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Advisory Program

girls in class

The Forest Ridge Advisory Program centers around building a support network for students as they navigate the ups and downs of adolescence. Using a strength-based approach grounded in positive psychology, advisors provide individualized coaching and support as girls grow in their self-advocacy skills.

What is an advisor?

Advisors are mentors, coaches and sounding boards. They are a point of connection for each of their advisees, and her parents, to provide more in-depth support on specific topics as needed. Advisors help girls build a solid center of gravity and learn that strong girls:

  • Ask for help
  • Own their “own engagement”: their energy, intentions and actions
  • Build a strength-based approach to solving problems
  • Strengthen their “integrity muscle”
  • Build strategies to manage responsibilities and activities
  • Develop healthy relationship skills, including setting boundaries and working through conflict
  • The Advisory Program is a rich practice field for learning to navigate everyday life—both the ups and the downs.

 

Middle School Advisory Program

Advisory meets twice a week to provide an opportunity for community connection through grade level activities. Advisory is also a place to learn life skills like time management, goal setting and prioritizing.
 

Our faculty empowers students to create solutions to problems, to develop responsibility for their learning, to communicate openly, to serve others and to better understand what it means to be part of a Sacred Heart community through open discussion of our school values and goals. Advisory also provides students the opportunity to learn to work and play together, to talk and listen together and to learn to be self-directed.

Advisory is one of many ways that the faculty at Forest Ridge come to know the unique and special gifts each child contributes to the class and school environment.

 

Upper School Advisory Program

Upper school is a time when our students grapple with the complexity that comes with greater independence. Advisors support our upper school students with individualized coaching and academic advisement as girls grow in their self-advocacy skills.

Skill-building includes:

  • Understanding and managing emotions

  • Advocating for self and others

  • Self-awareness

  • Problem solving and perspective talking

  • Genuine inclusivity: valuing our own and others’ strengths and contributions

  • Balancing independence and need for support

  • Navigating friendships: having autonomy within a group, branching out gracefully, appreciating space and openness to change

  • Goal setting and realistic action plans

  • Role of social media in friendships

  • Personal accountability and responsibility

Advisory Program Skill-Building Includes: