In today's educational world, students with special needs and students that have accommodations plans are often assigned a case manager to help determine how to best build their educational plans. This is an amazing process as students with learning disabilities or students that have impairments that affect a major life function often require additional support to ensure their success. My question is ... what about the students that may not categorize as a student with special needs or specific impairments?
It is imperative that ALL students have a "person". That person mentors, supports, guides and gives each student someone to turn to if there is ever a need. At our school, we have established an advisory where advisory teacher is meant to be the case manager for the students in their advisory class. This teacher works with each student to check grades, communicate any needs, work through educational struggles, help schedule necessary tutorials, check for missing work, update scheduling needs and any help with any other additional circumstances that may come up for those individual students. The intention is for someone to have eyes on the success of each and every student on our campus.
As we continue to work through developing our advisory program, teachers are finding ways to have an additional way to connect to their kids on a different level. Students need relationships with educators that promote individual success and support the individual needs of all students. Advisories have given our students, no matter who they are, ... their "person"!!