisories. “One of the biggest concerns, truly, was that there were so few male advisors [compared to] female. It’s been an idea that's been kicked around for a long time and was proposed to ask the students. There are lots of theories one way or the other for single gender advisory, and whether one is better than the other. We just thought we would ask the students which is when we surveyed the students one upper school meeting.The majority of students said they would like to try co-ed advisories and that is when we decided to go in that direction. I think some people think it's interesting because some of one gender is less than the other in advisories. We tried to place students with the advisors they wanted based on the survey.”
Though students seem to have chosen their fate for themselves, perhaps some are now realizing that they made the wrong choice, while others might be reveling in the new environment. So, will co-ed advisories be around next year? The simple answer is maybe. Ms. Babbitt is planning to send out another survey to the students and faculty, which would decide the plan for next year. Though the student body is divided, or at the very least uncertain about co-ed advisories, they have to power and the opportunity to change it if they so wish.
Written by Hannah Calonje