Common Principles for Uncommon Schools

Horace Volume 7 | 1991 | Issue 1

Are Advisory Groups Essential? What Do They Do, How Do They Work?: Describes the powerful role that advisory groups can play in personalizing students' educational experiences and improving the tone of a school; includes suggestions on organizing advisory groups. Download PDF  

A Friend is Dropped

When Sandy and Jenny started school as new sophomores in September, they got along very well. They had French and basketball in common, and the rest seemed to go along of its own accord. They kept lots of company with each other for the first few weeks. As time went on, however, there was little doubt that they were headed

Are Advisory Groups ‘Essential’? What They Do, How They Work

If even one person in a school knows him well enough to care, a student’s chances of success go up dramatically. In small groups that can focus on a range of subjects, teachers and students are forming new bonds and setting new standards for a personal education. When teachers at Kentucky’s Fairdale High School were planning the start of their

Lying: The Choices We Make

In her two books, Lying and Secrets, Sissela Bok discusses different forms of deception, and their various uses and justifications in modern life. She also gives many examples of deceptions: stated and unstated, blatant and subtle, “necessary” and unnecessary, omissions and exaggerations, some undertaken “for’ others, others for oneself, some undertaken in order to uncover even deeper deceptions, or to

Some Advisory Group Models

Some ways advisory groups can be organized and scheduled: As a credit-bearing hour-long daily Family Group meeting, including one day weekly set aside for help with academic work. Mixed ages and grades. Adviser- student ratio 1:18. (University Heights High School, New York City) As a 30-minute Teacher Guided Assistance (TGA) period scheduled midmorning to accommodate vocational students coming and going

Terranova: An Extra-Territorial Tale

There was in the nineteenth century an Italian sailor called Terranova, who worked on an American ship, the Emily, chartered in Baltimore but also working out of Salem, Massachusetts. Terranova was swabbing the decks one day when the ship was at port in Canton, China, when a Chinese woman, standing on her little junk which was perched up against the

The Broken Code: Churchill’s Dilemma At Coventry

At Bletchley, a tiny market town northwest of London, England, in November 1940, a terrible secret was learned. British code-breakers had managed to read German codes through an elaborate combination of stolen machines, Polish spies, interceptions, and brilliant and continuous decoding. The information gained in this way was called “Ultra”; it was gathered in the most careful and quiet way

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