From Student Voice to School-wide Impact: Reimagining Advisory Through Experience with Kikori

What happens when a school commits to advisory as a school-wide priority and invites students to help shape it?

Advisory has the potential to be one of the most powerful Tier 1 structures in a school. It's the built-in time for connection, check-ins, belonging, and the kind of relational groundwork that makes every other part of the school day work better. But too often, advisory feels inconsistent from room to room, passive in energy, or disconnected from what students actually need that morning, that week, that year.

At Amherst Middle School in New Hampshire, something remarkable is happening. Over this past year, we've had the privilege of partnering with the AMS team to support an advisory program that was already built on a strong experiential foundation, and then watching students step forward to help shape what it becomes next. The result was a partnership year that culminated in a Student Voice Project, a presentation at the New Hampshire School Administrators Association (NHSAA), and a curriculum build for next year that is being designed directly from student feedback.

This is the story of how it unfolded, and what it can teach any school leader thinking about the future of advisory.

The Foundation: AMS Was Already Leading the Way

One of the most important things to say up front is this: AMS didn't come to Kikori needing to be fixed. They came to Kikori ready to grow.

Under the leadership of Principal Kristen Gathier, AMS had already done the deep, thoughtful work of building an advisory program rooted in experiential learning, including foundational work with Tara Flippo, one of the leading voices in adventure-based and experiential education and author of Social Emotional

Learning in Action. The vision was there. The commitment was there. Every staff member in the building leads a small advisory crew. Advisory is a schoolwide priority, not an optional add-on with shared routines, shared terminology, and shared expectations already planned for the 2025-26 school year.

When a school has that kind of foundation, our job at Kikori isn't to reinvent anything. It's to equip and extend, giving teachers the daily resources they need to keep the work fresh, consistent, and student-centered all year long

The Partnership Year: Daily and Weekly Experiential Practice

Throughout the year, Kikori partnered with AMS to provide two layers of support.

• Daily advisory activities: Quick, structured check-ins, energizers, and calmers that any staff member could pull up and run with confidence. Some teachers used a little. Some used a lot. The point was that the resources were there, removing the moment of hesitation that so often derails Advisory when a teacher isn't sure what to do next.

• Weekly experiential learning activities: Deeper, more intentional experiences tied to the skills students practice across a full year, including belonging, communication, self-regulation, gratitude, and leadership. These are the activities that don't just fill time but build culture.

Because our activities are grounded in generations of experiential education practice and research from the University of New Hampshire, including the work of Dr. Michael Gass and Tara Flippo, AMS staff weren't just doing things that looked cool. They were doing things backed by proven methods.

The snowball effect was real. Within a few months, every student in the building knew the terminology. They knew the activities. They had favorites. When a teacher said "let's do a check-in," kids knew exactly what that meant, and increasingly, they knew which one they wanted.

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The Student Voice Project: Students Show Up

By spring, we were ready for the piece of this work we're most proud of: the Kikori Student Voice Project.

We opened up an invitation for AMS students to sit down with us and share direct input on their advisory experience. What was working? What felt meaningful? What felt like a waste of time? What did they want to see next year?

What happened next blew us away:

• More than 100 students signed up

• 100% were volunteers. No one was required, pulled, or nudged.

• 100% had parent support. Every family who was asked said yes.

Students were extraordinary in the interviews. They were thoughtful, honest, specific, and generous with their ideas. They talked about the energizers they loved, including Labyrinth, Make a Deal, Evolution, Warrior, Knee Tag, and Zoomert. They talked about finger breathing when they needed to calm down. They pitched new ideas for next year's Experiential Connection Calendar, including National Waffle Day and National Meme Day (both now officially on the table).

But more than the specific feedback, what struck us was what the participation itself revealed. When students believe their voice will actually shape what happens next, they show up. When families trust the school and the process, they support it. That kind of buy-in doesn't happen accidentally - it's built over years of trust.

The NHSAA Presentation: Students Take the Stage

On the strength of the Student Voice Project, Kikori and AMS were invited to present together at the New Hampshire School Administrators Association conference.

And here's the part that mattered most: students led the presentation.

Representatives from 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade took the stage alongside administrators and Kikori to share what advisory looks like, sounds like, and feels like at AMS. They ran check-ins with a room full of school leaders. They facilitated energizers. They answered questions about what makes advisory engaging, what drives belonging, and what they'd want every school to know.

The room of administrators experienced what AMS students experience every day. Not a talk about SEL, but a felt experience of it. Students practiced belonging, communication, and self-regulation in real time, in front of the people who make decisions about advisory programs across the state.

That's what schoolwide SEL looks like when it's real. Not a slide deck. A live example.

What Comes Next: Building Feedback Into the Big Build

Here's where the story gets exciting for the year ahead.

Everything we heard from AMS students in the Student Voice Project is now being built directly into Kikori's next chapter: a full grade-level curriculum build-out for next school year. We're calling it our Big Build, and it's being designed from student feedback up.

That means the activities, the sequencing, the themes, and the experiential arcs students will encounter next year aren't being designed in isolation. They're being shaped by the exact voices they're meant to serve, starting with the AMS students who told us what worked, what didn't, and what they wanted more of.

This is what closing the loop actually looks like. Students share. We listen. The curriculum gets better. And the cycle continues.

Three Anchors That Make This Work

If you're a school leader thinking about the future of advisory, here's the short version of what the AMS partnership has reinforced for us.

Experience lowers resistance. You cannot lecture your way into belonging. Students and adults alike need to do the thing. Experiential activities break down the wall that forms the moment you announce, "now we're going to talk about our feelings."

Reflection builds meaning. The activity isn't the point. The conversation after the activity is the point. Structure the reflection, and the skills stick.

Student voice drives improvement. You will never get advisory right on the first try, or the tenth. The only way to keep improving is to keep asking the people it's designed for, and then actually building their feedback into what comes next.

One Question to Carry Back

If you take nothing else from this, take this question back to your school:

What would your students say about Advisory that you might not be hearing?

And then: what's one small shift you could test next week?

You don't need to overhaul everything at once. You need to commit to the structure, build the shared language, invite students into the design, and keep showing up year after year. That's what AMS has done under Principal Gathier's leadership, and we've been honored to walk alongside them.

This is what school-wide SEL looks like when it's grounded in experience, student voice, and real partnership. And with the Big Build coming next year, we're just getting started.

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Kikori is a research-backed experiential SEL platform serving 20,000+ educators across 94 countries, with 3,000+ activities designed to support belonging, connection, and whole-school climate. Learn more about the Experiential Connection Calendar, the Kikori Student Voice Project, and bringing this model to your school at kikoriapp.com. 💚