I Was the Teacher Who Fought School Advisory

If you had asked me years ago about advisory, I would have told you exactly why it wouldn't work. I was one of the teachers fighting against it. Looking back now, I realize something surprising. I wasn't fighting advisory.

I was fighting the fear of failing.

I Was Hired to Teach Chemistry

When I became a teacher, I was hired because I knew chemistry. I was the content expert. Today, I question what it even means to be an "expert" in teaching—but that's a story for another day. At the time, though, my identity as a teacher was clear. I taught chemistry.

Then I was assigned an advisory.

Suddenly, I was expected to build meaningful relationships with a group of students I didn't teach, didn't know, and didn't have a shared experience with. No chemistry. No lab. No curriculum I knew how to teach.

Just...relationships.

The message I received, whether it was intended or not, was that because I was a teacher, I should naturally know how to do this.

I didn't.

I Entered Survival Mode

I actually started excited. I like challenges. But the moment those students walked into my room and looked to me to lead them, I froze. How do you build relationships with teenagers when you have nothing connecting you? Where do you even begin?

Today I teach about the Zones of Comfort. Back then, I had no language for what was happening inside me.

I thought I was stepping into a challenge. In reality, I had skipped right past my challenge zone and landed squarely in Panic. And when humans enter panic, we don't learn.

We survive.

Looking back, I can see every survival response show up.

First came fawning. "I can't do this." "Someone else probably knows how."

Then came fight. At the time I was in a leadership role within our teachers' union. I found other teachers who felt exactly the same way I did. Together we reframed school advisory as "another prep." If we're being honest, that's exactly what it felt like. We hadn't been trained to facilitate relationships. We hadn't been taught how to create belonging.

We were experts in our content, and suddenly we were expected to be experts in something completely different.

So we fought.

Looking back, I sometimes wonder if this was the beginning of the "us versus them" mentality between teachers and administration. Not because anyone wanted conflict.

Because fear had nowhere else to go.

Next was flight. Eventually the fight was over. Advisory stayed. So I changed strategies.

I fled. Not physically. Emotionally. I became the teacher who sat at my desk and thought,

"If students need me, they'll come talk to me." I convinced myself I didn't have to pursue relationships if they weren't pursuing me. It was easier.

Safer.

I stayed in that pattern for years. At the time, I thought I was protecting my energy. Now I know I was protecting myself from failure.

The Fear I Couldn't Name

Here's what I couldn't articulate back then. If the purpose of advisory was to ensure every student had one trusted adult...what if I wasn't that adult? What if I failed? What if a student never felt seen? What if they never felt like they belonged? What if they struggled alone? What if they reached a point where they believed no one cared?

Those thoughts sound dramatic. But they were real.

Failure didn't feel like getting a lesson wrong. Failure felt like carrying responsibility for another human being's life. When the stakes feel that high, survival makes perfect sense.

Fight.

Flight.

Freeze.

Fawn.

I experienced every one of them.

What I Needed Wasn't More Training to Master School Advisory

If I could go back and talk to that version of myself, I wouldn't tell her to "try harder." I'd tell her what was actually happening. "You aren't resisting because you're lazy." "You aren't difficult." "You're outside your Challenge Zone."

I wish someone had helped me understand that relationship-building is a skill—not a personality trait. I wish someone had modeled it. I wish someone had walked beside me while I learned. Instead, like many teachers, I assumed this was another initiative we just had to survive until the next one arrived.

The Day Everything Changed

Then something unexpected happened. A group of student leaders came into my advisory to work with my freshmen. Ironically, these were the exact kinds of students we often select as leaders—the rule followers, the responsible ones. They didn't come with a curriculum. They came with games. They laughed. They played.

The freshmen laughed.

And then something surprising happened. I laughed too. For the first time, my guard came down. I wasn't trying to facilitate meaningful conversation. I wasn't trying to manufacture belonging. I was simply playing.

In that moment I realized something that would change the rest of my career. I didn't need to become an expert in relationship-building overnight. I just needed a way to connect that felt authentic. Games gave me permission to be silly. To be vulnerable.

To stop performing. The relationships grew naturally after that. Not because I had mastered advisory. Because I had finally stopped surviving it.

What Peer Impact Really Solves

That experience happened six years before I left the classroom. Long before I imagined creating the Peer Impact Program. But looking back, I can see the thread connecting everything. Peer Impact isn't really about games. It isn't even primarily about student leadership. It's about helping both students and teachers move from survival into connection. Teachers often look resistant to advisory for the very same reason students appear resistant in our classrooms.

They're scared. Scared of failing. Scared of not knowing what to do. Scared of getting it wrong.

Administrators sometimes interpret that behavior as negativity or unwillingness. I see something different.

I see humans behaving exactly as humans behave when they are pushed beyond their comfort and challenge zones without enough support. The irony is heartbreaking. We spend our careers trying to understand why students resist learning. Yet when teachers resist something unfamiliar, we often forget to ask the same question.

Not, "What's wrong with these teachers?"

But, "What are they afraid might happen if they fail?"

When we understand the "why," everything changes. The answer isn't more mandates. It isn't more accountability. It's creating environments where adults feel just as safe to learn as we hope our students do.

Because belonging doesn't start with students. It starts with the adults who are asked to create it.