CURMUDGUCATION: 6 Guidelines for Extracurricular Advisers

CURMUDGUCATION: 6 Guidelines for Extracurricular Advisers:

6 Guidelines for Extracurricular Advisers

I have been an extracurricular activity adviser for as long as I've been a teacher. I have been the faculty adviser for class councils, student council, radio club, and a few school magazines. I have been the assistant director for the marching band and every kind of director for school plays. I am the adviser for yearbook and stage crew.

I'm pretty committed to extracurriculars in part because they were a big influence in my own high school years. I learned plenty of things in the classroom, but I learned a lot about leadership and responsibility and working with other people and just generally how to get things done in band and on yearbook staff.

School activities can be enormously empowering for students, but they can also be an avenue for just wringing the power right out of them, and it is a real challenge for teachers to stay on the path that allows students to find and exercise their own voice.

Here are the things I try to stay mindful of when working as a faculty adviser.

1) What Are the Actual Stakes?

I have seen adults act as is getting decorations properly assembled for a school dance was going to decide the Fate of Western Civilization As We Know It. But as it turns out, almost nobody has ever died because tissue poms were not fluffy enough. Prom decorations are almost never a life or death issue.


This does not mean you set slack, half-baked standards for your students. But your most important CURMUDGUCATION: 6 Guidelines for Extracurricular Advisers: