Ease Transitions
Advisers can play an important role in making the many transitions students experience as smooth as possible. Consider these tips for pandemic transitions:
- Create activities that encourage at-home students to turn on their cameras and engage.
- Maintain a sense of community.
- Recruit students in promoting student wellness.
- Offer virtual learners “bonus days,” when they can come into the building for extra help and guidance.
Take Some Advice
In “Lessons Learned,” we rounded up some great advice from both new and seasoned advisers to guide others. Advisers getting ready to pass their duties on to someone new can employ these tips:
- Hold elections before you leave.
- Send new advisers to as many conferences as possible (e.g., NatStuCo and state conferences).
- Share any pertinent organizational documentation.
- Disclose your contact info.
- Remind the new advisers that this is a new chapter for the student council and encourage them to make it their own.
LEAD With Heart
Adviser Amy M. Daniel shares the importance of social-emotional learning in student leadership and explains how she encourages her student council to use LEAD as the guiding principle in shaping their school culture:
- Love
- Empathy
- Awareness and acceptance
- Decision making
Plant Seeds of Positivity
Student council students Bailey McLaughlin and Laci Schwirian explain the critical importance of staying positive and nurturing growth. This can be done by:
- Uplifting peers and celebrating their achievements
- Thanking those who sacrifice their time, energy, and safety to keep others safe
- Acting as role models for those who need someone to look up to